Energy-Security Glossary
Key terms used across this section, defined plainly: from logistics tail and islanding to availability, breeding ratio, and the burner gates.
Terms used in this section
This glossary defines the recurring terms in the energy-security and logistics pages so they can be read without cross-referencing. Definitions are kept plain and consistent with the frozen technical canon used throughout the site.
Logistics and resilience terms
- Logistics tail: the full chain that must move fuel to a site, from production to last-mile delivery
- Attack surface: the set of points where a supply chain can be disrupted
- Islanding: disconnecting a microgrid to run self-contained during a disruption
- Black start: restoring power from full shutdown without any external supply
- Redundancy (N+1, 2N): spare capacity so a unit can fail without dropping the load
- Availability: fraction of time a source can deliver power (Tier III target ~0.99982)
Physics and canon terms
- Tritium breeding ratio (TBR): bred-to-consumed tritium, a design lever across 1.1 / 1.5 / 1.8
- Direct energy conversion: capturing charged-particle energy as electricity without a full thermal cycle
- Neutron fraction: share of fusion energy carried by neutrons; 5.44% for the burner's D-3He fuel
- Design point (burner): 26.49 T plug field, 17 T throat field
- Design point (breeder): Q_sci 3.076, 85.0 MW fusion, 9.66 MA plasma current, 16.84 T peak field
The four burner gates
- Plug coil stress: overstressed 3-3.9x at the design bore (infeasible as specified)
- Operating regime: 166-830x beyond any built device (un-post-dictable today)
- Helium-3 fuel: demand ~400x domestic supply per commercial unit
- Availability: 0.86-0.995 vs Tier III 0.99982 (30-100x short as a sole source)
These definitions are intended to be stable across the section, so a term means the same thing on every page. Where a figure appears, it is a design and validation value drawn from the frozen technical canon rather than a measured result, and it is stated the same way wherever it recurs. Consistency of terms and figures is itself part of the candor standard applied throughout.
All figures are design and validation values from the frozen canon; economics are excluded from this section by policy.