Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006em%26p...99..147m&link_type=abstract
Earth, Moon, and Planets, Volume 99, Issue 1-4, pp. 147-153
Physics
1
Anti-Neutrinos, Geo-Reactor, Geo-Magnetic Field, Natural Nuclear Reactor
Scientific paper
A natural nuclear fission reactor operating in the center of the Earth has been proposed by Herndon (Hollenbach and Herndon, 2001) as the energy source that powers the geo-magnetic field. The upper limit on the expected geo-reactor power is set by the estimated 12 TW (Buffett, 2003) heat flow from the Earth’s core. If it exists, a nuclear reactor of that size emits a strong anti-neutrino flux. Emitted electron anti-neutrinos can be detected by the Kamioka liquid scintillator anti-neutrino detector (KamLAND) (Raghavan, 2002), and the geo-reactor power level is proporional to the anti-neutrino emission rate. KamLAND measures the geo-reactor power as a constant positive offset in detected anti-neutrino rate on top of the varying anti-neutrino rate coming from man-made reactors. Here we present the first attempt to measure the geo-reactor power. Based on a 776 ton-year exposure of KamLAND to electron anti-neutrinos, the detected flux corresponds to (6 ± 6) TW. The upper limit on the geo-reactor power at 90% confidence level is 18 TW, which is below the lower limit of the total Earth’s radiogenic heat, estimated to be between 19 and 31TW (Anderson, 2003).
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