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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. El-Guebaly, M. Harb, A. Davis, J. Menard, T. Brown
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 354-361
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333864
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) is viewed as an essential element of the US developmental roadmap to fusion energy. The spherical tokamak-based FNSF has been designed through a national collaborative effort led by the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory. High-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets are potentially attractive for such applications. Among other aspects, the magnet shielding and tritium breeding assessments represent key elements for achieving the design engineering objectives. Numerous inboard shielding and cooling materials have been examined to select an optimal shield that protects the inboard HTS magnet and in the meanwhile enhances the outboard breeding. The breeding blanket of choice is the dual-cooled lead lithium (DCLL) blanket. Our 3-D neutronics model included all blanket internals in great details along with nine specialized ports for blanket testing, materials testing, plasma heating, and current drive. The inclusion of a thin DCLL blanket on the inboard side was deemed necessary to achieve an overall tritium breeding ratio in excess of unity.