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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.
Charles W. Forsberg, David M. Carpenter, Dennis G. Whyte, Raluca Scarlat, Liu Wei
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 584-589
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1289450
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three advanced power systems use liquid salt coolants that generate tritium and thus face common challenges to prevent release of the tritium to the environment. The Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) uses the same graphite-matrix coated-particle fuel as High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) and clean fluoride salt coolants. Molten salt reactors (MSRs) dissolve the fuel in a fluoride or chloride salt and release the fission product tritium to the salt. High-magnetic-field fusion machines may use liquid salt cooling and blankets because of the very high power densities of this new class of fusion machine. The three technologies can be coupled to a Nuclear Air-Brayton Combined Cycle (NACC) enabling variable electricity with base-load reactor operation.
Converging requirements for tritium control in 700°C liquid salts are leading to cooperative programs across technologies; tritium models that combined generation, chemistry, metal corrosion and transport; and new tritium control technologies using advanced carbon forms, metals produced by additive manufacturing and other technologies.