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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.
Jinwen Zhang, Wei Zhao, Zuowei Wen, Lei Feng, Li Zhao, Lingfeng Wei, Xiang Chen, Guoliang Yuan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 8 | November 2024 | Pages 976-983
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2272538
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Runaway electrons (REs) generated during disruptions pose a significant safety threat to tokamaks, as they can melt and damage the plasma-facing components (PFCs). Therefore, studying RE behavior is crucial for fusion devices. The interaction between REs and the first wall/PFCs results in the emission of high-energy X-rays, known as bremsstrahlung. To investigate RE behavior, it is necessary to quantitatively evaluate the emission of hard X-rays. A real-time hard X-ray spectrometer, utilizing a LaBr3 detector, has been successfully developed for studying REs on the HL-2M tokamak. This spectrometer has a counting rate capability reaching 3 MHz, with an energy resolution of 3.3% at 662 keV (137Cs). The time resolution for energy spectrums is as short as 1 ms. During the HL-2M discharge, observations were made on the hard X-ray energy spectrum, and by analyzing the spectrum within the energy range of 250 keV to 750 keV, the temperature of the corresponding REs was deduced.