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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.
Arkady Serikov, Ulrich Fischer, David Anthoine, Luciano Bertalot, Maarten De Bock, Richard O’Connor, Rafael Juarez, Vitaly Krasilnikov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 4 | November 2017 | Pages 559-565
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1347470
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper emphasizes the need of estimation of the mutual influence, called “cross-talk,” for neutronic analyses of neighboring diagnostics systems shared by the same ITER port. Using examples of several diagnostic systems inserted inside the ITER Equatorial and Upper Port Plugs, we have demonstrated this mutual influence. Cross-talk effects have been shown by examining the radiation environment inside the port plug in terms of neutron energy spectra and Shut-Down Dose Rate (SDDR) inside the Port Interspace (PI) area. In-port cross-talk was investigated for the diagnostic systems deployed in two Equatorial Port Plugs (EPP) #17 and #8, and for the components of Upper Port Plug (UPP) #3. One example of in-port cross-talks is a gamma shadow effect of the Tritium and Deposit Monitor (TDM) shield block, which affects the SDDR inside the PI of EPP#17. Where the gamma radiation originated from the dominant radioactive sources of the irradiated structures of Core-Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (CIXS) is blocked by the TDM shield. Another example is an influence of neutron streaming along the Fast Ion Loss Detector (FILD) channel on the neutron energy spectra calculated in the Tangential Neutron Spectrometer (TNS) in EPP#8. For the example of UPP#3 with Charge eXchange Recombination Spectroscopy (CXRS-core), performed neutronic analysis identified excessive neutron streaming along the CXRS shutter, which must be reduced by further design iterations.