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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.
Dagui Wang, Jin Wang, Liqin Hu, Jie Wu, Fang Wang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 8 | November 2019 | Pages 1024-1029
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1647082
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The construction of ITER indicates that the development of fusion energy has entered the engineering stage. Reliability assurance, which is essential in the design and safety supervision of a new reactor, is an urgent problem to be solved in the process of fusion reactor engineering. But, up to now, the reliability work of a fusion device has not considered the security of the fusion reactor. This paper proposes a method to establish a reliability index for fusion safety–related components. The reliability index is a useful indicator to evaluate the reliability of the system, and it is also the regulatory basis for regulatory authorities. First, this paper gives the recommended values of probability safety goals for a fusion reactor. Second, the reliability requirements for the fusion safety system that meet the safety goals are calculated. In this part, a Probability Safety Assessment (PSA) is adopted to establish the risk models and calculate the undesired consequences of a fusion reactor. Based on the PSA analysis results, a risk-informed approach is used to categorize the plant structures, systems, and components of the fusion reactor as four categories according to their safety significance. Last, the reliability index of the safety-related components is given based on the results of the risk-informed safety categorization and PSA analysis results. The validation of the reliability index system is still being studied, and this work is expected to support the reliability evaluation and safety supervision of a fusion reactor in the future.