Fri·Oct 6, 2017Friday·October 6, 2017

1. 01*

   Verification of spent nuclear fuel in sealed dry storage casks via measurements of cosmic ray muon scattering

   J. M. Durham🇺🇸 · D. Poulson · J. Bacon🇬🇧 · D. L. Chichester · E. Guardincerri🇺🇸 · C. L. Morris🇺🇸 · K. Plaud-Ramos · W. Schwendiman · J. D. Tolman · P. Winston

   Most of the plutonium in the world resides inside spent nuclear reactor fuel rods. This high-level radioactive waste is commonly held in long-term storage within large, heavily shielded casks. Currently, international nuclear safeguards inspectors have no stand-alone method of verifying the amount of reactor fuel stored within a sealed cask. Here we demonstrate experimentally that measurements of the scattering angles of cosmic ray muons which pass through a storage cask can be used to determine if spent fuel assemblies are missing without opening the cask. This application of technology and methods commonly used in high-energy particle physics provides a potential solution to this long-standing problem in international nuclear safeguards.

   nucl-exphysics.app-phPhys.Rev.Applied(2018)·15 citations
2. 02*

   Overview of Project 8 and Progress Towards Tritium Operation

   Walter C. Pettus (for the Project 8 Collaboration)🇺🇸

   Project 8 is a tritium endpoint neutrino mass experiment utilizing a phased program to achieve sensitivity to the range of neutrino masses allowed by the inverted mass hierarchy. The Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) technique is employed to measure the differential energy spectrum of decay electrons with high precision. We present an overview of the Project 8 experimental program, from first demonstration of the CRES technique to ultimate sensitivity with an atomic tritium source. We highlight recent advances in preparation for the first measurement of the continuous tritium spectrum with CRES.

   ↳ physics.ins-dethep-exnucl-exJ.Phys.Conf.Ser.(2020)·8 citations
3. 03*

   Status of the Project 8 Phase II

   Mathieu Guigue (for the Project 8 Collaboration)🇺🇸

   The Project 8 collaboration aims to measure the absolute neutrino mass scale using cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy on the beta decay of tritium. The second phase of the project will measure a continuous spectrum of molecular tritium beta decays and extract the tritium endpoint value with an eV or sub-eV scale precision. Monoenergetic electrons emitted by gaseous ${}^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr atoms are used to determine the relationship between cyclotron frequency and electron energy. This study allows us to optimize both the event reconstruction algorithm and the hardware configuration, in preparation for measuring the tritium beta decay spectrum. Phase II will benefit from a gas system of krypton and tritium that will allow measurement of and offline correction for magnetic field fluctuations. We present the recent progress in understanding the electron kinematics and implementing the magnetic field calibration.

   ↳ physics.ins-dethep-exnucl-exJ.Phys.Conf.Ser.(2020)·5 citations

* Reconstructed cohort: no mailing for this day survives in the archive. Papers are grouped by their submission times and arXiv's announcement cut-off, assuming announcement without delay; positions follow identifier order. Validated at ~91% exact-day agreement against the archived era.