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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
D. P. Stotler
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 22 | Number 2 | September 1992 | Pages 199-207
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30103
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Previously developed procedures that simulate the radiatively induced tokamak density limit are used to examine the scaling of the density limit in more detail. The maximum allowable density increases with auxiliary power and decreases with impurity concentration. However, there is little dependence of the density limit on plasma elongation. These trends are consistent with experimental results. Previous work used coronal equilibrium impurities; the primary result was that the maximum density increases with current when peaked profiles are assumed. Here, this behavior is shown to occur with a coronal nonequilibrium impurity as well.