Objective
Reactors for Use in the BOREXINO and GNO Solar Neutrino Experiments at Gran Sasso.
It is proposed to investigate the possibility to use the Russian research reactor facilities at RIAR (Dimitrovgrad) in order to produce a Mega-Curie low energy neutrino source which is urgently needed for performance checks of the BOREXINO and GNO solar neutrino experiments, now in preparation at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in Central Italy.
Such a source has been successfully applied to the GALLEX solar neutrino experiment. The neutrinos are emitted in the electron capture of 51Cr (half-life 1 month) which had been produced by an intense neutron activation of kg-quantities of isotopically enriched 50Cr in the Siloe reactor in Grenoble/France. The valuable enriched chromium and related hardware is available to us for re-activation, but Siloe goes permanently out of operation this year and no other reactor in Western Europe is suitable for this task. At Dimitrovgrad, this potential exists, but a careful technological and economic feasibility study is required in order to define the conditions under which such a strong source can actually be produced. In particular, we aim for a well supported estimate of what maximal source strength can be obtained at RIAR and under which random conditions.
The teams involved are MPI Heidelberg, INFN Milano/Gran Sasso, INR Moscow and RIAR Dimitrovgrad. There exist already good professional contacts between these groups in the general context of neutrino astrophysics. The unique reactor capacities of NIS make such a collaboration very obvious, in fact, no alternative would exist for the purpose. In particular, the application of such a source to the BOREXINO scintillation detector could become crucial for the evaluation of the results if the Be-solar neutrino flux is indeed as deficient as expected from the present state of knowledge. Evidence for massive neutrinos and 'new physics' could be the consequence.
Topic(s)
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69029 Heidelberg
Germany