Steady-State Burn And Firmness

A tandem mirror is designed to hold a continuous plasma burn, which is what lets a burner behave as a firm, always-on source.

Why steady-state matters for the grid

Firm power requires that the generator can, in principle, run without interruption for long periods. Pulsed fusion concepts must repeatedly re-establish the plasma, which complicates always-on grid service. The tandem-mirror architecture is open-ended and magnetostatic: end plugs and a central cell hold a continuous burn rather than a repeated pulse, which is the natural basis for firm output.

The burner's plug fields are extreme by design: 26.49 T at the plug and 17 T at the throat. Those fields set up the axial potential that confines central-cell ions long enough to burn. If sustained, that confinement supports continuous operation; the direct-conversion stage then draws charged-particle power off continuously.

The confinement gate

Two of the four honest gates bear directly on steady-state claims. The plug coil is overstressed roughly 3 to 3.9 times at the design bore, so as specified it is not yet buildable. And the plug operating regime sits 166 to 830 times beyond any device operated to date, so continuous confinement cannot be post-dicted from existing data.

The consequence for firmness is honest: steady-state, always-on operation is the design goal that makes MetroVolt attractive for grids and cities, but it is exactly the property the open gates put in question. The 2032 test unit exists to probe whether the burn can be held.

Design-and-simulation finding, not a built-hardware result.