Year
2012
Abstract
In the late seventies was born the idea that nuclear reactor antineutrinos could be used for reactor monitoring. Several experiments evidenced the direct relationship between the detected antineutrino signal and thermal power and burnup of the nuclear fuel. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has expressed its interest in the potentialities of antineutrino detection as a new safeguard tool. Several projects are in development worldwide, designing new antineutrino detector concepts adapted to the non-proliferation constraints. In parallel, sophisticated simulations of reactors and their associated antineutrino flux have been developed to predict the antineutrino signature of fuel burnup and of a diversion. This prospective simulation work is complementary to the R&D of detection techniques. In order to determine how the antineutrino probe could be part of the future surveillance procedures, the characteristics of the antineutrino emission of all these nuclear reactor designs have to be assessed. They will serve as well to determine the sensitivity goal of future antineutrino detectors devoted to reactor monitoring. To this aim we have started to study different reactor designs with our simulation tools. We use a package called MCNP Utility for Reactor Evolution (MURE), initially developed by CNRS/IN2P3 labs to study Generation IV reactors. The MURE package has been coupled to fission product beta decay nuclear databases for studying reactor antineutrino emission. The MURE package could be well adapted to be part of an integrated safeguards measurement tool comprised of the detector and the reactor simulation code. Such an approach might allow the agency to reduce reliance on the correctness of operator declarations at nuclear power reactors. Intermediate steps are required to reach this goal. At this conference, we propose to review the latest developments concerning the MURE code. In a first part we will present the simulation of the Chooz PWR cores in the frame of the Double Chooz particle physics experiment. The fission rates of the two cores have been computed thanks to detailed core simulations. A complete study of the associated systematic errors has been performed, reducing the overall error on the predicted antineutrinos down to 1.7%. We will then present preliminary results on diversion scenarios, taking the example of the case of CANDU reactors, provided that results from diversion scenarios with Pebble Bed Reactors and Na-cooled fast reactors, should be released soon