The Physics Gates, Summarized
Beyond availability and fuel, the burner faces two plasma-and-magnet gates — plug coil overstress and an un-post-dictable operating regime — that keep it a design study today.
Four gates, stated plainly
The data-center case rests on the burner, and the burner has four honest gates. Two are covered elsewhere: the availability gate (0.86-0.995 vs Tier III 0.99982) and the helium-3 supply gate (~400x current domestic supply per unit). Two are physics gates internal to the machine, summarized here for completeness.
The first is plug coil stress. To hold the 26.49 T plug field at the design bore, the coil is overstressed by roughly 3 to 3.9 times — infeasible as specified with today's materials and geometry. This is a materials-and-structures problem the design flags openly rather than hiding.
The second is the operating regime. The plug plasma is required to operate 166 to 830 times beyond any regime any device has demonstrated, so its behavior cannot be post-dicted from existing data today — it is an extrapolation, not a validated point. Together with the plug-stress gate, this is why the burner is honestly a design-and-simulation study, with a test unit not expected before ~2032.
Stated together, the four gates — plug stress 3-3.9x, regime 166-830x, He-3 ~400x supply, availability 0.86-0.995 vs 0.99982 — define exactly what must be retired before MetroVolt can power a data center. None is softened, and none is an economic claim; they are the physics and engineering facts that make the roadmap honest.
- Plug coil overstressed ~3-3.9x at the design bore
- Plug regime 166-830x beyond any demonstrated device
- He-3 demand ~400x current domestic supply per unit
- Availability 0.86-0.995 vs Tier III 0.99982