Welcome to Open Nuclear

Although there is something of a nuclear renaissance happening now, it's extraordinarily time consuming and costly to bring a nuclear plant online.  The global average construction time is about [10 years](https://twitter.com/GrantChalmers/status/1443501885948776452).  The most recent US reactor, Vogtle Reactor #3 in Georgia,  took 10 years, and cost ~$15 billion in 2021 dollars.  

IMO, much of this cost in time and money is due to a nuclear regulatory regime designed to strangle the industry.  For example, the Vogle plant was the first new nuclear plant to be approved for construction by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)  in 30 years.  [Bret Kudelmass, CEO of Last Energy](https://niklasanzinger.substack.com/p/the-story-behind-the-most-stranded) goes into the reasons why nuclear industry has become so stagnant.  

The philosophy of the Open Nuclear project is the same as that of the 3d-printed gun community -- make draconian nuclear regulations moot by making the construction and fueling of a nuclear reactor so simple that an individual or small group could safely construct and fuel one with or without state approval.  

Aimed at household / small apartment building energy needs, it would be based on ~50 kW designs intended originally for spacecraft, the Kilopower project.  With a Kilopower-like design, it should be possible build a reactor in any shop capable of welding 1" stainless steel.    

As it is intended for long space missions, the Kilopower design is designed to be simple and robust.  The only moving part is the control rod.  A 10 kW reactor core only weighs about 100 lb (98 kg), and would only need to be replaced every 15 years or so.  The entire apparatus is expected to weigh ~3300 lb (1500 kg).  

The 5 kW KRUSTY Kilopower prototype was designed and constructed with a budget under $20 million.  While well beyond the budget of most individuals, this figure is no doubt greatly inflated by the project's requirements to work within the existing nuclear regulatory apparatus.  

Given the quality of modern CAD / modeling software, it should be possible to design most of the components inexpensively in software before attempting physical construction. 

The hardest part is likely to be sourcing the uranium, so the first priority would be to design the uranium brine mining system.   If brine mining uranium can be made cost effective, it will become increasingly difficult for state actors to control the supply of uranium:

https://indiatoday.in/science/story/indian-researchers-extract-record-uranium-from-seawater-that-powers-nuclear-plants-1986196-2022-08-10

There are a number of other valuble minerals extractable from salt water as described here:

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/ew/c6ew00268d

A household nuclear generator could make underwater seasteads more practical, as nuclear power does not require access to oxygen or sunlight in order to work.  Brine mining  and seabed mining could also be a lucrative source of income for seastead based communities.   

There is already an effort to create an open source, open hardware large reactor design, the Open100.    Bret Kugelmass introduces the Open100 project here:

https://open-100.com

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0y8C4DqB-fU