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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.
Wenjun Yang, Changlin Lan, Guoqiang Li, Xueyu Gong, Xiang Gao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 6 | August 2024 | Pages 724-730
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2234224
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As a significant input for neutronics analysis of tokamak devices, the plasma neutron source is a bridge connecting fusion plasma physics and engineering design. A plasma neutron source model is established based on the EAST plasma configuration. The maximum neutron wall loading (NWL) is near the outboard midplane and is more than ~20% that of the inboard midplane. The investigations demonstrate that special care should be taken for radiation shielding and protection of the key components located on the outboard midplane and on the inboard midplane. The effect of the tritium accumulation on neutronics analysis should be carefully considered for EAST tokamak D-D plasma operations.
The effect of density peaking (DP) on the neutronics analysis is also investigated. It is evident that the peak NWLs are all near the outboard midplane and that the poloidal distributions of the NWL are slightly different for these cases. With increasing DP, both the outboard and inboard peak NWLs decrease. However, the decrease in NWL is very small; NWL decreases only 11% when the neutron source peak increases about 1.5 times.