Reactors as a source of antineutrinos: the effect of fuel loading and burnup for mixed oxide fuels

Understand

In a conventional light water reactor loaded with a range of uranium and plutonium-based fuel mixtures, the variation in antineutrino production over the cycle reflects both the initial core fissile inventory and its evolution.

• Under the assumption of constant thermal power, we calculate the rate at which antineutrinos are emitted from variously fueled cores, and the evolution of that rate as measured by a representative ton-scale antineutrino detector.
• We find that antineutrino flux decreases with burnup for Low Enriched Uranium cores, increases for full mixed-oxide (MOX) cores, and does not appreciably change for cores with a MOX fraction of approximately 75%.
• Accounting for uncertainties in the fission yields, in the emitted antineutrino spectra, and the detector response function, we show that the difference in core-wide MOX fractions at least as small as 8% can be distinguished using a hypothesis test.