Haunting Glow of Nuclear Power Station Was Detected in Water 150 Miles Away
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(SNOLAB) A tank of the purest water, buried under kilometers of rock in Ontario, Canada, flashed as a barely detectable particle slammed through its molecules. This event was the first time that water had been used to detect a particle known as an antineutrino, which had been fired from a nuclear reactor more than 240 kilometers (150 miles) away. The breakthrough, detailed in Physical Review Letters in 2023, was the first time water alone had been used to detect antineutrinos from a distant reactor – and it opened the door to a new generation of cheaper, safer detection technology.
As some of the most abundant particles in the Universe, neutrinos are odd little things with a lot of potential for revealing deeper insights into the Universe. Unfortunately they are almost massless, carry no charge, and barely interact with other particles at all. They mostly stream through space and rock alike, as though all matter was incorporeal.
Antineutrinos are the antiparticle counterpart to neutrinos. Usually, an antiparticle has the opposite charge to its particle equivalent; the antiparticle of the negatively charged electron, for example, is the positively charged positron. Since neutrinos don't carry a charge, scientists can only tell the two apart based on the fact an electron neutrino will pop into existence alongside a positron, while an electron antineutrino appears with an electron.
Electron antineutrinos are emitted during nuclear beta decay, a type of radioactive decay in which a neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and antineutrino. One of these electron antineutrinos can then interact with a proton to produce a positron and a neutron, a reaction known as inverse beta decay.
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