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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.
G. L. Kulcinski, J. F. Santarius
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 242-247
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333863
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It will be several decades before the first commercial fusion power plant is placed on the electricity grid. However, there are many non-electricity uses for fusion energy that can be realized in the next 5–10 years when the Q value (energy out/energy in) obtained in fusion systems is ≪1. This paper explores those possibilities dividing them into 3 categories: 1) Commercial Products, 2) Applications for Academia and Utilities, 3) Applications for Military/Governmental uses. At the present time, over 20 near term applications have been identified but it is expected that there could be many more once the fusion community focuses on the near term time frame. Since the near term applications do not require Q > 1, all fusion reactions can be considered. This means, for example, that one can consider fusion reactions that not only emit neutrons (from DT and DD) but also other reactions such as D3He that emit high-energy (14 MeV) protons because they can be used to make short half life Positron Emission Tomography (PET) isotopes. Both steady state and pulsed fusion reactions are also fair game because there is no reason for Q > 1 to be a constraint.