Brief Calculation of Neutrino Energy Spectra by the Use of Nuclear Data Files

Abstract

Nuclear reactors generate a highly intense flux of electron-antineutrinos from fission products through β− decay, and a slight amount of electron-neutrinos through either β+ decay or electron capture. Neutrino energy spectra are usually calculated by the β decay theory. Since the reactor neutrinos are emitted from a great number of nuclides, the calculation requires a lot of level scheme of these nuclides. Nuclear data files, however, are available these days. It is possible to evaluate the electron-antineutrino and -neutrino spectra for a nuclear reactor on the basis of nuclear data files (JENDL-FP-Decay-Data-File-2000, JENDL-3.3)1, 2).In the study, we consider β transition of 420 nuclides for electron-antineutrino spectra and 120 nuclides for electron-neutrinos. We derive electron-neutrino and -antineutrino spectra in the energy range of 10 keV to 8 MeV from nuclear data files. The method gives good agreement with other studies for electron-antineutrino spectra. We show a simple method to estimate the reactor neutrino spectra without complicated computation.