Köln 2004 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 28: Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics I
HK 28.4: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 10. März 2004, 11:45–12:00, F
Quest for a nuclear georeactor — •Rob de Meijer, Emiel van der Graaf, and Klaus Jungmann — Kernfysisch Versneller Instituut, Groningen, The Netherlands
Little is known about the interior of our planet. Questions still under debate are the role of U and Th in the energy production inside and the origin of the Earth’s magnetic field. Another intriguing issue is the presence of 3He in our atmosphere.
Recently a 8 km diameter nuclear georeactor at the Earth’s centre was proposed. Such a reactor is so large that it breeds its own 235U and tritium is produced via ternary fission. Calculations indicate that sufficient tritium is produced to explain the high 3He/4He ratios at volcanoes. Poisoning by fission products may reduce or shut down the reactor and so decrease and flip the geomagnetic field.
One way to investigate the U and Th distribution and the hypothesis of a georeactor, is to measure the anti-neutrinos produced in the respective decay and fission processes. Such measurements are feasible in an underground laboratory, provided the background due to the geological formation and anti-neutrinos produced in nuclear power reactors is sufficiently low. This condition hampers observation in the existing underground laboratories.
We propose to construct an underground laboratory at a location with a low-background and away from nuclear reactors. For this laboratory an anti-neutrino detector has to be developed with some directional sensitivity.