Abstract
The DANSS project is aimed at creating a relatively compact neutrino spectrometer which does not contain any flammable or other dangerous liquids and may therefore be located very close to the core of an industrial power reactor. As a result, it is expected that high neutrino flux would provide about 15,000 IBD interactions per day in the detector with a sensitive volume of 1 m3. High segmentation of the plastic scintillator will allow to suppress a background down to a ∼1% level. Numerous tests performed with a simplified pilot prototype DANSSino under a 3 GWth reactor of the Kalinin NPP have demonstrated operability of the chosen design. The DANSS detector surrounded with a composite shield is movable by means of a special lifting gear, varying the distance to the reactor core in a range from 10 m to 12 m. Due to this feature, it could be used not only for the reactor monitoring, but also for fundamental research including short-range neutrino oscillations to the sterile state. Supposing one-year measurement, the sensitivity to the oscillation parameters is expected to reach a level of sin2(2θnew) ∼ 5 × 10−3 with Δ m2 ⊂ (0.02–5.0) eV2.