The Fuel Supply Chain, End to End
From water and lithium at the breeder to a burning plasma at the installation, the fuel supply chain has a small number of well-defined links.
The whole chain in one view
The burner's fuel chain is short and mostly domestic. On the deuterium side: water is enriched to heavy water and electrolyzed to deuterium gas. On the helium-3 side: the breeder breeds tritium from lithium using fusion neutrons, the tritium is held and decays to helium-3, and the helium-3 is separated from helium-4 to fusion grade. Both fuels are then stored, conditioned to the target mix, and injected into the central cell.
Reading the map
Two features stand out. First, the deuterium branch is short and industrial; the helium-3 branch runs through the breeder and is the longer, slower, more valuable path. Second, separation appears on the helium-3 branch to guarantee purity before the fuel meets the deuterium stream. Downstream of injection, helium-4 ash and unburned helium-3 are removed in exhaust processing, with helium-3 recovered and returned to store.
- Deuterium branch: water → heavy water → D2 store (short, industrial)
- Helium-3 branch: Li blanket → tritium → decay → separation (long, bred)
- Streams meet at conditioning, set to the target D:3He ratio
- Exhaust processing recovers unburned helium-3 downstream
Every link here is either mature industrial technology (deuterium, separation, storage) or the breeder itself. The chain has no step that depends on unproven mining or off-planet logistics.