From the discovery of the neutrino to the measurement of 𝜃13, the last unknown neutrino mixing
angle, nuclear reactors have proved to be a fundamental tool to study these particles, of which
much remains to be unveiled. Measurements involving reactor antineutrinos rely on the prediction
of their energy spectrum, a non-trivial exercise involving ad-hoc methods and carefully selected
assumptions. A discrepancy between predicted and measured antineutrino fluxes at a few meters
distance from reactors arose in 2011, prompting a series of experimental efforts aimed at studying
neutrino oscillation at a baseline that was never tested before. This so-called reactor antineutrino
anomaly can, in fact, be accounted for by invoking the existence of new sterile neutrinos at the eV
mass scale that participate in the neutrino mixing, an appealing hypothesis tying to other anomalies
already observed in the neutrino sector, that opens a door for physics beyond the Standard Model.
With this article, the author intends to give an overview of the most recent results of the projects
involved in the search for reactor antineutrino oscillation at a very short baseline, as well as their
implication in our current understanding of the reactor antineutrino anomaly and the eV-scale
sterile neutrino hypothesis.