Prediction of the Material Composition of the VVER-type Reactor Burned Pellet with Use of Neutron-Physical Codes

The purpose of neutron-physical calculations is typically isotopic composition of the fuel elements. However, in solving materials science problems related to nuclear fuel, researchers are usually interested in elemental composition of the fuel pellets, because the chemical and thermal physic properties are the same for differentisotopes of one chemical element. Nevertheless, for modeling of the elemental composition one should perform calculation of the isotopic composition and carry out the summation over all isotopes of a given chemical element. The development of computational tools allows the use of improved methods and codes, which held the consequent solution of tasks of heat conduction, neutron transport, and kinetics ofnuclides transformation. Thus the calculations take into account the dependence of the thermal conductivity from the changing isotopic composition and fuel burnup. This allows to perform neutron-physical and thermal-physical calculations of the reactor with detailed temperature distribution, taking into account temperature dependence of thermal conductivity and other characteristics. This approach was applied to calculations of the fuel pellet of the VVER type reactor and calculation of its elemental composition. Keywords: materials science, elemental composition, fuel pellet

Experimental Parameters for a Cerium 144 Based Intense Electron Antineutrino Generator Experiment at Very Short Baselines

The standard three-neutrino oscillation paradigm, associated with small squared mass splittings $\ll 0.1\ \mathrm{eV^2}$, has been successfully built up over the last 15 years using solar, atmospheric, long baseline accelerator and reactor neutrino experiments. However, this well-established picture might suffer from anomalous results reported at very short baselines in some of these experiments. If not experimental artifacts, such results could possibly be interpreted as the existence of at least an additional fourth sterile neutrino species, mixing with the known active flavors with an associated mass splitting $\ll 0.1\ \mathrm{eV^2}$, and being insensitive to standard weak interactions. Precision measurements at very short baselines (5 to 15 m) with intense MeV electronic antineutrino emitters can be used to probe these anomalies. In this article, the expected antineutrino signal and backgrounds of a generic experiment which consists of deploying an intense beta minus radioactive source inside or in the vicinity of a large liquid scintillator detector are studied. The technical challenges to perform such an experiment are identified, along with quantifying the possible source and detector induced systematics, and their impact on the sensitivity to the observation of neutrino oscillations at short baselines.Comment: 21 pages, 27 figures, generated with pdflatex, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

White paper: CeLAND - Investigation of the reactor antineutrino anomaly with an intense 144Ce-144Pr antineutrino source in KamLAND

We propose to test for short baseline neutrino oscillations, implied by the recent reevaluation of the reactor antineutrino flux and by anomalous results from the gallium solar neutrino detectors. The test will consist of producing a 75 kCi 144Ce - 144Pr antineutrino source to be deployed in the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector (KamLAND). KamLAND's 13m diameter target volume provides a suitable environment to measure energy and position dependence of the detected neutrino flux. A characteristic oscillation pattern would be visible for a baseline of about 10 m or less, providing a very clean signal of neutrino disappearance into a yet-unknown, "sterile" state. Such a measurement will be free of any reactor-related uncertainties. After 1.5 years of data taking the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly parameter space will be tested at > 95% C.L.Comment: White paper prepared for Snowmass-2013; slightly different author lis