Red-Teaming the Honest Negatives: Bounded Closing Paths for a Compact Spherical-Tokamak Breeder and a Deuterium-Helium-3 Tandem-Mirror Burner

A reduced-order red-team of the binding gates of a compact spherical-tokamak breeder and a deuterium-helium-3 tandem-mirror burner. For each honest negative, alternatives are brainstormed, bounded, ranked, and only the promising ones promoted to high-fidelity validation. The current-drive burden falls 58 percent below fusion power inside unused pressure headroom; tritium closure is restored independent of the beryllium multiplier; and the burner plug-density requirement is attacked by a thermal barrier and a centrifugal architecture. Screening bounds, not banked results.