At 43 MA, an unmitigated MetroVolt disruption would release 10.3 GJ of stored energy — 4.8 GJ magnetic plus 5.5 GJ thermal — and pull ~590 MN of vertical load. Those numbers are in the deposit because pretending otherwise is how fusion loses trust.
The disruption ledger (KX-24) quantifies the full event: stored-energy partition, a ~23 ms current quench, vertical displacement forces, and a runaway-electron avalanche gain that is flagged 'high' — which is why shattered-pellet injection (SPI) mitigation is a requirement, not an option, with the reduced DREAM deck deposited for flagship confirmation.
Negative triangularity helps twice: the ELM-free edge removes the most frequent disruption trigger class, and the mode-trade study shows the lower-current operating branch eases the ledger to ≈9 GJ. Structural verdicts are computed at ≥2× yield criteria against the ~590 MN envelope.
Utilities do not fear plasma physics; they fear unbudgeted downtime. A disruption case with numbers, mitigation hardware, and structural margins is an insurable event rather than an existential one. Publishing the 'high avalanche' flag is deliberate: it converts our hardest transient into a specified, testable engineering requirement.
| Unmitigated stored energy | 10.3 GJ (4.8 magnetic + 5.5 thermal) |
| Vertical load | ≈590 MN (≥2× yield structural criterion) |
| Current quench | ≈23 ms |
| Mitigation | SPI — required, deck deposited (S30) |
| Eased case | ≈9 GJ at 37.1 MA branch |