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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.
N. N. Skvortsova, E. V. Voronova, I. Yu. Vafin, N. S. Akhmadullina, T. E. Gayanova, A. A. Letunov, V. P. Logvinenko, A. Yu. Kolchanova, V. D. Borzosekov, A. S. Sokolov, V. D. Stepakhin, E. A. Obraztsova, O. N. Shishilov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 8 | November 2025 | Pages 833-847
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2478656
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a description of the creation of heterogeneous catalysts by plasma-chemical methods using a powerful pulsed fusion gyrotron. The microdisperse particles for catalysts are created by irradiating a mixture of copper (Cu) and dielectric (aluminum oxide, silicon oxide, titanium oxide, silicon–aluminum oxynitride) powders by the microwave radiation of a gyrotron, which initiates plasma-chemical reactions inside the mixture and in the air above it. These are complex chain reactions of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis. As a result of these reactions, microparticles of dielectrics into whose surface Cu nanoparticles are imbedded are created.