The burner's low-neutron budget gives its first wall a life of 104 to 428 full-power years. Over a 30-year plant life that works out to between 0.035 and 0.144 first-wall changes — effectively none. Scheduled-replacement waste, the dominant activated-waste stream in a D-T plant, is essentially zero for the burner.
First-wall life scales inversely with neutron flux. At the burner's design-point neutron fraction of 5.44%, the frozen first-wall life is 104-428 full-power years (B31); dividing a 30-year operating window by that life gives 0.035-0.144 wall changes. The burner's capacity factor is therefore plug-limited, not damage-limited — the opposite of the breeder.
The scheduled replacement of activated first walls and blankets is the waste stream and the outage that dominate D-T fusion operations. Removing it almost entirely is both an environmental result and an availability result — the low-neutron fuel paying off twice.
| First-wall life | 104-428 fpy (frozen B31) |
| Changes in 30 yr | ~0.035-0.144 (~none) |
| Scheduled-replacement waste | essentially zero |
| CF limit | plug-limited, not damage-limited |
| Contrast | D-T replaces wall/blanket on a monthly-scale cycle |