MetroVolt's Near-Zero Water Claim

MetroVolt needs almost no water because its dominant conversion path is electrostatic, not thermal, so it has no steam condenser to feed.

The claim, stated precisely

MetroVolt is the Kronos burner (Aegis / MetroVolt) in a housing built for data centers and cities. Its core is a D-3He tandem-mirror generator with a 26.49 T plug and 17 T throat. Because most of its electrical output comes from direct energy conversion of charged particles, it has no steam cycle and therefore no evaporative cooling water demand at the scale that dominates conventional plants.

"Almost no water" is deliberate wording. The residual heat loads, from the 5.44% neutron fraction and from converter and magnet losses, still require cooling. But those loads are a small fraction of a comparable thermal plant's rejected heat, and they can be carried by a closed coolant loop rejected to air. The consumable water that remains is for occasional makeup and facility use, not for continuous evaporation.

What makes this credible

• The mechanism is physical, not procedural: no condenser exists to consume water
• Residual heat is small and can go to dry heat exchangers, trading a little efficiency for near-zero consumption
• Siting is not gated on a large cooling-water source, so arid and inland locations open up

What we do not claim

We do not claim zero water. We do not claim net electrical gain from built hardware; the burner is a design-stage study with a test unit planned around 2032, perfected while the breeder (Hyperion) is built. We do not attach any economic figure to the water advantage on these pages. The water story is a statement about heat-rejection physics: remove the steam cycle, remove steam-cycle water.