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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.
Mirela Draghia, Gheorghe Pasca, George Ana, Alin Fuciu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 221-226
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704140
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the tritium recovery processes, the microreactor is used for conversion of the various tritiated streams to water. Microreaction technology offers many advantages for chemical reactions, mainly a high surface-to-volume ratio, a well-defined residence time in the microchannels, and good thermal transport. Also, from an oxidation point of view, the microreactor is proven to be safer by comparison with a conventional oxidation reactor. Another major advantage is that the microreactor can be designed to provide a high recombination efficiency (more than 99.9%), if required. This paper aims to present the issues related to the design, calculation, and manufacturing of a high-efficiency microreactor that can be used to convert the tritiated streams to water.