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On moving fast and breaking things
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
So much of what is happening in federal nuclear policy these days seems driven by a common approach popularized in the technology sector. Silicon Valley calls it “move fast and break things,” a phrase originally associated with Facebook’s early culture under Mark Zuckerberg. The idea emerged in the early 2000s as software companies discovered that rapid iteration, frequent experimentation, and a willingness to tolerate failure could dramatically accelerate innovation. This philosophy helped drive the growth of the social media, smartphones, cloud computing, and digital platforms that now underpin modern economic and social life.
Today, that mindset is also influencing federal nuclear policy. The Trump administration views accelerated nuclear deployment as part of a broader competition with China for technological and AI leadership. In that context, it seems willing to accept greater operational risk in pursuit of strategic advantage and long-term economic and security objectives.
Hodaka Osawa, Takehiro Tabata, Masami Ohnishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 1270-1274
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A863
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion device is possibly used for the neutron source that has the ability to produce the neutrons of 105-108/s by the glow discharge. It works more efficiently at the condition of the high voltage and the low pressure. It, however, is difficult to keep the continuous operation at the low-pressure because the glow discharge is apt to be unstable. We have made the three-dimensional Monte Carlo PIC code including atomic processes to investigate the glow discharge. The study reveals the spatial position where the ionization occurs and numerically reproduces the discharge called 'star mode'.