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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.
J. T. Fisher, J. W. Leachman
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 525-529
Fusion Technologies: Heating and Fueling | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 2) Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A19146
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Twin screw extrusion is anticipated to meet the pellet fueling demands of tokamak fusion devices. The twin-screw design principle has been proven by a functional prototype extruder at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); however numerical models necessary for design optimization have yet to be validated due to system complexity. Characteristic measurements of solid flow during extrusion are difficult for any extruder and are exacerbated by the cryogenic environment necessary to solidify solid hydrogen. In this paper, we first discuss current modeling efforts to establish needs for experimental measurements and then present the design and construction status of a diagnostic twin-screw extruder to address these needs. Development is underway of a mass transfer analysis that predicts volumetric efficiency and augments an existing 1st order model of extrudate temperature. These predictive models are necessary for design and operation of hydrogenic twin screw extruders for fueling tokamaks, including ITER.