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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.
Kieran Dolan, Guiqiu Zheng, David Carpenter, Steven Huang, Lin-Wen Hu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 398-403
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1712993
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Advanced reactor applications that use a molten fluoride salt coolant and graphite moderator are under consideration as next-generation energy technologies. For molten salts with lithium or beryllium, such as flibe (2LiF-BeF2), the production of tritium from neutron irradiation is a significant technical challenge. Understanding the expected quantities and mechanisms for tritium retention in graphite is important for designing tritium management strategies in these advanced reactors. In this work, the tritium content of IG-110U graphite from a 2013 in-core flibe irradiation experiment was measured by leaching in water and thermal desorption. Five total samples were tested, with an average measured tritium content per salt-contacting surface area of 3.83 ± 0.25 Ci/m2. The tritium measured from the thermal desorption experiments was primarily in a water-insoluble form. Compared to the overall tritium generation during the irradiation, the total amount of retention in graphite predicted by the desorption measurements is significant.