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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.
Yoshikazu Tamauchi, Takashi Miyata, Kazumi Takebe, Yoshiaki Hayashi, Shingo Matsuoka, Kazuya Hayashi, Katsuya Kurosu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 2 | February 2013 | Pages 303-316
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety/Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15785
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a reprocessing plant, the various and many accidents identified related to mechanical processes, chemical processes, and storage facilities have to be assessed to know the total risk of the plant. To assess the individual risks of so many potential accidents efficiently and effectively, we have developed a simplified quantitative method called quantitative safety assessment (QSA), based on our experience in probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) for the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant and with reference to the integrated safety analysis used in the United States for fuel cycle facilities. Our method not only includes such PRA features as quantifiability of the results and comparability of risk importance of the contributors to accident sequences but also offers the new features of simplified presentation and easy traceability. The designation of important safety structures, systems, components, and personnel activities is thus facilitated through the use of the results of this method. In this paper, the deployment of the QSA method is demonstrated using an example of a criticality accident in a plutonium partition process.