Antares Achieves Criticality of Mark-0 Reactor

That's just what we needed! Nuclear autotune.

TRISO fuel so.. pebble bed? Is there a reluctance to market on this? The Chinese were all-in.

Great to see engineering deliver on time. I wonder if Rolls Royce will also have a smooth ride. It's a PWR.

Congrats to everyone involved. This is a pretty awesome milestone

Is anyone working in the US on a waste solution that isn’t a big hole with a straight out of cyberpunk sci-fi warning plaque?

The French reprocess and recycle fissile material but that’s kind of a gnarly industrial process. Still they do it and it works.

The long term solution is to create a second kind of reactor that has a higher burn fraction which means a more fuel efficient fast reactor. Those would be, ideally, the big base load plants if we did this rationally.

I am still quite confused on the scientific consensus:

Should we double down on renewable energy and solve its issues with lots of batteries or should we invest in next generation nuclear energy?

Both at the same time?

Does anyone know?

> "The Trump administration is proud to support the rebirth of America’s nuclear industry and ensuring Americans have access to affordable, reliable and secure energy for generations to come."

> "The demonstration and the licensing pathway it establishes represent a key step toward deploying electricity-producing microreactors for U.S. military installations by September 30, 2028."

So which is it? Power to the people or power to the military? This microreactor concept doesn't seem very well suited for commercial use.