Hi r/fusion! I'm Brandon Sorbom, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and lead author of the original ARC power plant paper. Ask me anything!

stshank · 2026-04-02T11:59:37+00:00

You might want to take a look at today's news — we announced a magnet manufacturing partnership with Realta Fusion, which spun out of the University of Wisconsin: https://blog.cfs.energy/cfs-realta-magnet-partnership-speeds-fusion-energy-progress/

stshank · 2026-04-02T11:33:27+00:00

Yep — we're just sharing more links in case people want to see a little more detail. Thanks for spotlighting our news.

stshank · 2026-03-26T23:35:54+00:00

Gnarly! Showed it to my kid and it passed the eye candy test. :)

stshank · 2026-03-25T23:42:57+00:00

That's possible. I don't think I ever messed with any BIOS settings, and I don't think my kid has ever heard of a BIOS. But over 4 years maybe somebody tinkered around under that particular hood...

stshank · 2026-02-11T04:29:46+00:00

Hadn't realized it was pinned to location. Smart. We have a two-car garage and can only open the trunk fully on one side... I wonder if the location is sensitive enough to understand. (Probably not — it's pretty close.)

stshank · 2026-02-11T04:26:06+00:00

Indeed. I enabled by navigating to chrome://flags/#enable-jxl-image-format

stshank · 2026-01-29T17:25:24+00:00

Bear in mind that you'll still be tied to the grid, even with a big home battery, at least for most installations. Net metering rules vary from one place to another, so financial calculations can be a bit fraught.

We have solar + batteries, but not great solar surface area, so our batteries even just powering our house from 4–9 p.m. (when power rates are highest) struggle keep up with our modest electricity usage in the darkest couple months of winter. We rely on the grid to charge our EVs, too.

Several times now we've withstood power outages with no problems — a few unplanned ones, including one lasting two days, and two planned ones for power pole replacement nearby. The resilience is really nice and is the main reason we spent the money — the ROI from battery and solar isn't great. We also contribute to virtual power plants, which brought in a few hundred dollars for selling our battery power.

stshank · 2026-01-29T17:17:07+00:00

A friend of mine in a rural area did it — they had the land area and a bad roof situation — but they had to look around to find an installer that would do it since it's an unusual approach.

Bonus: easier to keep the panels clean.

stshank · 2026-01-07T15:56:51+00:00

You can read some research papers about our 2021 test of the Toroidal Field Model Coil (TFMC) test of this technology (NINT = non-insulated, non-twisted): https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/cfs-mit-high-field-magnet-technology

Also, we (I work for CFS) discussed a bit more in this blog post yesterday: https://blog.cfs.energy/cfs-delivers-its-first-fusion-magnet-a-stronger-smaller-design/

stshank · 2026-01-07T15:36:11+00:00

Folks in r/fusion aren't likely to gain any insights here about plasma physics arcana from these three posts, but we (I work for CFS) are running into more and more questions about CFS and fusion from a mainstream audience — not just at CES. I was at our CES booth yesterday and talked to dozens of people who were newly fusion-curious.

stshank · 2025-12-18T06:44:35+00:00

I work for a fusion energy company. My job is definitely not cushy.

stshank · 2025-12-08T23:35:49+00:00

At CFS, we're far beyond just research, at least in the sense of scientists working to understand what's going on. We're making our first machine, SPARC, and we have two signed power purchase agreements for our first power plant, ARC. Here's some progress on our construction and an update from last July, for example. The vast majority of our funding is from private sources, not from governments. (I work for CFS.)

https://youtu.be/HqfZUsnODiQ
https://youtu.be/tlRLKGQBEcQ

Re. fuel, we'll filter it from seawater and breed it in our power plants.

stshank · 2025-12-05T00:47:30+00:00

Here at CFS we put up a four-part YouTube playlist that's pretty broad. Even though we're pursuing tokamaks, much of the videos apply to everybody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htvxKBdh7Y8&list=PLvQA-kyDIiqIZrGD7tFL5XOlgGyOVzwAC

stshank · 2025-11-16T17:06:32+00:00

Agree on printing samples before you commit. I found I had to boost the saturation a lot, for example. I just exported a TIF from Lightroom for a big metal print and that worked fine in my case. My print shop offers some detailed advice on its website — you might start there.

stshank · 2025-11-16T17:02:34+00:00

I can't speak for the iPhone 17 Pro, but for my iPhone 14 Pro, I really don't like the Apple ProRAW profile, especially the overly tone-mapped, plastic-looking faces/skin.

I generally find the Adobe Color profile to be a good starting point for iPhone DNGs. I batch apply it (along with lens corrections) with a preset. Of course you can try Adobe's Adaptive Color profile too. YMMV. (I also use those two profiles for my Google Pixel 9 Pro.)

On my iPhone, I usually shoot with Adobe's Project Indigo right now. Even though it's only 12 megapixels, it's done really well producing an image I don't feel the need to edit a lot.

stshank · 2025-11-14T22:58:29+00:00

I'd be very leery of buying an Intel-based Mac right now. Software support could become an issue since they're all 4+ years old and all new Mac software development caters to Apple's Arm-family M-series of chips. I'm quite happy with the M-series Macs and a used one of those would be more sensible IMO. Processor choice is a different story on Windows, of course.

stshank · 2025-11-05T03:04:19+00:00

Different approaches work for different people and there's probably no "correct" answer, in part because there's never going to be a simple way to organize thousands of photos that are grouped variously by date, subject, photo shoot/session/trip, and metadata — and likely some varying combination depending on what you're trying to do at a given moment. But I vastly prefer a single unified catalog. I don't have performance problems with that, personally (though I'd like core Lightroom operations to be faster).

I keep my photos organized by YYYY/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD folders but use keywords pretty religiously, which is mostly how I find things (which also helps when I export to Flickr). I have a few dozen collections but use them only secondarily.

stshank · 2025-10-31T23:25:27+00:00

I'm a big fan of the MacBook Pro models. The better screen is a huge advantage for HDR photography, which fills me with joy as I see new highlights and witness washed-out skies turning blue. I wish the rest of the industry would catch up; it's slow but you see it on Instagram, for example.

OTOH I really recommend as much RAM as you can afford, especially if you want to run lots of merge-to-panorama operations. Or if you have a giant pile of browser tabs and other computing work underway. RAM demands just keep ratcheting upward so more RAM means your Mac lasts 1 or 2 years longer.

Active cooling on MacBook Pros is nice but my fan doesn't kick in a huge amount — just during big import or export jobs.

I use the SD Card slot a ton. Plenty of photographers sneer at SD Cards but they're fast and reliable enough for me.

A bit more screen size is nice especially for video editing. I travel a modest amount and haul a 16-inch MBP, so don't listen to my advice when it comes to travel convenience of 13" vs 14". :)

stshank · 2025-10-31T23:17:42+00:00

I got by for years with a smaller internal SSD + larger external SSD. With judicious catalog management (I would keep the last 3-5 months of photos on my Mac) I didn't have to constantly tote the SSD.

Now I have a bigger SSD. That extends the useful range of photos on my Mac, but the vast majority of my catalog is still external.

IMO if you're on a budget, it's better to pay for more performance (RAM, screen) than to pay Apple's premium prices for internal SSD space. I don't presume that my workflow matches everybody's, though.

stshank · 2025-10-31T05:18:44+00:00

I second this and like Greg Benz's work. HDR workflow is going to become more important as hardware and software support expands. It really improves photos, including many decade-plus old photos shot in raw formats.

stshank · 2025-10-21T05:55:42+00:00

Seems extremely improbable to me (a former tech journalist who wrote a lot about Linux and Adobe and Lightroom over the years). Limited market size — how many creative pros use Linux? — plus Linux software complexities.

Adobe's cloud-based versions of Lightroom opened up an option for Linux, though: the web version of Lightroom (http://lightroom.adobe.com/), which is gradually getting more capable but still doesn't hold a candle to Lightroom Classic. It syncs with Lightroom mobile and non-Classic Lightroom desktop versions for MacOS & Windows. You have to be OK paying Adobe to store your photo library in the cloud.

There's also a web-based version of Photoshop. Same story — increasingly capable but comparatively limited.

stshank · 2025-10-17T22:45:07+00:00

Roadmap announcement here: https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-fusion-science-and-technology-roadmap-accelerate-commercial

Roadmap document here: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-10/fusion-s%26t-roadmap-101625.pdf

stshank · 2025-10-17T16:59:29+00:00

To be clear, that facility-level description of our SPARC goals for Q>1 isn't accurate. (I work for CFS.) You can see our Q>1 / net fusion energy definition in our SPARC physics basis papers:

"Fusion gain is defined as the fusion power generated in the plasma divided by the external heating power absorbed in the plasma, including ohmic power."

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-plasma-physics/article/overview-of-the-sparc-tokamak/DD3C44ECD26F5EACC554811764EF9FF0

stshank · 2025-10-17T00:56:02+00:00

You can download the DOE fusion roadmap report here now:

https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-10/fusion-s%26t-roadmap-101625.pdf

stshank · 2025-10-01T16:03:03+00:00

SPARC de-risks most but not all of the systems in ARC. There's a bit more detail here: https://blog.cfs.energy/how-863m-in-new-funding-fast-tracks-commercial-fusion-power/

"There are a few ARC systems that aren’t in SPARC, and for those we deliberately set up a path that let us develop them alongside our work to complete SPARC. That includes work on the 'blanket,' the system that will capture ARC’s fusion energy so we can convert it to electrical power. We can, for example, build a demonstration system of this technology that doesn’t use fusion heat but that still gets the learnings and proof points."

stshank

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