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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.
Shanwen Zhang, Yuntao Song, Zhongwei Wang, Xuebing Peng, Jianfeng Zhang, Yongfa Qin, Linlin Tang, Qiang He
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 1 | January 2018 | Pages 43-49
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1368334
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), the largest modular stellarator in the world, is in operation at Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. The magnet system of the W7-X consists of 50 nonplanar and 20 planar superconducting coils, which are supported by a massive central support structure. All superconducting coils have been subjected to gravity and electromagnetic force due to the interaction between self-field and the coil current in the test conditions in Saclay, France. Each coil is equipped with a few mechanical sensors. Some of the sensors have indicated considerable deviation from the numerical prediction. The nonplanar coil Type 1 is an example of such deviations. This technical note presents structural analyses performed to verify the numerical modeling by checking the stresses in the measurement points. In order to find the reason from the finite element model, three factors are considered: mesh refinement, increasing the region of mesh refinement, and changing the element supports. The results show that the three factors have no impact on the stresses at the measurement points. Finally, special attention has been paid to the sensors during commissioning of the W7-X, which revealed that lack of information about boundary conditions or temperature fluctuations could be the reason for the original discrepancies.