The use of CEvNS to monitor spent nuclear fuel

With a growing demand for a clean energy supply along with concerns over effective nuclear waste storage, it is imperative to be able to monitor highly radioactive waste in a safe and effective way. To date, no effective technology exists to re-verify the content of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) in a dry storage cask should this become necessary. For this purpose we explore the applicability of using Coherent-Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEvNS) to monitor the content of SNF in dry storage casks, as SNF produces neutrinos chiefly from $^{90}$Sr decays. We compare these results with what can be achieved via Inverse Beta Decay (IBD), demonstrating that at low nuclear recoil energies CEvNS event rates exceed the IBD event rates by 2-3 orders of magnitude for a given detector mass. We find that 10 kg argon or germanium detectors 3 meters from a fuel cask can detect over 100 events per year if sub-100 eV recoil energy thresholds can be achieved. Backgrounds from cosmic ray neutrons are estimated and considered in a preliminary analysis to examine with what certainty the fuel content in a dry storage cask can be verified.