The Plasma Current Target
The breeder's 9.86 MA plasma current is a design target the first machine must actually reach; Kronos treats reaching it as an open, falsifiable gate.
A target, not an achievement
The breeder (Hyperion) design point specifies a plasma current of 9.86 MA. Plasma current is central to confinement and to the whole gain story. It is a design target computed from our models — and whether a built machine reaches and holds it is one of the first things FOAK will test.
What rests on this number
- Confinement quality, and therefore the Q_sci 3.424 design point
- The neutron flux that drives breeding and product output
- Plasma stability under the negative-triangularity (delta -0.30) shaping
- Integrated operation with the 8 T on-axis field
How we frame it
We do not say the machine 'has' 9.86 MA; we say the design targets it and FOAK will measure it. If the built plasma falls short, the confinement model is wrong and much downstream of it must be revisited — which is exactly why this is a registered, falsifiable prediction rather than a settled fact.
Naming the current as a gate, not a property, keeps the reader's expectation aligned with the evidence: strong on paper, unproven in steel until 2030.