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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.
Nikolaus Christiansen, Derek Schmidt, John Martinez, Valerie Fatherley, Justin Jorgenson, Noah Birge, Verena Geppert-Kleinrath, Carl Wilde
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 7 | October 2023 | Pages 907-913
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2210298
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutron pinhole array, used to collect neutron burn, X-ray, and more recently, gamma emission images, has been in use at the National Ignition Facility since 2011. Since then, there has been the ever-continuing challenge of meeting tighter alignment and resolution requirements. Part of that challenge is being able to accurately characterize the as-built variances from the nominal design associated with the manufacturing and assembly of the pinhole array. To overcome this specific challenge, multiple processes are taken to obtain high-precision profiles of the various features of each pinhole array. This paper highlights the processes used as well as the steps taken to compile the significant amount of data and turn it into an accurate as-built reconstructed model of the NIS1-U–assembled pinhole array.