Readiness & First Burn
Aegis is at design stage now; the first test burner around 2032 is where the deployment and operations plan is first proven on hardware.
Everything in this section — installation, balance of plant, startup and shutdown, maintenance, availability, staffing, and safety — is the engineered plan for a machine at the design and simulation stage. The burner is being perfected now while the breeder (Hyperion) is built. The plan is proven on hardware beginning with the first test burner.
Why design-first
The breeder (Hyperion) is built first because it produces the helium-3 the burner needs and proves shared technology at scale. In parallel, the burner design is matured so that when its turn comes, the machine, its balance of plant, and its operating procedures are ready rather than improvised.
What the first burner proves
- Plug formation and the ambipolar potential on hardware
- Steady-state D-³He operation toward the design point
- Direct energy conversion in the expander
- The startup, shutdown, and protection sequences described here
Honest framing
No net-gain hardware result is claimed before the first test burner. The frozen design values — 26.49 T plug, 17 T throat, 5.44% neutron fraction, direct energy conversion — are design and simulation results. The deployment and operations plan is the standard the machine is engineered to meet.