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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.
Alexei Yu. Chirkov, Semion A. Tokarev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 4 | May 2023 | Pages 413-420
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2135337
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The formation of the spectrum of ions leaving the Z-pinch constriction during its compression is considered in the framework of the thermal mechanism corresponding to collisional regimes at high density. This mechanism refers to the heating of all ions due to compression without consideration of the electromagnetic acceleration of any selected group of ions. It is shown that such conditions can be implemented in relatively high-density regimes in which the product of precompression density and radius is n0a0 ≫ 1024 m–3. Neutron yield is analyzed. Possible parameters of a fusion reactor based on a high-density Z-pinch are estimated and found to be extremely high in terms of today’s technology.