Energy-Security Glossary

Key terms used across this section, defined plainly: from logistics tail and islanding to availability, breeding ratio, and the burner gates.

Terms used in this section

This glossary defines the recurring terms in the energy-security and logistics pages so they can be read without cross-referencing. Definitions are kept plain and consistent with the frozen technical canon used throughout the site.

Logistics and resilience terms

• Logistics tail: the full chain that must move fuel to a site, from production to last-mile delivery
• Attack surface: the set of points where a supply chain can be disrupted
• Islanding: disconnecting a microgrid to run self-contained during a disruption
• Black start: restoring power from full shutdown without any external supply
• Redundancy (N+1, 2N): spare capacity so a unit can fail without dropping the load
• Availability: fraction of time a source can deliver power (Tier III target ~0.99982)

Physics and canon terms

• Tritium breeding ratio (TBR): bred-to-consumed tritium, a design lever across 1.1 / 1.5 / 1.8
• Direct energy conversion: capturing charged-particle energy as electricity without a full thermal cycle
• Neutron fraction: share of fusion energy carried by neutrons; 5.44% for the burner's D-3He fuel
• Design point (burner): 26.49 T plug field, 17 T throat field
• Design point (breeder): Q_sci 3.076, 85.0 MW fusion, 9.66 MA plasma current, 16.84 T peak field

The four burner gates

• Plug coil stress: overstressed 3-3.9x at the design bore (infeasible as specified)
• Operating regime: 166-830x beyond any built device (un-post-dictable today)
• Helium-3 fuel: demand ~400x domestic supply per commercial unit
• Availability: 0.86-0.995 vs Tier III 0.99982 (30-100x short as a sole source)

These definitions are intended to be stable across the section, so a term means the same thing on every page. Where a figure appears, it is a design-and-simulation value drawn from the frozen technical canon rather than a measured result, and it is stated the same way wherever it recurs. Consistency of terms and figures is itself part of the candor standard applied throughout.

All figures are design-and-simulation values from the frozen canon; economics are excluded from this section by policy.