Nuclear Propelled Vessels and Neutrino Oscillation Experiments

We study the effect of naval nuclear reactors on the study of neutrino oscillations. We find that the presence of naval reactors at unknown locations and times may limit the accuracy of future very long baseline reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments. At the same time, we argue that a nuclear powered surface ship such as a large Russian icebreaker may provide an ideal source for precision experiments.

Figure 1

Energy spectrum of antineutrinos produced by different types of reactor fuel. The two broken lines correspond to the fuel composition of a commercial power reactor at the beginning and at the end of a fuel cycle. The solid line represents the spectrum for a hypothetical core made of ${}^{\mathrm{235}}\mathrm{U}$ only.

Figure 2

Estimated 95% C.L. errors in $\Delta m^2$ (left panel) and ${tan}^2\theta$ (right panel) for tunable baseline experiments compared to the case of a fixed baseline experiment as a function of $\Delta m^2$. The three curves for the tunable baseline case refer to ${tan}^2\theta =0.22$, 0.34, and 0.56, as consistent with the central value and the extremes of the MSW-LMA solar neutrino solution [18]. Only the central value is used for the case of the fixed baseline experiment represented by the shaded region bounded above and below by, respectively, the case of a 100 ton and 1 kton detector.