Open Questions and Reconciliations
The program tracks specific unresolved questions honestly, including net breeding ratio and centerpost lifetime, mapped to the gates that settle them.
Naming the unknowns
A credible design states what it has not yet resolved. The breeder program tracks specific open questions and reconciliations rather than presenting the design as finished. Each is mapped to the gate, test, or analysis that will settle it.
Tracked open items
- Breeding ratio: design-level TBR of 1.8 versus net three-dimensional breeding in a real blanket, settled by measurement at G3
- Centerpost lifetime: neutron fluence on the conductors over the machine's operating life
- Magnet materials: some REBCO material and author-attribution details under reconciliation
- Confinement scaling: whether the plasma reaches Q_sci 3.076 at delta -0.30, settled at G1
How they are handled
Open items are not hidden or smoothed over. They are documented, assigned to a gate or analysis, and reported against pre-registered predictions when tested. The tritium breeding reconciliation, in particular, is a headline example: the design uses TBR as a lever precisely because the net value is uncertain until G3.
Why honesty here matters
The value of the breeder program is a rigorous design and a concrete build plan, not a claim of finished physics. Stating open questions plainly is what separates a serious program from marketing. The gates exist to close these questions with data.
These questions concern a machine not yet built. Their resolution is the substance of what the first-of-a-kind unit and its gate program are designed to deliver.