Method of Fission Product Beta Spectra Measurements for Predicting Reactor Anti-neutrino Emission

Abstract

The nuclear fission process that occurs in the core of nuclear reactors results in unstable, neutron rich fission products that subsequently beta decay and emit electron anti-neutrinos. These reactor neutrinos have served neutrino physics research from the initial discovery of the neutrino to current precision measurements of neutrino mixing angles. The prediction of the absolute flux and energy spectrum of the emitted reactor neutrinos hinges upon a series of seminal papers based on measurements performed in the 1970s and 1980s. The steadily improving reactor neutrino measurement techniques and recent re-considerations of the agreement between the predicted and observed reactor neutrino flux motivates revisiting the underlying beta spectra measurements. A method is proposed to use an accelerator proton beam delivered to an engineered target to yield a neutron field tailored to reproduce the neutron energy spectrum present in the core of an operating nuclear reactor. Foils of the primary reactor fissionable isotopes placed in this tailored neutron flux will ultimately emit beta particles from the resultant fission products. Measurement of these beta particles in a time projection chamber with a perpendicular magnetic field provides a distinctive set of systematic considerations for comparison to the original seminal beta spectra measurements. Ancillary measurements such as gamma-ray emission and post-irradiation radiochemical analysis will further constrain the absolute normalization of beta emissions per fission. The requirements for unfolding the beta spectra measured with this method into a predicted reactor neutrino spectrum are explored.