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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.
Toshikazu Takeda, Hironobu Unesaki, Toshihisa Yamamoto, Katsuya Kinjo, Toshio Sanda
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 101 | Number 2 | February 1989 | Pages 179-184
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-A23606
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutron streaming in a fast breeder reactor fuel subassembly caused by the double heterogeneity of the pin structure and the wrapper tube structure is estimated by double heterogeneous modeling. The neutron streaming is decomposed into three components: the pin-cell heterogeneity, the wrapper tube heterogeneity, and the homogenized fuel/wrapper tube subassembly effect. The streaming effect is evaluated based on the Benoist diffusion coefficient. The total streaming effect caused by the double heterogeneity structure of a fuel subassembly is found to be about −0.2% Δk/kk′ for keff, which is almost twice that obtained from the conventional pin-cell model of about −0.1% Δk/kk′.
