Comparison of Plastic Antineutrino Detector Designs in the Context of Near Field Reactor Monitoring

Abstract

We compare existing segmented plastic antineutrino detectors with our new geometrically improved design for antineutrino detection and light collection efficiency. The purpose of this study is to determine the most suitable design style for remote reactor monitoring in the context of nuclear safeguards. Using Monte Carlo based GEANT4 simulation package, we perform detector simulation based on two prominent experiments: Plastic antineutrino detector array (Panda) and Core monitoring by reactor antineutrino detector (Cormorad). In addition to these two well-known designs, another concept, the Panda2, can be obtained by making a small variation of Panda detector, is also considered in the simulation. The results show that the light collection efficiency of the Cormorad is substantially less with respect to the other two detectors while the highest antineutrino detection efficiency is achieved with the Cormorad and Panda2. Furthermore, as an alternative to these design choices, which are composed of an array of identical rectangular-shaped modules, we propose to combine regular hexagonal-shaped modules which minimizes the surface area of the whole detector and consequently reduces the number of optical readout channels considerably. With this approach, it is possible to obtain a detector configuration with a slightly higher detection efficiency with respect to the Panda design and a better energy resolution detector compared to the Cormorad design.