Novel Opaque Scintillator Technology for Nuclear Industry Imaging based on Anti-Matter Detection

We propose to deliver a novel technology for the nuclear industry to open the possibility of direct monitoring of nuclear reactions inside nuclear power plant cores.

The new technology centres on a radically-new and totally counter-intuitive approach to radiation detection that has arisen from neutrino physics research. As of today, direct and rapid in-situ measurement of nuclear reactor fission activity is not possible. Our technology is expected to make this possible by using the copious neutrinos that stream out of nuclear reactors.

Achieving this leap relies on the paradigm shifting nature of our approach. Detection of radiation makes extensive use of light emitting materials known as scintillators. These are nearly always transparent, to allow the light to be seen and measured.

Our radically-new approach is to use an opaque scintillator, coupled with a lattice of optical fibres to extract the light.

This technique naturally provides high-resolution imaging of anti-matter annihilation plus many other types of radiation (e.g. betas, gammas, neutrons), improving the signal to noise ratio of anti-neutrino detection by a factor >10x. Consequently, our technology would be able to tolerate the high background environment close to a reactor.

The civil nuclear industry will benefit in a range of ways from safety and societal reassurance to operational efficiencies with a direct economic return.

Our technology will also be able to provide remote monitoring and information on any nuclear processes that emit neutrinos, opening many potential new markets.

Examples include spent nuclear fuel containers, fuel pools and waste disposal sites as well as nuclear warheads and fusion reactors such as ITER.

Our inter-disciplinary consortium pulls together experts from mechanical and electronics engineering, nuclear and particle physics, chemistry and computing with our major industrial partner in the civil nuclear energy industry to make this radical new technology a reality.