Design & Simulation Status
The burner is a design-and-simulation study, not a built machine; a test burner is targeted ~2032 and a commercial-class unit ~2036.
Everything on these pages describes a machine that has not been built. The burner (Aegis / MetroVolt) exists as a design and a body of simulation, and every parameter — 26.49 T plug, 17 T throat, 5.44% neutron fraction, near-90 keV burn — is a design-point value, not a measurement. Reading the burner honestly means reading it as engineering intent supported by physics, with named open gates.
The development path is staged. A test burner is targeted around 2032 to move key physics — above all the plug regime — from simulation toward experiment. A commercial-class unit is targeted around 2036. No hardware net-power claim is made for the burner today; the machine's case rests on physics and simulation, stated with its gates intact.
The four honest gates, together
- Plug coil stress ≈ 3–3.9× the feasible limit as specified
- Plug plasma regime 166–830× beyond any operated device
- He-3 demand ≈ 400× domestic supply per commercial unit
- Availability 0.86–0.995 vs. Tier III 0.99982 (30–100× more downtime)
Why state it this way
A design that hid these gates would be easier to sell and impossible to trust. The burner is presented at full candor: the tandem-mirror physics is sound, the D–³He and direct-conversion choices are well motivated, and the hard problems — plug structure, plug regime, fuel supply, and reliability — are named with numbers. The path through them runs through experiment and through the breeder and lunar fuel programs, not through rhetoric. No economic figures are attached to any of it.
All figures are design-and-simulation values for a machine not yet built.