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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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May 2026
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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.
Egor S. Afanasenko, Dmitri V. Portnov, Julia G. Vysokikh, Yuri A. Kashchuk
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 4 | May 2026 | Pages 805-813
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2476818
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
MCNP is actually the only code in use at ITER for neutron transport modeling. The OpenMC software package is a potential alternative to it. At least, the OpenMC code can be a complement for preliminary evaluations, lost particle elimination, weight calculations for variance reduction, and similar tasks. OpenMC presents powerful and convenient functionality for these tasks. The essential advantage of OpenMC is that it is available as an open-source code. This allows one to adapt the code for one’s specific tasks. The project is supported by more than 100 developers from all around the world. The pace of the code development is excellent because of the experienced team, sound engineering process, and applied modern technologies. This paper discusses the use of the OpenMC code for ITER neutronics modeling, translation and synchronization of the models between MCNP and OpenMC, and some verification results.