Electric lighting became a solution when General Electric created a complete system, providing power generation, power distribution, and lights. Express mail became a solution when Federal Express created a network, connecting customers to recipients. Nuclear power will become a solution when entrepreneurs develop complete high-reliability systems, managing feed production, power generation, and disposal.The business challenge is to manage complete solutions that will work safely across a long timespan that starts with mining and continues through decay. The technical challenge is to produce these solutions safety while minimizing the risk-adjusted cost.Entrepreneurs have not yet stepped up to manage all component tasks and their risks. Instead, key business and technical responsibilities have been turned over to committees of government regulators plus industry interests, leaving nobody accountable.Since no leaders like General Electric’s Thomas Edison or Federal Express’s Fred Smith have stepped up, there has never been an initial fully-functioning nuclear power-generation system, and there has never been a subsequently steadily-improving system. Robustness to threats has never been proven. Waste management is unsolved. The current nuclear power industry is best thought of as nothing more than a series of power generation demonstration plants.If all that was required was power generation, with no overriding short-term or long-term tradeoffs or risks, as is the case for example with fossil fuels, hydropower, and geothermal, that would be enough. But with nuclear power, the short-term and long-term risks can be catastrophic.Sure enough, putting governments in control of nuclear power system development has killed 9,000 to 33,000 people, and has stopped system development cold. But it doesn’t have to stay this way.Current AI emulates multistate and continuous bioprocesses by using on-off semiconductor logic that consumes far more power. For as long as AI design continues along this path, AI will demand increasing power generation.This current AI use case brings renewed interest in nuclear power, driven by the powerful people in tech. Regardless of what capabilities and benefits AI ends up delivering, current AI power demands are an opportunity to give human prosperity a step change up, by responsibly developing nuclear power.The table outlines a baseline design concept, combining the best organizational approach with the most-promising technical approach.Table. Baseline nuclear power system design conceptOrganizationally, entrepreneurs would manage complete systems that encompass all steps from cradle to grave. Each entrepreneur would select, refine, and develop components as needed to make his complete system deliver high reliability with competitive pricing. Siting choices would need to satisfy investors, insurers, and neighbors that good protections would be built in and would remain robust and effective throughout each plant’s operating life and ultimate disposition.Entrepreneurs wouldn’t seek to capture all the power-generation revenue for themselves while unloading the safety and environmental accountability and costs onto government regulators and the public. In exchange, the entrepreneurs would earn the full returns.Technically, the overall objectives would be to produce safety from cradle to grave and to produce abundant low-cost power.Molten-salt reactors can be designed to use liquid-phase fuels, to use up most fuel for safer disposal, and to be disposed within 10 years and emit less radiation than ores emit within 300 years. With liquid-phase fuels, fuels can be drained off if for emergency safety, and reactors can be refueled while operating, reducing cost. Molten-salt coolants instead of high-pressure steam can run at atmospheric pressure, and gas secondary coolants run at low pressures. Both such coolants, unlike liquid-metal coolants, are unreactive.Modularized construction can prepare for disposal before radioactive materials are introduced. All system components can be designed to be disposed in proven boreholes. Modules can be built in controlled factory conditions. Equipment and controls can be standardized. Given the reactors’ inherent safety, chemical industry instrumentation can provide proven high reliability at low cost.Deep geological formations can be proven at the time of drilling to be trapping water underneath impermeable layers.Conventionally, radioactive fuels present immediate hazards, generate radioactive components across decades, and persist for immense time periods. This creates substantial technical complexity and risk.Past generations have leaned on public-private shared development and regulation. This approach accepted higher technical complexity and risk, and superimposed organizational complexity. Existing public-private approaches to mining, power generation, and waste management have been bureaucratic and unresponsive, not responsive and innovative.The key problem, waste management, was put off until some indefinite time in the future, waiting for governments. This has greatly impeded the development of system solutions and the refinement of such solutions.Entrepreneurs could have sidestepped governments’ pitfalls from the start and created solutions. Current AI’s power demands make the time opportune now for entrepreneurs to assimilate the technical lessons learned to date and build on this foundation. Entrepreneurs have a great opportunity, and the public does too.Making a clean break now could finally create abundant power, which would bring abundant resources, more products, and better products—the hoped-for world of the Jetsons.The post Nuclear Power: Entrepreneurial System Design for the Win appeared first on LewRockwell.