A reference worldwide model for antineutrinos from reactors

Purpose of this web page

This page provides update of data published in:

Marica Baldoncini, Ivan Callegari, Giovanni Fiorentini, Fabio Mantovani, Barbara Ricci, Virginia Strati, and Gerti Xhixha "Reference worldwide model for antineutrinos from reactors" Physical Review D 91, 065002 (2015)

The content of the web page is intended as additional material to the publication: we directly address to the paper for the definition of physical quantities, units of measurement and for literature references. Signal prediction update concerns exclusively reactor operational conditions, which are taken from the annual publication “Operating Experience with Nuclear Power Stations in Member States” of the Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This information is collected in a comprehensive database, compiled starting from 2003 and updated every year.

Table of content

The worldwide map of reactor antineutrinos signals

Signal contribution of close by reactors

Predicted reactor antineutrino and geoneutrino signals

The worldwide map of reactor antineutrino signals

The 1° x 1° map provides the worldwide predicted reactor antineutrino signal in the low energy region expressed in Terrestrial Neutrino Units (TNU), obtained using 2013 reactor operational data. The signal evaluation is performed by modeling the 3 reactor antineutrino life stages: production, propagation and detection. For the calculation of the reactor signal starting from 2003 we keep fixed the following 5 ingredients, chosen according to updated estimates of 2013:

  • the reactor antineutrino spectrum;
  • the energy released per fission;
  • the fission/power fractions;
  • the neutrino oscillation parameters;
  • the inverse beta decay cross section.

The database of the operating commercial reactors is compiled starting from 2003 on a yearly basis and updated every year according to the information published by the PRIS. The 19 database columns are structured as follows:

  • core country acronym;
  • core name;
  • core location (latitude and longitude in decimal degrees);
  • core type;
  • use of Mixed OXide (MOX) fuel (1 for yes, 0 for no);
  • thermal power Pth [MW];
  • 12 columns listing the monthly load factors LF [%].

For parameters definitions we refer to the PRIS.

The following links, grouped year by year, point to the reactor records database in xls format, to a zip containing the signal numerical maps in the Low Energy Region (LER) and in the Full Energy Region (FER) in ASCII format and to a zip file containing the maps in png format of the signal in the LER and in the FER The columns of the numerical map file are respectively longitude and latitude (in decimal degrees) and the reactor antineutrino signals in TNU.

*with the support of the FIR 2017 project of the University of Ferrara

The database of research reactors can be downloaded here.

Signal contribution of close by reactors

The location map, produced according to the 2013 reactor operational status, illustrates the percentage contributions to the signal given by the close-by reactors for the three long baseline experiments KamLAND, Borexino and SNO+ and for the proposed medium baseline experiments Juno and RENO-50.

Location reactor map KamLAND Borexino SNO+ JUNO RENO-50

Predicted reactor antineutrino signals

The 1° x 1° map shows the worldwide ratios between the expected reactor signal in the low energy region and the geoneutrino signal [Huang et al. 2013], produced with 2013 reactor operational data.

Ratio of expected reactor Low Energy Region and geoneutrino signal (RLER/G)
ratio reactor antineutrino geoneutrino worldwide map


The table summarizes the predicted reactor signals in the full energy region R and in the low energy region RLER, together with the geoneutrino signals G [Huang et al. 2013] and the ratios RLER/G at current and proposed neutrino experimental sites, obtained with 2013 reactor operational conditions.

antineutrino geoneutrino signal different experiments Borexino KamLAND SNO+ JUNO RENO-50 Hanohano LENA Homestake Baksan

a IT: Italy, JP: Japan, CA: Canada, CH: China, SK: South Korea, US: United States of America, FI: Finland, UK: United Kingdom, SP: Spain, FR: France, RO: Romania, PL: Poland, RU: Russia.
b Y. Huang, V. Chubakov, F. Mantovani, R. L. Rudnick, and W. F. McDonough Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 14, (2013).
c 2006 reactor operational data. d E. Ciuffoli, J. Evslin, Z. Wang, C. Yang, X. Zhang, and W. Zhong, Physical Review D 89, 073006 (2014).
e 2013 reactor operational data plus Yangjiang (17.4 GW) and Taishan (18.4 GW) nuclear power stations operating with a 80% average annual load factor.