Remote detection of nuclear reactors by oil supertankers
Physicist Thierry Lasserre with colleagues from the French Alternative Energy and Atomic Energy Commission (French Alternative Energy Commission) proposed an original idea for the remote detection of nuclear reactors. According to his calculations, neutrino detectors (like the Cherenkov water detector ) can be built on supertankers that can sail to the coast of an enemy country and scan up to 500 km deep into its territory for the reactor neutrino spectrum.
On November 16, 2010, French physicists published (PDF) in open access their work “SNIF: A Futuristic Neutrino Probe for Undeclared Nuclear Fission Reactors”.
The international community suspects that countries such as Iran or North Korea may launch a nuclear reactor secretly from everyone, in violation of international agreements. Intelligence agencies from different countries closely monitor the movement of nuclear materials and receive information from informants in order to find out the plans of the enemy. At the same time, physicists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) think how to solve the problem of monitoring nuclear reactors using purely scientific methods.
Theoretically, a remote nuclear reactor can be detected using neutrino detectors. For example, a gigawatt reactor emits about 10 21 neutrinos per second. It would seem that it glows like a Christmas tree, but the problem is that finding them is not so easy. The usual method is to construct a Cherenkov water detector — a large water tank in which the recording system is located in the form of a spatial lattice.
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Today in Russia, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan and the United States, work is underway to create neutrino detectors capable of real-time measuring the neutrino reactor spectrum and thereby controlling both the reactor power and the composite fuel composition. It is assumed that such a detector will be able to detect nuclear reactors for hundreds of kilometers, that is, from the territory of a neighboring country.
A sufficiently large Cherenkov detector could register radiation from any reactor. Another problem is signal filtering. There are many sources of neutrinos, including radioactive substances in the Earth, as well as hundreds of legal nuclear reactors.
Thierry Lazierra’s idea is to design a powerful antineutrino detector based on an oil supertanker. Lasierr proposes to cover the tanker tank surface with photon detectors and fill it with 10 34 protons in the form of 138,000 tons of linear alkyl benzene (LAB, C 13 H 30 ).
A LAB needs a tank with a capacity of approximately 160 thousand m 3 , for example, a radius of 23 m and a length of 96.5 m. This is SNIF (a Secret Neutrino Interactions Finder).
Such a tanker can sail to the coast of a suspicious country, then immerse the detector to a depth of from several hundred to several thousand meters - and work for about six months until it collects enough information.
On the next map, Thierry Lazierre depicted how many events can be recorded by a detector at a depth of 4,000 m for six months when filtering neutrinos with an energy of more than 2.6 MeV (information from 201 nuclear stations is included).
In scientific work there is a similar map for a depth of 2500 m and energy of 1 MeV, as well as all the necessary data for carrying out independent calculations.
Of course, such a project is still too fantastic, but the threat of nuclear war may force someone to try to implement the experiment in practice.
On November 16, 2010, French physicists published (PDF) in open access their work “SNIF: A Futuristic Neutrino Probe for Undeclared Nuclear Fission Reactors”.
The international community suspects that countries such as Iran or North Korea may launch a nuclear reactor secretly from everyone, in violation of international agreements. Intelligence agencies from different countries closely monitor the movement of nuclear materials and receive information from informants in order to find out the plans of the enemy. At the same time, physicists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) think how to solve the problem of monitoring nuclear reactors using purely scientific methods.
Theoretically, a remote nuclear reactor can be detected using neutrino detectors. For example, a gigawatt reactor emits about 10 21 neutrinos per second. It would seem that it glows like a Christmas tree, but the problem is that finding them is not so easy. The usual method is to construct a Cherenkov water detector — a large water tank in which the recording system is located in the form of a spatial lattice.
')
Today in Russia, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan and the United States, work is underway to create neutrino detectors capable of real-time measuring the neutrino reactor spectrum and thereby controlling both the reactor power and the composite fuel composition. It is assumed that such a detector will be able to detect nuclear reactors for hundreds of kilometers, that is, from the territory of a neighboring country.
A sufficiently large Cherenkov detector could register radiation from any reactor. Another problem is signal filtering. There are many sources of neutrinos, including radioactive substances in the Earth, as well as hundreds of legal nuclear reactors.
Thierry Lazierra’s idea is to design a powerful antineutrino detector based on an oil supertanker. Lasierr proposes to cover the tanker tank surface with photon detectors and fill it with 10 34 protons in the form of 138,000 tons of linear alkyl benzene (LAB, C 13 H 30 ).
A LAB needs a tank with a capacity of approximately 160 thousand m 3 , for example, a radius of 23 m and a length of 96.5 m. This is SNIF (a Secret Neutrino Interactions Finder).
Such a tanker can sail to the coast of a suspicious country, then immerse the detector to a depth of from several hundred to several thousand meters - and work for about six months until it collects enough information.
On the next map, Thierry Lazierre depicted how many events can be recorded by a detector at a depth of 4,000 m for six months when filtering neutrinos with an energy of more than 2.6 MeV (information from 201 nuclear stations is included).
In scientific work there is a similar map for a depth of 2500 m and energy of 1 MeV, as well as all the necessary data for carrying out independent calculations.
Of course, such a project is still too fantastic, but the threat of nuclear war may force someone to try to implement the experiment in practice.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/108677/
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