Valar built its own reactor protection system in six weeks for about $400,000 after a vendor quoted $5 million and two and a half years, showing how much of nuclear's 'high cost' is manufactured overcharging rather than real complexity.
Isaiah Taylor recounts building Valar's own reactor protection system in six weeks for roughly $400,000 after a vendor quoted $5 million and 2.5 years — evidence, he says, that nuclear's 'expensive' reputation comes from an atrophied industry charging huge margins, not fundamental cost. ✦ AI generated
Isaiah Taylor · No Priors · 2026-07-02 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 45:45
So after having haggled with this vendor for about two months trying to convince him to go faster, we eventually got the team together and said, Guys, we're going to have to build our own RPS. And we sat down with Joe who runs instrumentation and control. Awesome guy, Brown dropout, really really good with electronics, and he brought together five team members and we locked ourselves in the conference room and six weeks later we had a working RPS and we spent about $400,000 on it.
verbatim transcript · starts at 45:45
45:27against itself to say is the plant in a safe state or not. And if two of them vote that the plant is not in a safe state, it shuts down. And we were quoted about $5 million. Uh, and we were told it would make it would take about two and a half years to build. Um, and so we said, "Well, all right. Maybe I'd be willing to pay $5 million, but I'm
45:45certainly not going to wait two and a half years." And so after having haggled with this vendor for about two months trying to convince him to go faster, uh, we eventually got the team together and said, "Guys, we're going to have to build our own RPS." And, uh, we sat down with Joe who runs instrumentation and control. Awesome guy, Brown dropout. uh really really good with electronics and
46:07he brought together five team members and uh locked ourselves in the conference room and uh six weeks later we had a a working RPS and we spent about $400,000 on it. Um everywhere in nuclear is like this. There are uh totally fake costs from an industry that is just totally anemic and doesn't know how to build anything anymore. By the way, the conclusion to that story is
46:33kind of unfortunate, which is that when the vendor realized that we were going to do it ourselves because we just could not, you know, get our heads around a two-year timeline. Uh they freaked out and started telling everybody in the industry that were an unsafe company that's going to kill people. Uh because we would dare to to do something ourselves that, you know, is their special sauce that they're charging the
46:53market $5 million for. Uh, and if you go to I don't know if you guys use any of these like investor search platforms where you can like go look up a company and people have done like expert calls. Um, they contacted all of those expert calls companies and volunteered to do an expert call on Valor where their CTO >> shitty. >> Yeah. Their CTO uh basically went and
47:14like ranted about how we're the worst company on earth. Uh, because this is a massive massive threat to them. the fact that their $5 million system we can just make for a couple hundred grand with a team of 5 in years. Uh but the more that you look at a nuclear the more it's like this everywhere you look it's a fake industry that has not been building
47:32anything for 40 years and the little bit that they have been building they're charging a 100x margin on. But if you just take it from first principles and you have smart people in the room and you're willing to build it yourself you end up with this and the plant is running. There is something very inspiring about the idea of like given the physics work. Yeah. >> It should be possible and if it is