Cutaway and Section Views
Section planes remove half the machine so the layered build from plasma to cryostat is visible in a single glance.
Why cutaways matter
A fusion machine is defined by what it wraps around the plasma. The value of the design lives in the ordering and thickness of its shells: first wall, blanket, shield, vessel, and structure. A cutaway view is the only honest way to show that ordering, because from the outside every fusion device looks like a metal drum.
The section plane
You can place the section plane on any of the three principal axes and drag it through the machine. On Hyperion the poloidal section, a vertical cut through the machine centerline, is the most informative: it reveals the D-shaped plasma, its negative triangularity, and the concentric layers outboard of it. On the burner the axial section shows how the central cell, plug throats, expander, and converter chain together.
Reading a Hyperion poloidal section
- Innermost is the plasma boundary, drawn with its -0.30 triangularity so the D leans the correct way.
- Then the first wall, then the tritium-breeding blanket carrying the 1.8 tritium breeding ratio target.
- Then the neutron shield, the vacuum vessel, and finally the toroidal-field coil legs and cryostat.
Layer callouts
When the section plane is active, each exposed layer shows its own thickness callout at the cut face. This turns the section into a measured drawing rather than an illustration. The numbers are the frozen design values used in the neutronics and structural models.
Sections pair naturally with the exploded view, which shows the same layers separated along their assembly axis.