Hyperion Tritium Plant Interface
The tritium plant interface extracts bred tritium from the blanket, processes it, and returns clean fuel to the machine.
Closing the fuel loop
Hyperion breeds its own tritium, so it needs a system to recover that tritium, clean it, and feed it back as fuel. The tritium plant interface is where the machine connects to that fuel-cycle plant. It is the boundary across which bred tritium leaves the blanket and finished fuel returns to the fueling system.
What crosses the interface
- Bred tritium extracted from the breeding blanket.
- Tritium and unburned fuel pumped from the plasma exhaust at the divertor.
- Processed, isotopically clean deuterium-tritium fuel returning to pellet injection.
- Coolant carrying blanket heat, kept separate from the tritium streams.
Why breeding ratio matters here
The tritium breeding ratio of 1.8 is meaningful only if the plant can actually recover the bred tritium faster than it decays and with acceptable losses. The interface and plant are what turn a breeding ratio on paper into a self-sufficient fuel supply, and eventually into surplus tritium that can start other units. Breeding without extraction would be a number with no payoff.
In the model
The interface appears as the service connections at the blanket and divertor ports rather than as a single object; the plant itself sits outside the machine envelope. Selecting the interface highlights the extraction and return paths so the fuel loop is visible end to end.
The rest of the loop
This page covers the machine-side boundary. See the breeding blanket that produces the tritium and the fueling system that returns it.