Reactor Antineutrinos and Nuclear Physics

Several recent experiments emphasize the need for better nuclear data in connection with fundamental science, either exploring new physics beyond the Standard Model or exploring astrophysical phenomena. For example short-baseline reactor neutrino experiments successfully measured the neutrino parameters they set out to measure, but they also identified an excess of reactor antineutrinos with energies around 5 MeV as well as a reduction from the predicted value of the flux. Very recently the flux of neutrinos coming from the fissions of ²³⁵U and ²³⁹Pu in the cores of Daya Bay reactors were measured and were found in variance with the nuclear physics predictions. In this talk recent developments are summarized and the potential impact of improving the nuclear physics input into neutrino interactions on uncovering new physics will be discussed.