The Energy Distribution of Antineutrinos Originating from the Decay of Fission Products in a Nuclear Reactor

The energy spectrum of antineutrinos around a nuclear reactor has been derived by summing contributions from individual fission products. The resulting spectrum is weaker at energies above ∼8 MeV than earlier published antineutrino spectra. The reason may be connected to the strong feeding of high-lying daughter states in the beta decay of fission products with high disintegration energies.