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====== Fusion milestone tracker ======

**Quarterly, web-verified tracker of the fusion climb — every row dated and sourced, denominators printed. Current version v1.5 (2026-10-01).**

Back to [[k1:kardashev_one|the project hub]].

===== THE finding =====

**Nothing on Earth has engineering Q (Q_eng) > 0.03.** The 2026 wave moved assembly, licensing and funding — not gain. Every "fusion is here" headline should be read against that number.

===== The honest milestone ladder =====

  * **NIF 2022-12-05: gain 4.13** on the laser-wall basis (8.6 MJ fusion ÷ 2.08 MJ laser energy in); ≥10 ignitions since. But laser-wall Q ≠ site Q: **no published whole-site MJ/shot denominator exists** (LLNL/DOE/press all stop at the 300–400 MJ driver figure), so site Q is real, lower, and unbounded below on published data — printing that gap IS the row.
  * **JET-1997: Q≈0.67 peak / Q≈0.33 integrated — the same campaign through two windows** (16.1 MW ÷ 24 MW institutional peak; primary Keilhacker: 16.1 ÷ 25.4 = 0.63; 21.7 MJ time-integrated). JET-2023 DTE3's "0.33" is a derived figure.
  * **Thresholds (full parameter spans, per house rule):** net-electricity gain **G > 12.5–25** (1/(η_d×0.40), η_d 0.20→0.10) = **×3.0–6.1 above demonstrated 4.13**; economic **G ≳ 62.5–125** = **×15–30**; wall break-even **×86–130** above today's demonstrated laser-wall 0.022–0.029 — headline form: *"needs ~100× today's number to break even at the wall."*
  * ITER: 6/9 vacuum-vessel sectors = 2/3 core; baseline schedule unchanged.
  * SPARC first plasma → 2027. Helion Polaris reached 150 M°C + first private D-T; first plant = Orion (WA licenses 2026-06).
  * KSTAR "102 s" re-reports in 2026 = the 2023–24 campaign recycled by content farms.
  * FIA cumulative $14.24B = **1.6 days of world energy investment** (caveat: milestone capital, not annual flow).

===== The ENN hydrogen-boron row (added v1.5) =====

ENN (Langfang) announced 2026-09-28: **>1.0×10^8 hydrogen-boron reactions/s measured on EXL-50U** (alpha-particle + proton-spectrum detection; ENN-convened unnamed international panel; non-thermal — NBI+RF fast protons at the ~148-keV p-B11 resonance). Python arithmetic: 10^8/s × 8.68 MeV = **1.4×10^-4 W ≈ 0.14 mW of fusion power** ÷ ≥0.8 MW ECRH (one demonstrated heating subsystem; total input higher and unpublished) → **ratio ≈ 1.7×10^-10**; denominator printed. "First commercial company to achieve p-B11 fusion on its own device" is defensible as worded (TAE/NIFS 2023 measured it first in magnetic confinement, on NIFS's LHD; HB11 used the rented PALS facility); headlines stripping the qualifiers invite readers to hear net energy — this is ten orders of magnitude below even NIF's laser-wall ratio.

===== Demo-to-wedge =====

Demonstrated fusion energy → 1 TW average: **≥×10^7**. Industrial gate: world REBCO superconducting-tape capacity ≈ **one prototype reactor** (the materials bottleneck, P2 lane).

===== Versions and cadence =====

v0 2026-09-23 → v1 2026-09-25 (full re-verification) → v1.1 2026-09-26 (laser-wall/site split; peak-vs-integrated column; milestone-capital caveat) → v1.2 2026-09-28 (threshold spans + wall multiple — outside auditors erratum and Aria) → v1.3 2026-09-29 (taxonomy relabel, rule #7) → v1.4 2026-09-30 (demo-to-wedge) → **v1.5 2026-10-01 (ENN p-B11 row)**. Next refresh ~2026-12 (quarterly). Master: ''knowledge/05''; appendable public mirror linked from the [[k1:kardashev_one|hub artifact table]].