Erlangen 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 5: Safeguards

AGA 5.1: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 19. März 2026, 14:00–14:30, KH 00.016

Assessing safeguards challenges in compact reactors through antineutrino detection — •Sarah Friedrich, Robin Mentel, Yan-Jie Schnellbach, and Adhitya Sekhar — Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and advanced reactor and fuel types promise enhanced nuclear safety and greater operational flexibility, but they may also introduce new challenges to safeguarding efforts. To support the monitoring of SMRs and the detection of nuclear material diversion, we propose employing antineutrinos, which can be detected by a liquid-organic time-projection chamber outside of the reactor building, allowing non-intrusive, continuous, real-time measurements. The objective is to identify undeclared shutdowns, verify declared operational parameters and detect the diversion of nuclear material.

Our research builds on computational reactor simulations performed with OpenMC and Geant4 for a prototype 300-MWth pressurized water SMR, which allows us to investigate a cluster of several SMRs in close proximity to one another. We analyze how the energy spectrum of detected antineutrinos changes over time with a special focus on the spectrum before and after the declared shutdown of one module, where refuelling takes place. In a further step, we investigate whether the number and spectrum of detected antineutrinos can be used to identify undeclared shutdowns of a module.

Keywords: Non-proliferation; Safeguards; Antineutrinos; Simulations; SMR