Developing https://xitter.cf/t.co/Nk3r8DajE3 Occasionally tweeting about nuclear fusion research, where I worked in the past. he/him

Europe
Joined August 2012
I am going to use the dedicated account now for StarbaseSim stuff. You can follow this one, if you only want to keep up with the game.
Trailer for Tank Farm Update 👇 Video on Odysee: odysee.com/@ashtorak:1/starb… Download the game at ashtorak.itch.io/starbase-si…
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Some of these test components were helium cooled at up to 700°C and 80 bar. At least that was the goal. We didn't quite achieve the 700 yet while I was there. Little bit insane to cool something at that temperature, but needed in fusion reactor for neutron damage mitigation.
It has been suggested that the orange color might be from evaporated rust on the metallic test tiles. I am not sure a thin rust layer could produce such an amount of deposits. Here is my alternative explanation, coming from my background in fusion tech: 🧵
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It's cool that we finally might get a fusion "power plant", but don't expect the electricity that it might generate to be cheap or reliable any time soon. I guess, Microsoft has deep enough pockets 😄
We've started construction on the site of the world's first fusion power plant, Orion. Located in Malaga, WA, Orion will begin delivering electricity from fusion to Microsoft by 2028. Read more: helionenergy.com/articles/he…
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That's pretty cool. Now imagine putting all of these in space with a starship launch. Just need to pack them closely and add some propulsion. The mass of the scopes itself is not that high.
This is what I’ve been up to the last year! Building the largest remote observatory in the world (By quantity of scopes)
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Sometimes I revisit old @hatebreed bangers like "Perseverance" and "Live For This" Always gives great motivation, and memories of seeing them live for the first time 20 years ago. Both accompanying albums are great :)
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Fun fact: Currently installed PV capacity on earth should be somewhere around 1.5 TW, which equates to about 7500 km², a bit less than Cyprus or Puerto Rico. Capacity is doubling every three years. If we continue at this rate, the whole earth would be covered in just 50 years!
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and it would take not even 100 more years to cover the area of a Dyson sphere with 1 AU radius!
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2,2 TW PV-Kapazität erreicht! Während es 68 Jahre gebraucht hatte, um von der ersten Solarzelle das erste TW an installierter Leistung zu erreichen, brauchte es nur 2 Jahre bis das zweite TW erreicht wurde. (Quelle: Solar Power Europe, Mai 2025)
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Fun fact: Currently installed PV capacity on earth should be somewhere around 1.5 TW, which equates to about 7500 km², a bit less than Cyprus or Puerto Rico. Capacity is doubling every three years. If we continue at this rate, the whole earth would be covered in just 50 years!
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Amazing to see the development of the ITER neutral beam source going in its final phase. They will need to operate this thing at 1000 kV DC with negative polarity, which is a huge challenge, and it seems they have made some good steps into that direction. iter.org/node/20687/successf…
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I was there 15 years ago when this project was about to start. Back then ITER was scheduled to start operation in 2017. Even though, everyone knew that they won't get a novel 1 MV DC- device like that developed anywhere close to that time frame. Organization of ITER is so weird😆
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So @VW has a problem with finding buyers for their cars? Maybe they should give their profits to their employees in form of a car. Just with last year's profits every employee could have gotten basically an entry level Golf, pre-tax, at 23.4 k€ profit per employee.
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Instantly +0.7m deliveries, and the crazy things is, they could have done that almost every year back to 2017. Maybe there is a more fundamental reason to why people can't buy cars. Maybe they just can't afford to pay for the profits of big corps? Not just VW.
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Interesting longer article about new small scale Stellerator research. It's great that this stuff exists! You'll never know what comes out of it, like this table top device below with thousands of permanent magnets. That won't make it into a power plant, but still pretty cool!
Are small reactors the future of fusion? Researchers at ⁦@PPPLab⁩ built a kitchen-table-size stellarator with permanent magnets. This may not be the ticket to commercial fusion but may bring in new insights and push the field forward #fusionenergy spectrum.ieee.org/the-off-th…
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I don't think this will happen with updates to my game, but wow, I never thought about something like this. It gives a whole other level of meaning to what you do as a game dev.
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This is from youtube.com/watch?v=nWqIhkiJ… which got spilled in by Youtube after the latest controversy about some of his comments. I don't have time to watch any twitch currently, but I still follow up with some streamers once in a while.
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Maybe Hyperloop is not dead just yet? While they still use maglev, their system is the best for the application at least and they give interesting details on their website. Lift-to-drag 150 is pretty good for maglev. At 700 km/h you could still just use wheels as well though :D
First Successful Test at the European Hyperloop Center!🎉✨ Our vehicle demonstrated its traction solutions —magnetic levitation, guidance, and propulsion—over the first 90 meters of the track. 🔗 Read the full announcement: linktr.ee/hardthyperloop #Hyperloop #Innovation
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The main reason why traditional scientific publishing needs to die, is because of these pesty fake publishers that spam your email address even years after you published something the last time. If you are about to publish on some journal, be very careful what address you use!
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Extremely Large Telescope is taking shape! Pretty large indeed 😄
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fyi, a country cannot go bankrupt in the currency it's issuing, which is what the US are mainly indebted in. The only thing that can happen is that inflation goes up. But the last two years it was trending down. So there is even room for more debt.
America is headed for bankruptcy fyi
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US inflation rate last 10 years via tradingeconomics
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I haven't posted in a long time about nuclear fusion. But there hasn't been much news either, other than another delay of ITER first plasma, which isn't really news 😆 So I'm just gonna share this picture of the ITER site. At least on the outside it looks pretty finished already.
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