Likelihood and impact of severe space weather events on the resilience of nuclear power and safeguards monitoring.

A single burst of particles from the Sun can trigger a false alarm in a nuclear facility’s criticality detector, forcing an unnecessary emergency shutdown. This project aims to stop that from happening. The problem is that ground-level neutron monitors, which detect the neutrons that signal a potential nuclear chain reaction, cannot currently tell apart neutrons from a solar storm and neutrons from actual fissile material. This leads to false-positive criticality alarms at nuclear licensed sites. The research will improve the monitors’ ability to differentiate neutron origins, reducing those false alarms. If it succeeds, the work has two practical payoffs. First, nuclear power stations and other sites handling fissile materials will become more resilient to space weather, avoiding costly and disruptive shutdowns. Second, the same monitors will provide rapid, accurate data on geomagnetically induced currents that can damage power grids and other critical infrastructure. The project directly addresses a known vulnerability in the UK’s energy and nuclear safety systems, with no fundamental science component—it is an applied engineering improvement to existing monitoring hardware.