go critical

go critical

1. To be able to function successfully. When do you think this new software will be able to go critical?
2. Of a nuclear reactor or power station, to be able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. What protections do we have if the nuclear power plant goes critical?
See also: go
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

go critical

1. If a project or organization goes critical, it reaches a stage of development where it can operate smoothly and successfully. The programme confirmed its initial impact in week two, and really `went critical' with the third edition on 8 December. Bristol airport is about to go critical. That will come when more than a million passengers a year pass through the terminal.
2. When a nuclear power station goes critical, it reaches a state in which a nuclear fission chain reaction can sustain itself. Monju went critical last year, and produced its first electricity in August this year.
See also: go
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • get through to (someone or something)
  • think on (one's) feet
  • think on feet
  • think on one's feet
  • think on your feet
  • able to take just so much
  • able to take only so much
  • sleep
  • all able-bodied people
  • able to make (something)
References in periodicals archive
Abu Dhabi: The UAE is due to commission the Arab world's first nuclear power station this year, while the remaining three reactors will go critical by 2020.
The second unit of Kudankulam atomic power project in Tamil Nadu is expected to go critical on Sunday, S K Sharma, Chairman and Managing Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), said on Saturday.
This is because it has managed to swallow enough of its stellar companion's mass to "go critical." At last, the white dwarf can swallow no more, and blows itself up.
Thirdly, the external situation is a minefield: Europe still has problems; the slowdown in China could resume; and the Middle East could go critical.
expected to go critical with the onset of searing summer heat and families become heavily reliant on air
It is believed that the reactor will go critical, setting the stage for sea trial sometime in the first half of next year.
The reactor at Dimona was about to go critical and the underground facility was being readied to extract weapons-grade fissile material.
No doubt having the HMCS Charlottetown farting about the Mediterranean on "anti-terrorism" exercises will come in handy should things in Syria go critical. Suncor has some natural gas it needs to get back to pumping, if j nothing else.
It's called thorium nuclear reactors, which would produce negligible radioactive waste, could not be used to make nuclear weapons, would produce no CO[sup.2] and could not go critical like the Japanese reactors.
When a pool runs dry, he explains, the fuel may heat up but it won't go critical, because the neutrons generated by fission escape so quickly they can't create a chain reaction.
3 reactor, a 1.18-million-kilowatt pressurized water reactor, was activated with the MOX fuel for the so-called ''pluthermal'' electric generation and is scheduled to go critical Thursday evening, according to the power company.
One said Iran's first nuclear electricity generating plant would go critical in December and thereafter any air attack would become impossible since it would trigger a nuclear explosion.
But theorists have had nagging problems identifying how a white dwarf can collect enough infalling mass to "go critical." That's because when fresh hydrogen piles up on a white dwarf's surface, it's likely to fuse to helium in a thermonuclear explosion of its own.
Consider that the International Atomic Energy Agency controls quantities of 8 kg of [sup.239]Pu and 25 kg for [sup.235]U and that these quantities probably relate to masses needed for crude "bombs" Further, in some processing plants, a mass of about one-half a kilogram is used as a guideline for the minimum quantity of [sup.239]Pu or [sup.235]U, which can, given optimum conditions, go critical. I think the article could mislead people on what quantities need protection.