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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.
S. Bhandarkar, B. J. Kozioziemski, J. D. Sater, L. B. Hagler, J. D. Moody
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 7 | October 2023 | Pages 745-753
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2188968
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of strong magnetic fields to augment the output energy of inertial confinement fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility is of high interest. It offers the potential of reducing electron thermal conduction and increasing hot-spot alpha heating with little to no change in hohlraum behavior. In these magnetically assisted ignition experiments, the ultimate goal is to add a B-field in the form of a pulse ranging from 25 to 60 T to a high-performing hohlraum implosion several microseconds before impingement of the laser beams. This requires eliminating metallic components in the target and replacing them with electrically nonconducting materials. However, the strong eddy currents generated by the rapidly increasing high B-field, which were calculated to be as high as 2000 K, can heat the hohlraum. In this paper, we examine the transient effects of this rapid temperature change on the behavior of the target as well as the fuel layer composed typically of deuterium and tritium. Using simulations and calculations for limiting case scenarios, we find that the effect of the heating is not restrictive toward the performance of the target or the quality of the deuterium-tritium ice.