• 0 Posts
  • 5 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 28th, 2026

help-circle

  • Molten salt for heat transfer and thermal storage is a pretty mature technology that goes way back before we started using it in concentrated solar systems.

    Isn’t the core problem with anything that uses molten salt is that when the heat sauce source (thanks autocorrect, really, the context in that sentence means you should suggest “sauce”?) fails you just end up with a huge lump of solid salts that clog every part of your system?

    The Russian Alfa class had a similar problem due their use of lead-bismuth heated into a liquid.

    When they lost power for whatever they’d essentially end up being written off as reheating them was incredibly difficult and very tricky.



  • Stars are a lot cooler then fusion reactors.

    It’s in their outer layers that they produce a shit ton of photons.

    Fusion reactors are way hotter (like 100m Celsius) and although they make photons most are very high energy (think gamma, xrays etc).

    So what would be emitted as visible light would never be enough to generate enough power via pvc to pay back the cost of generating the fusion reaction in the first place much less the cost of building the plant.

    Also pvc is like at best 22%~ efficient. You’re losing a lot compared to say steam powered generators which, using ultra super critical hot steam made by a fusion reactor could maybe hit 60% (I believe that is high as you can go).

    Asianonmetry has a great lecture on steam powered generators

    https://youtu.be/suCEKLCCgzw


  • I read a time travelling book (very old and dusty, relatively short, I think it’s from the 70s) where the protagonists discovers over time that he is his own father/mother. He travels in time so often that there are zillions of him at different ages in each time.

    He just ends up partying with himself because he can be just himself. And with all the drugs and partying one thing leads to another. Also because he travels so damn much somehow that leads to a female version of himself.

    That Ethan Hawk film Predestination is a less fucked up, similar version of the story.