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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.
L. R. Baylor, C. C. Barbier, J. R. Carmichael, S. K. Combs, M. N. Ericson, N. D. Bull Ezell, P. W. Fisher, M. S. Lyttle, S. J. Meitner, D. A. Rasmussen, S. F. Smith, J. B. Wilgen, S. Maruyama, G. Kiss
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 211-215
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-926
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A disruption mitigation system (DMS) is under design for ITER to inject sufficient material deeply into the plasma for rapid plasma thermal shutdown and collisional suppression of any resulting runaway electrons. Progress on the development and design of both a shattered pellet injector (SPI) that produces large solid cryogenic pellets to provide reliable deep penetration of material and a fast opening high flow rate gas valve for massive gas injection (MGI) is presented. Cryogenic pellets of deuterium and neon up to 25 mm in size have been formed and accelerated with a prototype injector and a full scale prototype MGI valve is now in testing. Implications of the design with respect to response time and reliability at the proposed injector locations on ITER are discussed.