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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, Takayuki Ishibashi, Masami Ohnishi, Kiyoshi Yoshikawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 1265-1269
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A862
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion device is possibly used for portable neutron sources. R. L. Hirsh reported that D-D the neutrons of 1.8 × 108 n/s were produced. Recently, the similar amounts of fusion reactions are observed to occur in IEC devices In the most of IEC devices, since gas pressure is so high that the ions lose their energy by the frequent collisions with the neutral gas. The conditions of the high voltage and the low pressure are preferable because the energy of beam ions is kept very high and used for the fusion reaction more efficiently. It, however, is difficult to produce enough amounts of ions through a glow discharge at the low pressure. One of the solutions is to equip the ion source such as a magnetron near the anode. We have made three-dimensional orbit following code to evaluate the life of the ions produced near the anode surface. The code includes atomic collisions with background neutral gas and indicates the optimal positions to equip ion source which gives longer life of accelerated ions.