ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
June 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2026
Latest News
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.
Blair P. Bromley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | October 2015 | Pages 546-560
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-851
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A study of computational/analytical neutronics and heat transfer has been carried out for different types of gas-cooled fuel bundle lattices that could be used for the sub-critical fertile/fissionable blanket of a cylindrical-geometry hybrid fusion-fission reactor (HFFR) with thorium-based fuels. The HFFR concept envisioned is one with a simple cylindrical geometry, using an anticipated variant of a magnetic mirror to confine a deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion plasma. The annular-cylindrical blanket is approximately 10 meters long and 2 meters thick, and is a repeating lattice of pressure tubes filled with 0.5-meter fuel bundles that are made of (233U,Th)O2, and refuelled continuously on-line, sharing technological features with pressure-tube heavy water reactors (PT-HWR) and the Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (AGR) in the U.K.. With a 2-meter thick blanket, the average fissile content in the blanket needs to be at least 2.5 wt% in order for the HFFR system to be self-sustaining in power.