Forging a Storage Core from a Dead City

A thirty-gigawatt-hour storage core normally took months. Factory Zero gave Lu Yao nine hours and forty minutes. The standard design required twenty thousand tons of new lithium. They had dead cells, bearing steel, and mountains of scrapped robots. “Twelve percent completion at best,” Su said. “Then we don't build a battery.” Lu Yao overlaid the molten-salt plant, flywheel array, and the neighborhood's underground shelters. He proposed a hybrid storage city: salt for duration, maglev flywheels for bursts, old batteries for black start, and the ring tunnel as the casing. [THEORETICAL CAPACITY: 31.6 GWH.] [MISSING: 240 HIGH-SPEED FLYWHEELS.]