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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.
Hyun Sik Park, Hee Cheon No
Nuclear Technology | Volume 127 | Number 2 | August 1999 | Pages 160-169
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A2992
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A condensation experiment in the presence of noncondensable gas in a vertical tube of the passive containment cooling system of the CP-1300 is performed. The experimental results show that the heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) increase as the inlet air mass fraction decreases and the inlet saturated steam temperature decreases. However, the dependence of the inlet mixture Reynolds number on the HTC is small for the operating range. An empirical correlation is developed, and its predictions are compared with experimental data to show good agreement with the standard deviation of 22.3%. The experimental HTCs are also compared with the predictions from the default and the alternative models used in RELAP5/MOD3.2. The experimental apparatus is modeled with two wall-film condensation models in RELAP5/MOD3.2 and the present model, and simulations are performed for several subtests to be compared with the experimental results. Overall, the simulation results show that the default model of RELAP5/MOD3.2 underpredicts the HTCs, and the alternative model overpredicts them, while the present model predicts them well throughout the condensing tube.