Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Neutrino radiation
from
nuclear power plants
(NPP)
Peter H. Rassmann
3 / 2008
The environment of nuclear power plants has been the blind spot of high science for
decades. So was the neutrino radiation for environmentalists. This paper closes the
gap.
Everything you ever wanted to know about NPPs and neutrinos. Is it time to get
worried?
Content
The Author
Peter H. Rassmann
Paul-Gossen-Str. 34
91052 Erlangen
Germany
All pictures and diagrams within this paper are under GNU Public License.
Source: Either www.wikipedia.org or self-made.
1 Neutrino radiation
Neutrinos are subatomic particles. They were predicted 70 years ago, and were
observed for the first time in reactor experiments some 50 years ago. If a lot of those
particles travel in one direction, this is called “neutrino radiation”.
Because the word „anti-neutrinos“ is too long and clumsy to write and read it all the
time, I’ll just go ahead and call them „neutrinos”. We are talking about nuclear reactors
here, and the meaning should be clear.
Neutrino radiation is different from other types of radiation that you may know about,
perhaps from everyday life. For example, you may have noticed that your mobile
phone’s signal strength is reduced by and by, if shielded by some matter. The same is
true in principle for other more radioactive types of radiation like alpha, beta or gamma
rays: Because they permanently interact with matter, this radiation is absorbed more
and more the deeper it penetrates into material. Neutrinos are different. They just pass
thru material without a trace, but if they interact, they sort of trash the target nucleus,
releasing a lot of energy and radioactivity on the spot. Between the neutrino source and
the target nucleus, you can’t measure them and they don’t leave a trace.
E = m*c2.
You have heard about that. The generated neutrons fuel the chain reaction by splitting
other nuclei, or are absorbed or decay. All radioactive particles are absorbed inside the
reactor, turning their energy into thermal power. The whole process generates
neutrinos, too, which escape from the reactor and take their energy with them.
The neutrinos (ν e ), encircled with yellow lines, just leave the reactor, because there
is no shielding to stop them. They carry away about 6 % of the total reactor energy.
The neutrinos which leave the reactor don’t carry all the same amount of energy.
Some have much more energy than others. A graphics that shows how may
neutrinos carry which energy is called the „neutrino spectrum“ of the reactor.
A typical NPP has a thermal power of about 4000 MW (Mega-Watts). Thermal power
is the amount of heat generated within the coolant by the fisson process.
Today, it is generally assumed that the 200 or 250 MW of neutrino radiation from an
NPP just penetrates all material, without leaving a trace at all. The energy just seems
to disappear into the void. Please try to imagine what we are talking about: 200 MW
of energy delivers enough heat to melt 200 tons of steel per hour, or enough
electricity to fuel 2 Million 100 Watt light bulbs. And this energy, as everybody
believes, disappears?
3 Neutrino measurements
Neutrinos were discovered in 1956 with a reactor experiment by Frederick Reines
and Clyde Cowan. Both received the 1995 Nobel Price in physics for their
achievements. Since then, two more types of neutrinos were discovered. Today,
three “generations” of neutrinos are known, the electron-, myon- and tau-neutrino. All
three types have anti-neutrinos to go with.
Now let’s get back to the particles we are interested in, the anti-electron-neutrinos
from a nuclear reactor, which I’ll call “neutrinos” for short. I would like to summarize
the method how the neutrinos were detected in the first place. This is basically the
experimental setup of the Cowan & Reines discovery. The setup has been reused
the same way, or at least in a similar way, for all experiments ever since.
The two signals from the positron and the neutron within a very short time span give
a clear signature for a neutrino reaction, or a “neutrino event”, how it is called in
physics speak.
.
However, there is no way to tell that you have indeed measured all neutrino events,
since neutrinos can do other types of reactions, too.
In theory, a neutrino from a reactor can react with any particle within the target
material. If the target is water, it can react with the protons and neutrons from the
oxygen nuclei, or with the electrons of the atomic hulls. And, of course, the
experiment doesn’t say anything about other materials, with other chemical elements
used for a target.
That’s not the whole story yet. In order to produce this unique neutrino signal, the
incident neutrino has to transform a proton into a neutron and a positron, and this
transformation requires a certain amount of energy. So the neutrino has to bring in
this amount of extra energy to make the reaction work. In physics speak, you say that
the energy threshold for the reaction is 1.8 Mega-electron-Volts, or 1.8 MeV for short.
“MeV” is just some energy unit in particle physics. The important thing is that not all
neutrinos carry enough energy for the reaction. That means most neutrinos cannot
be detected at all, because they don’t carry enough energy. Let’s take a closer look
at it.
Within the above spectrum , the threshold energy for neutrino detection is marked by
a green line. This means that only a number of neutrinos equivalent to the small area
on the right side can be detected at all. It is about 3 %. The vast number of neutrinos,
equivalent to 97 %, cannot be detected with a present day apparatus at all.
This doesn’t mean that neutrinos below this threshold cannot react with matter. It only
means that scientists so far are a bit choosy with their detectors. Primarily, so far they
wanted to see clear neutrino evidence, and that was needed to prove the theories.
And here is the “Neutrino Gap”. If a neutrino interacts with some heavy atoms – the
sort of atoms with lots of protons and neutrons in it – the energy levels inside the
atom must be included to describe the process. If a neutrino transforms a heavy atom
into an “isobar”, all the structures inside it are reshuffled. “Isobar” means “equal
weight”, because the atom has roughly the same mass, an electron and a proton
less, but a neutron more. As far as the theory goes, a neutrino with relatively low
energy of 0.1 MeV or below can react with some heavy atoms and turn them into
radioactive isotopes. That’s because the energy difference is delivered by the inside
reshuffling of the atom. Mostly all neutrinos from an NPP have enough energy to do
that.
This is the path of arguments: Assert the worst case scenarios, and try to figure out
by what reasoning they can be devaluated, based on today’s knowledge. (On this
part, the reader is requested to join in with his own experience. For example, I am not
a specialist for radiation protection of NPPs, and that’s why I certainly miss a few
small but utterly important details.)
The longer-lived isotope produced by the neutrino accumulates along the food chain,
or within the drinking water. Eventually, it reaches a human body, where it decays
and releases radioactivity.
A shielding against this type of radioactive contamination is not possible, because the
neutrinos easily penetrate most materials. Moreover, the radiation can not easily be
traced to the reactor, because the neutrinos cannot be seen between their source
and their target. If the specific dangerous element were known, it might be possible to
use additives to the nutrition, as surplus replacement elements, to prevent the
radioactive isotopes from being incorporated into the body (this procedure would be
similar to the prescription of iodine pills in the case of nuclear incidents).
In the absence of those measurements, there are a few hints to help take glimpses at
neutrino interactions. First of all, the values of those high energy neutrinos have
been measured. The numbers say that neutrinos will induce just a few radioactive
events, per kilogram of water and per day, right next to the reactor. That’s indeed
very little compared to natural radioactivity. It is often quoted that “one light year of
lead would be needed to stop the neutrinos, because they don’t interact”. That is
false, just because nobody ever measured lead. The only known value is for the
hydrogen – e.g. protons - in water molecules. From other types of radiation it is
known that the absorption can vary by ten orders of magnitude, depending on
material and energy. This applies for energies below 1.8 MeV, because the radiation
“sees” the internal structure of atoms and matter in this range. This is true for
electron, neutron, alpha and gamma radiation (gamma includes all types of
electromagnetic radiation in this case, like X-rays or visible light, or the waves that
drive you mobile phone).
There are some more experiments related to nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, they
again are only sensitive to high energy neutrinos. They look at the attenuation of the
neutrino flux, that is, whether the neutrino beam flux is dimmed as it travels along.
These experiments try to investigate whether neutrinos “disappear”. The general idea
is to prove “neutrino oscillations” – a process by which neutrinos change from one
type to another, and thus avoid detection.
The problem of disappearance is annoyingly around for 40 years with solar neutrinos,
those from the sun. They are the anti-particles of neutrinos from reactors, but they
disappear nevertheless somehow. Presumably they are produced in the core of the
Peter H. Rassmann, Paul-Gossen-Str. 34, 91052 Erlangen, Germany printed 20080312
phone +49 172 4423637 e-mail peter_rassmann@yahoo.com
Neutrino radiation from nuclear power plants Page 13 of 16
sun. The most important production process would be the fusion of two protons into a
deuterium. Unfortunately, that process releases rather low energy neutrinos, and thus
experimenters went after their brethren with higher energies, from more scarce fusion
processes. After a close look, they had a solar neutrino problem: “Discrepancies in
the measurements of actual solar neutrino types and what the sun's interior models
predict.“ They explained it by “neutrino oscillations”. Since then, they got other
detectors which faciliate a look at the lower energy neutrinos, but the problem is still
around, and is still explained the same way – by neutrino oscillations.
One thing is certain about solar neutrinos. If there ever was a material – some
isotope – on earth that reacts strongly with solar neutrino, it would have been
disintegrated within a short time, by the very solar neutrinos. “Short time” is to be
taken relative to the earth’s age of 4 billion years. That makes it tough for researchers
to get hold of a material that reacts strongly with solar neutrinos. They used this one
isotope, Gallium-71, which reacts with solar neutrinos to form Germanium-71. The
scientists set up 30 tons of the stuff as a target in Italy, and counted the few atoms
per day that were transformed by neutrinos. Again, they found the numbers are too
small.
The scientists are somewhat fascinated by the idea of “neutrino oscillations”, but to
judge environmental hazards around NPPs, no real conclusion comes from solar
neutrinos so far.
A hint for the existence of a reactor neutrino problem came from the medical
sciences. A study undertaken in Germany by the German Childhood Cancer Registry
found a significant increase in childhood leukaemia around nuclear power plants.
There have been more findings like that in the past, but this is the first one which
gives a generally recognized statistical security. The study, done on behalf of the
German Federal Agency for Radiation Protection (BfS) , was scrutinized by external
experts, and comes to the conclusion: There is a significant increase in childhood
cancer around commercial nuclear reactors, within a distance of 5 kilometres. With
the state of the art of knowledge, this increase cannot be accounted for by the
radioactivity emitted by the plants.
So far the underlying scientific model of NPPs does not include the neutrino radiation
of NPPs at all. An additional and unexpected induced radioactivity or contamination
due to neutrinos may explain the medical findings. As it stands, the KiKK-study just
looks like a set-up to search for the interactions of neutrinos with matter.
(For further information on the KIKK study, please refer to the English language site
http://www.bfs.de/en/kerntechnik ).
7 To do
Based on the present level of knowledge about neutrinos, it is not possible to judge
upon the environmental hazards of an NPP’s neutrino radiation.
All measurements within neutrino physics to date were designed to prove or disprove
the latest trends in elementary particle physics, and they were not designed to study
the environmental contamination of NPPs. They were done for the wrong energy
band, and for one material (hydrogen) only.
8 Technical notes
This attachment contains some technical notes that have some importance, but may
have disrupted the flow of conception in the previous chapters.
2. „Only 3 % of all reactor neutrinos carry an energy of more than 1.8 MeV and
can trigger a reaction within the detectors. 97 % of all neutrinos escape
unnoticed.“ Those 3 % are hard to calculate, more precisely, because you
would have to know the details about a plant including geometry, nuclear fuel
and nuclear ashes produced so far, age and details of its operation over time,
and more. You may then be able to calculate the masses of all the β-emitters
as a function of time, and get the plant’s neutrino spectrum as a superposition
of all spectra of participating ß-emitters. Past experiments with reactor
neutrinos avoided this problem in parts, because the experimenters were only
interested in a relative neutrino flux, like between two different detector
locations. Also, the interest was in the high energy neutrino band, where the
neutrinos were detectable with their experimental apparatus. I am not even
sure there are software programs to calculate the neutrino spectrum for all
different reactor types. Personally I know of only one software program that
may allow for a neutrino spectrum calculation for boiling water reactors. The
value „3 % of neutrinos are above threshold of 1.8 MeV“ is taken from Donald
H. Perkins book, „Introduction to High Energy Physics“. In the book, he uses
the number to explain the original Cowan & Reines neutrino experiments.
According to current theories, neutrinos react with matter with a mechanism called
„weak interaction“. Within the scope of this paper, it is impossible to explain the
theory. But the term “weak” is often misused in popular science in a way like
“neutrinos rarely interact with matter because the reaction goes by weak interaction”.
A statement like that is just as true or false as this one: “You can’t fall down and
break your nose because gravity is the weakest interaction of them all.”
The interaction of neutrinos with matter, even when described by current theories, is
governed by more parameters. In the absence of measurements, it is a bad advise to
rely only on the label “weak”.
For those interested in the matter, I have compiled a second paper named
“Interactions of soft neutrinos with matter”. It requires some background in physics. If
you have interest in the topic, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Interactions of
soft antineutrinos
with matter
Peter H. Rassmann
3/2008