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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.
Li Jiang, Ge Gao, Zhengyi Huang, Jie Zhang, Peng Wu, Xuesong Xu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 96-102
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1957369
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
According to the ITER requirement, the availability of the poloidal field (PF) coil power supply system must be 98.3% during the life cycle of ITER. In order to meet this requirement, Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Inspectability (RAMI) analysis has been applied for analyzing the availability and reliability of the PF power supply system. First, the function analyses, which are described using the Integration Definition Function–language Ø or IDEFØ model are performed. Second, the failure mode effect and criticality analyses are used to calculate the risk level, present the potential causes and effects, and provide the risk mitigation actions to reduce the risk level for each failure. Third, the reliability block diagram is built to simulate the availability and reliability of the system. RAMI analysis provides a method that can be followed to improve the availability and reliability of the system, and from the results, the design requirement can be satisfied.