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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, Ross F. Radel, Andrew Davis
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 248-254
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333861
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A near term, low cost 14 MeV neutron materials test facility has been designed that allows significant radiation damage (dpa, appm He, etc.) levels to be achieved typical of those that will be experienced in DT Demonstration or commercial DT power plants. The design described in this paper produces peak damage levels of ≈4–6 dpa/fpy in 15 cm3 and has ≈600 cm3 test volume covering the damage range from 1 to 6 dpa/fpy. The total active tritium inventory in the test facility is less than 1 g and the overall construction costs are also roughly unchanged from an earlier (2015) design. The time to initial operation remains at ≈4 years from the start of construction because it builds on an on-going project for radioisotope production already under construction. This latest facility design has the possibility to provide a 2 MW-y/m2, 14 MeV neutron exposure to first wall materials in less than 4 fpy’s of operation.