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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.
A. Deoghar, S. Verma, A. Saraswat, A. Prajapati, S. Gupta, A. Patel, H. Tailor, A. Gandhi, S. K. Sharma, V. Vasava, R. Bhattacharyay
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 5 | July 2025 | Pages 384-395
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2431784
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A dual-coolant heat extraction system has been designed, developed, and operated for extraction of the heat load from molten Pb-16Li in a thermo-fluid lead lithium magnetohydrodynamic experiment. The system uses the heat transfer oil Therminol 55 as a primary coolant that extracts heat from lead lithium in a Pb-16Li/thermic fluid (TF) heat exchanger (HX). The extracted heat load is further rejected to cooling water by a TF/water HX, in which demineralized water extracts the heat load from the hot heat transfer oil. In this system, the heat transfer oil is circulated in the loop at a nominal flow rate of ~35 liters per minute (lpm) and in the temperature range of 250°C to 270°C, while the water loop is operated at a nominal flow rate of ~30 lpm at room temperature. In the present study, the performance of the heat extraction system is tested to extract a heat load of ~24 kW continuously for the duration of ~100 h. During the experiment, the overall heat transfer coefficient, heat duty, and effectiveness of the HXs are validated with theoretical estimations. The present study discusses design and operation details of the system, along with the performance characteristics of the major components of the system.