China’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) has stated that an experiment employing neutrinos from the Daya Bay and Ling Ao nuclear power reactors has been completed. It was effective in measuring neutrino interactions more precisely than ever before.
The global partnership led by China and the United States, known as the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment, saw neutrino detecting equipment deployed within the steep hills behind the Daya Bay and Ling Ao power facilities, which are just around 1 kilometer away.
The incredibly sensitive detectors, shielded from cosmic rays by solid rock, tallied the quadrillion antineutrinos that flow from each of the six identical reactor cores per second. A detector set was placed near each plant, and another was placed further away, deeper into the hill, all of which were connected by tunnels.
Neutrinos and antineutrinos have three distinct ‘flavors,’ and researchers were able to quantify how many neutrinos disappeared owing to little-understood interactions between them by comparing the disparities in data from close and far detector sets. “Our exact measurement will… pave the road for the future understanding of matter-antimatter imbalance in the cosmos,” IHEP’s Yifang Wang remarked in 2012.
The plant was decommissioned in December 2020, and its complete decommissioning was declared on September 1st. According to IHEP, “In 2003, the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment began. It had accomplished all scientific aims and finished its scientific purpose after four years of planning, four years of building, and nine years of operation.”
The complicated and costly equipment used in the experiment was carefully dismantled for reuse. Some will be used at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, while others will be donated to other research in China and worldwide, according to IHEP. Some will be displayed at the National Museum, while others will be used to educate the public at Daya Bay and the Jiangmen experiment.