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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.
George H. Miley, Heinrich Hora
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 7 | October 2019 | Pages 575-580
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1622970
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The importance of the development of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) was highlighted with the award of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics to Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland. CPA laser physics opens the way to exciting new advances in laser applications including laser fusion. As noted in this paper, its application to laser fusion enables ultrahigh power levels for ignition of laser fusion systems without requiring thermal pressures and millions of degrees centigrade. Instead, nonthermal pressures are driven by nonlinear force to create ultrahigh picosecond acceleration of plasma blocks. This paper discusses the exciting possibility of using CPA with block ignition to provide a new route for burning the environmentally clean fusion of hydrogen–boron-11 (HB-11) fuel.