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August 24–27, 2026
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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.
Catalin Brill, Sebastian Brad, Claudia Bogdan, Aleksandr Grafov, Oleksandr Sirosh, Alin Lazar, Mihai Vijulie, Viorel Badescu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | April-May 2024 | Pages 422-430
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2283226
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Experimental Pilot Plant for Tritium and Duterium Separation has been designed and built at the Rm. Valcea National Research and Development Institute for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies to separate deuterium and tritium from deuterated and tritiated water based on two combined processes: catalytic isotope exchange and cryogenic distillation. For this, additional experimental stands were developed for testing different components of the columns, such as the cold box, heat exchangers, condensers, and boilers. This paper presents the design of a new generation of fin condensers that avoids film condensation and allows the dropwise condensation mode. A small-scale cryogenic system equipped with a hydrogen liquefaction unit is presented as an alternative for condenser conductivity testing. The condenser is fixed on a hydrogen tank that is protected by a radiation shield and mounted inside a vacuum chamber. The proposed method is to continuously liquefy hydrogen using a two-stage Gifford McMahon 4K cycle cryocooler. A method for estimating the liquefaction rate was proposed and confirmed by the test results.