What Hyperion Makes

The breeder (Hyperion) is an isotope and neutron foundry: its products are tritium, helium-3, and 14 MeV neutrons — material, not megawatts.

A foundry with three product streams

The breeder (Hyperion) is a compact D–T spherical tokamak sized to a supply requirement rather than an electrical rating. It runs at scientific gain Q_sci 3.076, producing 85.0 MW of fusion power at 9.66 MA of plasma current. The value it delivers is the neutron economy that gain creates, not electricity sent to a grid.

Every D–T fusion reaction releases one 14.1 MeV neutron. Those neutrons do three jobs. They breed tritium in a lithium-bearing blanket toward a ~4 kg/yr class output. That tritium beta-decays to helium-3 with a 12.3-year half-life, yielding a coproduct near 1.97 kg/yr. And the fast-neutron flux itself is a product: a fusion-representative 14 MeV irradiation source for materials qualification and activation services.

Why the products matter more than the power

Tritium is the base fuel of every D–T fusion program and has no natural terrestrial reservoir at scale. Helium-3 is a strategic material for quantum-computing dilution refrigeration and neutron detection. A true 14 MeV source has no operating equivalent for testing fusion materials. Hyperion is designed to supply all three.

Honest about stage and gates

The three products depend on breeding physics that is not yet closed. The tritium breeding ratio (TBR) is treated as a design lever at 1.1 / 1.5 / 1.8, and the reconciliation between an idealized local TBR and the as-built net TBR is an open question at the 1.8 target. Tritium self-sufficiency is not yet proven. These are stated plainly on the pages that follow.

This page describes a design-and-simulation study, not a built machine. Construction begins Q2 2027; first-of-a-kind (FOAK) first tritium is targeted near 2030. No net-gain claim is made before FOAK.