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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. X. Zhao, Q. Li, W. J. Wang, C. Li, D. D. Zhang, R. Wei, S. G. Qin, Y. L. Shi, L. J. Peng, N. J. Pan, Y. Xu, G. H. Liu, T. J. Wang, D. M. Yao, G.-N. Luo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 4 | May 2015 | Pages 784-791
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-835
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A hot isostatic pressing (HIP) route has been developed by the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Advanced Technology & Materials Co., Ltd. for bonding W/Cu tiles to Ni-electroplated CuCrZr heat sinks. During high-heat-flux testing, in the initial stage, Cu/Ni interfacial debonding was observed. Careful analyses indicated that interfacial oxidation during encapsulation for HIP processing using tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding was the main cause of the limited fatigue lifetime. Copper oxides formed during the TIG encapsulation do not decompose during HIP at 600°C. As a result, weak bonding and even some microcracks were generated, and unfortunately these microcracks could not be detected by current industrial ultrasonic probes. An oxidation-free encapsulation technique, suitable for batch processing, has been developed to achieve a thermal fatigue lifetime of more than 1000 cycles at a heat load of 5 MW/m2 for the components.