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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.
Fumito Okino, Yukinori Hamaji, Teruya Tanaka, Juro Yagi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 8 | November 2024 | Pages 1060-1069
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2312055
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The axial concentration of deuterium by dispersion in a circulating liquid lithium-lead (LiPb) loop was analyzed and experimentally verified. In previous fusion blanket studies, the tritium transport rate in flowing LiPb was treated by convection a priori; i.e., the dispersion effect was negligible. In contrast, Taylor dispersion theory shows conflicting results, exhibiting axial transport enhancement via convective flow. In the current paper, the experimental setup consists of a deuterium dissolving tube that substitutes for tritium breeding and a deuterium concentration monitor by LiPb droplets in a vacuum with four nozzles of ϕ = 1.0 mm. The released deuterium mass flux from the droplets was measured using a quadrupole mass spectrometer. An electromagnetic pump circulated 49 L of LiPb at 350°C at a rate between 0.15 and 0.3 L∙min–1 with the corresponding Re number between 600 and 1000, i.e., in the laminar flow range. The dispersion coefficient was analyzed by measuring the temporal distortion of the deuterium concentration profile. The obtained axial dispersion coefficients of dissolved deuterium in LiPb were between 4.6 × 10–2 and 1.2 × 10–1 (m2∙s–1) and approximately seven orders of magnitude greater than those under static conditions. The results agreed with the Taylor dispersion theory, which studied the mass transport enhancement by convection. The applicability of Taylor’s theory to the deuterium flow in liquid LiPb is suggested, whereas the Prandtl number was three orders of magnitude lower and the Schmidt number was one order of magnitude higher than that of the water.