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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.
Anisia Bornea, Marius Zamfirache, Liviu Stefan, Ioan Stefanescu, Anisoara Preda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 266-269
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T7
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Cryogenic distillation is the back-end process used in water detritiation technologies with the aim to separate the hydrogen isotopes and concentrate it for further extraction and storage. At ICIT, research towards cryogenic distillation has been approached to develop the technology for heavy water detritiation at CANDU reactors. These results can be also useful for fusion reactors. ICIT has developed a technology for producing heavy water which was completed through a technological transfer to a heavy water plant. With this technology, ICIT has developed a research program to achieve high efficiency ordered packing for the water distillation process. These packings have been promoted at Cernavoda NPP and now equip the heavy water upgrading installations for the CANDU reactors. The packages for water distillation processes were made of phosphorous bronze, being required a very high wettability. Considering on water distillation process similarity, respectively hydrogen distillation, ICIT has started a research program for the development of similar package made by stainless steel, to be used at cryogenic distillation. This paper presents two types of ICIT packages developed for hydrogen distillation and performance data obtained on laboratory scale. In order to determine the characteristics of the package, the installation was operated in the total reflux mode, for different flow rate for the liquid. There were made several experiments considering different operating conditions.