Monitoring the thermal power of nuclear reactors with a prototype cubic meter antineutrino detector

In this paper, we estimate how quickly and how precisely a reactor's operational status and thermal power can be monitored over hour to month time scales, using the antineutrino rate as measured by a cubic meter scale detector. Our results are obtained from a detector we have deployed and operated at 25 m standoff from a reactor core. This prototype can detect a prompt reactor shutdown within 5 h and monitor relative thermal power to within 7 days. Monitoring of short-term power changes in this way may be useful in the context of International Atomic Energy Agency's reactor safeguards regime or other cooperative monitoring regimes. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.