Comment by poincaredisk

5 days ago

>1,337 seconds: that was how long WEST, a tokamak run from the CEA Cadarache site in southern France and one of the EUROfusion consortium medium size

Is this a joke and reference to internet culture or a coincidence? Probably the latter, but i found it entertaining.

They turned it off specifically then. Just like the previous one at 1066. We used to do stuff like this in our labs as a joke. Or try and stop timers exactly on :00

I work for the IFMIF project, an ITER-adjacent project with the goal of researching new materials suitable for future fusion reactors.

Trust me, we are all massive geeks, including my colleagues from CEA. There is a non-small chance that the result is deliberate.