The Nucifer demonstrator for nuclear reactor monitoring
Résumé
The Nucifer demonstrator is a prototype device for nuclear reactor monitoring. It pools French and German resources and know-how to meet the International Atomic Energy Agency’s requirements about performing nuclear safeguard measurements in a non-intrusive way. Nucifer detects electron antineutrinos emitted in the decay chains of fission products. Combined with reactor simulations, it provides a promising way to assess both the thermal power and fissile material content of a nuclear core. This article reports on the successful 5 years of operations of Nucifer at the Osiris research reactor, located at the Saclay research center of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Nucifer achieved the world’s second-shortest baseline antineutrino detection, 7 m away of a reactor core in severe background conditions, using 145 and 106 days of reactor on and off data, respectively. The future and next steps of the Nucifer project are then briefly discussed.