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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.
Saadia Amiel, Jacob Gilat
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 18 | Number 1 | January 1964 | Pages 105-109
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A18145
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reaction O17(n, p) and the previously unreported reaction O18(n, d)were found to be responsible for the production of the 4.14-second delayed-neutron precursor, nitrogen-17, in water irradiated in a reactor. The effective cross sections of these reactions with fission-spectrum neutrons were measured by counting the delayed neutron emission of irradiated water samples enriched with oxygen-17 and -18. The values obtained are 7.4 ± 0.6 and 0.086 ± 0.008 µb respectively.
