ZiaCore microreactor successfully achieves criticality

The emerging technology of advanced nuclear microreactors offers solutions to many modern energy challenges. The ZiaCore design, a low-enriched uranium dioxide-fueled microreactor developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, now joins several developing concepts for fission-based nuclear power microreactors that have achieved initial criticality. The ZiaCore design reached this milestone through a proof-of-principle experiment—a high-temperature, zero-power criticality demonstration at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) in Nevada.