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Latest News
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.
Jianhang Zhou, Jinglong Zhang, Jie Zhang, Yipo Zhang, Hong Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 7 | October 2022 | Pages 588-594
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2090785
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutron flux measurement provides essential data for the diagnostic tools that control plasma combustion, equipment maintenance, and radiation safety and reveals key information on plasma physics, machine protection, and control issues. To obtain rapid change of the neutron emission rate by magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, a fast neutron flux measurement system with high time resolution (~10 ) was developed on the HL-2M tokamak (located at Southwestern Institute of Physics, China). The system includes four EJ-410 detectors and four digitizers that we developed ourselves with dedicated field-programmable gate array firmware, including a waveform recording function, real-time count rate measurement, and real-time integration measurement. The simulation results show that the throughput rate of the readout electronics is 96.7% when the input counting rate is 1 mega count per second (Mcps) and the throughput rate could achieve 63.8% when the input counting rate is 6 Mcps. Moreover, when the input counting rate increases further to 10 Mcps, the integration model may be used. Given that this measurement system is highly portable and has a high time resolution, it is suitable for the fast neutron flux diagnostic on the HL-2A tokamak.