Cerenkov Water-based Anti-neutrino Detection

A group of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have designed and constructed a water-based anti-neutrino detector to be used in monitoring plutonium content of reactor cores. This detector has the advantages over previous detectors in that it has a reduced foot print near the reactor core and it will be neither toxic nor flammable as previous detectors have been. In order to reduce backgrounds, a muon-veto was constructed to increase the signal to noise ratio. In this experiment, the researcher characterized the Photo-multiplier tubes to be used in the muon-veto and the central detector. From these results, researchers are confident that the new detector will be able to resolve the anti-neutrino signal. The detector is currently deployed at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and is collecting data.