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Antares achieves zero-power criticality at INL
Leveraging more than $140 million in private capital fundraising, over 322,000 square feet of operational manufacturing space, and multifaceted partnerships with the Departments of Energy and Defense, reactor start-up Antares has become the first company involved in the Reactor Pilot Program to achieve zero-power fueled criticality—a full month ahead of the July 4 deadline set by President Trump’s Executive Order 14301.
This milestone, announced yesterday, was achieved with the company’s Mark-0: a sodium heat-pipe-cooled, TRISO-fueled microreactor. The Mark-0 is a forerunner to the company’s flagship design, which it calls the R1. For Antares, this development represents a key validation of its reactor physics, control systems, and supply chain.
S. Le Tacon, F. Durut, C. Chicanne, V. Brunet
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | March-April 2013 | Pages 132-135
Technical Paper | Selected papers from 20th Target Fabrication Meeting, May 20-24, 2012, Santa Fe, NM, Guest Editor: Robert C. Cook | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16330
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Glass thin films appear particularly interesting as semipermeable barriers for many noncryogenic target applications. This functional layer can be sputtered from quartz targets onto CHx microshells synthesized by glow discharge polymerization. In the present work, we investigate the influence of deposit parameters (pressure, RF power, target-holder distance, and plasma composition) on glass coating microstructure and permeation properties. The permeation properties of CHx/SiO2/CHx capsules are studied by mass spectrometry using deuterium (D2) as the filling gas. The use of a low deposition pressure and a high RF power in a background atmosphere of argon appears essential to obtain the most efficient barrier. The optimized sputtering conditions allow deuterium half-lives of 1 month on 1700-m CHx capsules, including a 1-m-thick SiO2 coating (corresponding to a permeation coefficient of 3 × 10-20 molm-1s-1Pa-1). These capsules could be filled to the required pressures ([approximately]3 MPa) for Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) experiments.