Abstract
BUTTON-30 is a neutrino detector demonstrator located in the STFC Boulby underground facility in the north-east of England. The main goal of the project is to deploy and test the performance of the gadolinium-loaded water-based liquid scintillator for neutrino detection in an underground environment. This will pave the way for a future large-volume neutrino observatory that can also perform remote monitoring of nuclear reactors for nonproliferation. This paper describes the design and construction of the watertight optical modules of the experiment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 65 |
| Journal | European Physical Journal Plus |
| Volume | 141 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2026 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344, release number LLNL-JRNL-2013097. The work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Defence Nuclear Nonproliferation R&D through the Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification under award number DE-NA0003920. The work carried out at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was carried out under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy under the contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D). This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0018974. This work was supported in the UK by several STFC grants (ST/S006400/1, ST/S006419/1, ST/S006524/1, ST/T005319/1, ST/V002341/1, ST/Y003373/1, ST/Y003500/1, ST/Y003462/1, ST/Y003411/1) and by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), as contracted by the Ministry of Defence. The work of Ben Richards is supported by the UKRI grant MR/Y034082/1. The collaboration with ICLTech to develop the housings was supported by an STFC Accelerator grant awarded to G. D. Smith. Testing a fully assembled module at BNL was facilitated by a NuSec travel award to D. S. Bhattacharya and M. Needham. This work was supported in the UK by several STFC grants (ST/S006400/1, ST/S006419/1, ST/S006524/1, ST/T005319/1, ST/V002341/1, ST/Y003373/1, ST/Y003500/1, ST/Y003462/1, ST/Y003411/1) and by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), as contracted by the Ministry of Defence. The work of Ben Richards is supported by the UKRI grant MR/Y034082/1. The collaboration with ICLTech to develop the housings was supported by an STFC Accelerator grant awarded to G. D. Smith. Testing a fully assembled module at BNL was facilitated by a NuSec travel award to D. S. Bhattacharya and M. Needham.