Post · bonfire.cafe

I loved our inflatable SPARC (the tokamak we're building now to demonstrate net fusion energy and pave the way for our ARC fusion power plants). This was at an inspiring (for me at least) Commonwealth Fusion Systems all-hands meeting. The inflatable incarnation of SPARC was fun, but our work on the actual SPARC is very real. #FusionEnergy #Science

An inflatable version of the CFS SPARC tokamak staked down in a field of tall grass with two people standing nearby. It's a balloon, but it's got accurate renderings of the machine's geometry, with magnets and glowing plasma visible in cross section.

#fusionenergy #Science

Wes George

@wesgeorge@mstdn.social · 9 months ago

@stshank I was briefly very confused about "Inflatable SPARC"

A picture of sun sparcstations, original, 4, and 5, stacked on one another.

Stephen Shankland

@stshank@mstdn.social · 9 months ago

@wesgeorge I am amused that I couldn't escape that trademark. Muscle memory does ok with SPARC but I tend to type TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) when I mean TFMC (Toroidal Field Model Coil). Also supercomputer instead of superconductor.

Stephen Shankland

@stshank@mstdn.social · 9 months ago

Note that this 1:1 scale balloon rendering of SPARC is pretty accurate. The TF, PF, and CS magnets, the ICRF heating antennas, the midplane and off-midplane ports, the plasma with fuchsia Balmer series colors from emitted by hydrogen ions that recaptured their electrons...