Steady-State Operation

Once burning, the burner is designed to run continuously — a natural fit for the constant, firm load of a data center.

Built to run continuously

A tandem mirror has no pulsed transformer drive and no toroidal current that must be ramped, so it has no intrinsic pulse limit. In principle it runs in true steady state: fuel in, electricity out, potential held by continuous heating. That is a strong match for baseload electrical demand, which is why the burner targets firm, around-the-clock dispatch.

What must be held constant

• Plug potential and thermal barrier, via steady ECRH and beams
• Fuel balance: D and 3He fed to match burn-up and end losses
• Heat removal from the first wall, shield, and collectors
• Density and temperature within the stable operating band

The recirculating-power loop

Some of the machine's electrical output is fed back to run the beams, ECRH, cryogenics, and pumps. Net output is what remains after this recirculation. Keeping recirculating power low — through efficient heating and high-efficiency direct conversion — is central to the machine making sense as a generator. The balance between fusion power, heating power, and converted power is exactly what the design study computes and what the 2032 test unit is meant to validate.

Because the burner is a design study, steady-state operation is demonstrated in simulation, not yet in hardware. No net-gain claim is made ahead of the test program.

This continuous, fuel-fed character is the deepest reason the burner suits computing and urban loads: there is no pulse to smooth over, no cyclic fatigue from repeated ramps, and the machine's natural mode is exactly the flat, always-on output those loads demand.