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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. Z. Liang, J. L. Wei, S. Liu, Y. H. Xie, C. C. Jiang, W. Liu, J. J. Pan, Y. J. Xu, Z. M. Liu, Y. L. Xie, C. D. Hu, Y. Z. Zhao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 2 | February 2019 | Pages 160-165
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1533619
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to meet experimental requirements on high parameter plasma research, the injected power of the counter injector is expected to increase at a fixed beam energy of 50 keV for deuterium neutral beam. Three candidate schemes are compared to assess the possibilities of raising the injected power. Considering safety and economic factors, raising the electric field in the first gap is employed by adjusting the voltage gradient on the accelerator. The experiments show that the optimum perveance is increased from 2.2 to 2.7 μP by changing of gradient grid voltage from 0.84 to 0.78 Vacc. The ion beam power is promoted by about 50% at 3.0 μP, but beam transmission efficiency decreased to 60% at 3.0 μP. Thus, the injected power is boosted about 25%.