Search for Neutrino Oscillations at the Palo Verde Nuclear Reactors

We report on the initial results from a measurement of the anti-neutrino flux and spectrum at a distance of about 800 m from the three reactors of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station using a segmented gadolinium-loaded scintillation detector. We find that the anti-neutrino flux agrees with that predicted in the absence of oscillations to better than 5%, excluding at 90% CL $rmbar u_e - bar u_x$ oscillations with $Delta m^2 > 1.12times 10^{-3}$ eV^2 for maximal mixing and $sin^2{2theta} > 0.21$ for large $Delta m^2$.