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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.
M. L. Williams
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 83 | Number 1 | January 1983 | Pages 37-49
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-2
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect that interference between resolved resonances has on averaging multigroup cross sections is examined for thermal reactor-type problems. A simple and efficient numerical scheme is presented to correct a preprocessed multigroup library for interference effects. The procedure is implemented in a “design-oriented” lattice physics computer code and compared with rigorous numerical calculations. The approximate method for computing resonance interference correction factors is applied to obtaining fine group cross sections for a homogeneous uranium-plutonium mixture and a uranium oxide lattice. It was found that some fine group cross sections are changed by more than 40% due to resonance interference. The change in resonance interference correction factors due to burnup of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel pin is examined and found to be small. The effect of resolved resonance interference on collapsed broad group cross sections for thermal reactor calculations is discussed. It is found that the 238U and 235U epithermal cross sections are fairly insensitive to interference effects, but the 239Pu value increases ∼3.5%, and the 240Pu value decreases by more than 7% for a PWR pin.
