Hyperion is a compact deuterium-tritium spherical tokamak whose product is not electricity but materials: tritium, helium-3, and 14 MeV neutrons. It is named for the Titan who fathered Helios the sun — the machine that fathers the fuel everything after it burns.
The hardest bottleneck in a helium-3 fusion economy is not the reactor; it is the helium-3. Kronos resolves the sequence by building a breeder first: a machine whose job is to make the scarce inputs, sized to a real requirement rather than a physics optimum. Hyperion requires fusion gain only — no net-electricity milestone — at confinement consistent with what the field has already demonstrated.
Ordering the programme this way turns the burner's fuel dependency from a hope into a schedule: a decade of breeder production supplies the demonstrator that follows. The design bar is deliberately modest — gain, not closure — which is what makes Hyperion the near-term, buildable member of the family.
| Machine | spherical tokamak, D-T fuel |
| Physics bar | fusion gain only (no Q_E>1) |
| Product streams | tritium, helium-3, 14 MeV neutrons |
| Design gain Q | 3.424 (computed) |
| Role | near-term fuel foundry |