The Atlantic Neutrino Surveillance System (codename System 12, originally Project 906) is a covert federal system in the Commonwealth that detects nuclear reactors worldwide by measuring the neutrinos they produce. It does so through arrays of detectors located deep underground in mines and volcanic caverns to monitor the constant flux of antineutrinos emitted during fission and fusion. These antineutrinos can indicate, through their energy spectra and triangulating their arrival with other stations, their origin. As such, the System is the Commonwealth’s most advanced nuclear intelligence assets.
The primary System 12 installation is a “deep site” in a former mine shaft in Kala known as the Deep Particle Observatory, where the surrounding rock filters out cosmic ray interference. System 12 shares the facility with System 11, and in many ways the two federal systems are sister projects downstream of the particle physics work conducted by the NSRE. Like most federal systems, System 12 has a legitimate scientific purpose in particle physics research, and indeed the intelligence analysis is conducted from the data produced in the site’s regular course of work. As the world has shifted towards monopolar reactors like the Commonwealth’s own MMR-III, the facility may have a purpose in future tracking not just industrial nuclear sites but the individual machines powered by them.