Control of the Tandem-Mirror Burner
The burner generator is a tandem mirror, not a tokamak, so its control centers on plug fields, axial confinement, and direct conversion.
A different confinement scheme
Where the Hyperion breeder is a toroidal spherical tokamak, the Kronos burner is a tandem-mirror device: a linear central cell with strong magnetic mirrors at each end that reflect particles back and end plugs that electrostatically confine ions along the axis. The control problem is therefore different in kind, not just in numbers.
Plug field control
The end plugs use very high magnetic fields, 26.49 tesla at the plug and 17 tesla at the throat, to build the potential that confines the central-cell ions. Controlling the plug fields and the plasma that generates the confining potential is central to holding the burner's confinement. This replaces the toroidal shape and current loops of a tokamak.
Axial and radial stability
Mirror configurations face their own instabilities, including interchange and drift modes tied to the field curvature and the plasma pressure. Control maintains the field profile and plasma parameters that keep these modes stable, an analog to the stability control a tokamak applies to its current and pressure profiles.
Direct energy conversion
A distinctive feature of the burner is direct energy conversion: charged particles escaping along the axis are decelerated against an electric field, converting their kinetic energy directly to electrical output rather than through heat. Control regulates the collector fields to match the escaping particle flux, a loop with no counterpart in a tokamak.
In the Kronos program
The burner runs deuterium and helium-3 fuel, giving a low neutron fraction near 5.44 percent, and appears in two housings: Aegis for fixed defense installations and MetroVolt for data centers. Both share the tandem-mirror control approach centered on plug fields, axial stability, and direct conversion. Like the breeder, the burner is in design and simulation, with the same layered control and protection philosophy applied to its distinct actuator set.