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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.
Paul Guss, Michael Reed, Ding Yuan, Denis Beller, Matthew Cutler, Christopher Contreras, Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, Scott Wilde
Nuclear Technology | Volume 185 | Number 3 | March 2014 | Pages 309-321
Technical Paper | Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-2
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Gamma-ray energy spectra were acquired for different sizes of cerium tribromide (CeBr3), cerium-doped lanthanum tribromide (LaBr3:Ce), and thallium-doped sodium iodide (NaI:Tl) detectors. A comparison was conducted of the energy resolution and detection efficiency of these scintillator detectors for different sizes of detectors. The results of this study are consistent with the observation that for each size detector, LaBr3:Ce offers better resolution than either a CeBr3 or NaI:Tl detector of the same size. In addition, CeBr3 and LaBr3:Ce detectors could resolve some closely spaced peaks in the spectra of several radioisotopes that NaI:Tl could not. As the detector size increased, all three detector materials exhibited higher efficiency, albeit with slightly reduced resolution. Significantly, the very low intrinsic activity of CeBr3 is also demonstrated in this study, which, when combined with energy resolution characteristics for a range of detector sizes, could lead to an improved ability to detect special nuclear materials compared to the other detectors.
