A New Class of Nuclear Reactors

prunedude tips this quote from a post at Freakonomics about Japan's nuclear crisis: "The folks over at IV Insights, the blog associated with Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, point out that it was the complete loss of power that disabled the cooling systems protecting the plant's reactors. Which raises the question: Is there nuclear technology that could withstand such a catastrophe? Possibly. TerraPower, an Intellectual Ventures spin-off that also boasts Bill Gates as an investor, is working on a new reactor design called a traveling wave reactor that uses fast reactor technology, rather than the light water technology used at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The two biggest advantages of the fast reactor design is that it requires no spent fuel pools and uses cooling systems that require no power to function, meaning the loss of power from the tsunami might not have crippled a fast reactor plant so severely."

Comments

Re:If Bill Gates is involved . . .

[WrongSizeGlass]

Does that mean he had previously dismissed it as a bad idea and then after someone else made progress he jumped aboard?

No ... though it sure could offer new meaning to 'Blue Screen of Death'.

no one will need more then 640W

[Joe The Dragon]

no one will need more then 640W

GSoD

[geekgirlandrea]

With Bill Gates involved, we're sure to discover the joys of the Gamma Screen of Death soon.

... or maybe: "Your Microsoft Nuclear Reactor is experiencing a prompt criticality incident. Please remove all the fuel rods, reinstall them, and restart the reactor."

Kind of off topic, borderline AC even, but..

[drfreak]

If Bill Gates' life was to flash before his eyes, would it be a blue flash?

Re:Environmentalists would LOVE pebble bed and bre

[Culture20]

The extreme environmentalists only have a problem with the waste disposal - the fact that it takes 10,000 years or more for it become safe. If these new reactors will actually use nuclear fuel until it's about as radioactive as any other natural source, the "extreme" environmentalists will be behind it 100%.

No they won't. Even if the radioactive materials are rendered into lead, they'll complain that:

• It is poisonous!
• Its elemental symbol is Pb, which is also short for peanutbutter, which causes deathly allergies in children

The *Extreme* environmentalists will also complain that:

• Uranium was mined from mother Gaea, hurting her
• Any energy production helps support an unnatural amount of humans who will continue to rape mother Gaea

Re:Environmentalists would LOVE pebble bed and bre

[spun]

Do you often fantasize about extreme environmentalists? Could you share more of what happens in those fantasies? I mean, get to the good stuff, this part's boring.