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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.
Huan Wu, Yuntao Song, Xufeng Liu, Shuangsong Du, Xiang Ji, Kaizhong Ding, Jinxiang Zheng, Sumei Liu, and Kun Lu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 65 | Number 3 | May 2014 | Pages 384-390
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-708
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Central Solenoid (CS) conductor layout has been tentatively decided during the conceptual design phase of the Chinese Fusion Engineering Testing Reactor (CFETR). To check the validity of the conductor layout, stability analysis must be performed against the working condition of the conductors. We constructed a superconducting critical surface of the strands used in the CS conductors and then calculated the current sharing temperature of the conductors under the most stringent working condition envisioned with the operation parameters. We further analyzed the energy margin by simulating the quenching behavior with the GANDALF code upon disturbances of different durations and lengths representative of a mechanical disturbance and plasma disruption. The analysis results give preliminary estimation of conductor stability for further improvement of the design.