Antineutrino and gamma emission from the OSIRIS research reactor

Abstract

For the first time, the summation method has been coupled with a complete reactor model, in order to predict the antineutrino emission of a research reactor. This work, discussed in the first part of this paper, allows us to predict the low energy part of the antineutrino spectrum, evidencing the important contribution of actinides to the antineutrino emission. Experimental conditions at short distance from research reactors are challenging, because the reactor itself produces huge gamma background that induce accidental and correlated backgrounds in an antineutrino target. The understanding of this background is of utmost importance and triggered the second part of the work presented here.