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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.
J. G. Yang, B. C. Kim, H. K. Na, N. S. Yoon, J. Hong, W. C. Kim, G. S. Lee, S. M. Hwang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | January 1999 | Pages 268-272
Oral Presentations | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A11963865
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We report the plasma production experiment in the central cell of the Hanbit device. In the experiment, an RF wave is excited by a slot antenna with a driving frequency of 3.75 MHz, and the RF power is applied up to 200 kW with a flat-top pulse length of 100 ms. The reproducible plasmas are produced without preionization with an averaged density of 2×1012 cm−3. The power absorption characteristics of the slot antenna are investigated by measuring the plasma resistance. The measured value of plasma resistance is in the range of 0.2 to 1.2 Ω. The discharges show transitions of the plasma density as the RF power increases.
