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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.
Haihong Huang, Zhao Chen, Haixin Wang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 8 | November 2024 | Pages 941-959
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2271226
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To quickly output sufficient current for plasma excitation control, parallel operation of a structure of multiple branches is adopted in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fast control power supply. During the process of parallel operation of multiple branches in engineering, a larger inductance current sharing reactor is used to suppress the circulating current for the branches, which reduces the dynamic response speed of the output current and increases economic costs. In order to achieve cost savings and improve the dynamic response speed of the output current, the parallel branch current model of the EAST fast control power supply is analyzed, and the current of each branch is reconstructed into two parts: the current flowing to the load end and the circulating current flowing to other branches. Without changing the circuit structure and increasing the additional complex communication system for each branch, observation of the current flowing to the load end from each branch is achieved. Based on the observed current, a super-twisting sliding mode controller (STSMC) is designed to suppress the circulating current flowing through branches. To realize fast output of the branch current and circulating current suppression for the branches, a new STSMC with a linear term and parameter adaptive structure is designed, speeding up the convergence rate of the whole control system. The linear term and designed parameter adaptive structure based on the sliding mode system status ensure fast convergence speed and excellent control performance of the system. Simulation and experiments show that the designed control method can achieve fast output current control for each branch and that the tracking performance of the total output current is good. While reducing the inductance of the current sharing reactor, the circulating current for the branches is effectively suppressed compared with traditional control methods. The proposed method has great significance in cost savings and performance improvement in engineering practice applications.