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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.
P. A. Bagryansky et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 40-45
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16871
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Physics and engineering aspects of a system for electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) at the magnetic mirror device Gas Dynamic Trap (GDT, Budker Institute, Novosibirsk) are presented. This system based on two 450 kW/54.5 GHz gyrotrons is aimed at increasing the electron temperature up to the range 250-350 eV for improved energy confinement of hot ions. The basic physical issue of the GDT magnetic field topology is that conventional ECRH geometries are not accessible. The proposed solution is based on a peculiar effect of radiation trapping in inhomogeneous magnetized plasma. Under specific conditions, oblique launch of gyrotron radiation results in generation of right-hand-polarized (R) electromagnetic waves propagating with high N|| in the vicinity of the cyclotron resonance layer, which leads to effective single-pass absorption of the injected microwave power. In the present paper, we investigate numerically an optimized ECRH scenario based on the proposed mechanism of wave propagation and discuss the design of the ECRH system, which is currently under construction at the Budker Institute.