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Bill Gates On Energy
Sam the Nemesis
submitted an interview in Wired with Bill Gates on the future
of energy. Gates sees nuclear as the only
feasible option for base load generation. His views on the current
direction of energy funding are particularly distressing: "But the
economics are so, so far from making sense. And yet that's where
subsidies are going now. We're putting 90 percent of the subsidies in
deployment — this is true in Europe and the United States
— not in R&D. And so unfortunately you get technologies
that, no matter how much of them you buy, there's no path to being
economical. You need fundamental breakthroughs, which come more out of
basic
research."
Say waht you will about MS but to me it appears old Bill is mostly right on this one. Things like solar and will will eventually become economical, but not in the immediate future. This is mostly due to the rising cost of fossil fuels, but there are some economies of scale. More basic research is needed but renewables will become economical on their own eventually.
Time to offend someone
The down side to nuclear is the waste where does it go? and Safety as all it takes is one MR burns cutting costs to make a big mess.
"640 kwh should be enough for anyone"
After the last discussion on energy options, I had since learned that many of the most desired alternative sources fail to be viable in the truest sense. Wind farms cost too much. They are expensive to maintain -- even more expensive than nuclear power plants. Solar just isn't there yet either though I feel that with more R&D, that will change... money spent on deployment of solar at the moment is wasted I think.
Perhaps only geothermal has the potential to replace nuclear as a longer-term solution but I have my doubts on that too. At the moment, it is only available to specific regions and those are also potentially unstable areas meaning that the same areas where geothermal is of use in the US also have active magma circulation relatively close to the surface. (If deeper drilling techniques were available, perhaps that problem could be overcome.) Once again, more R&D needed to make it viable everywhere.
1. You should into look at how Bill Gates has spent the last decade and then ask yourself your own question.
2. Even if you felt that way before the article, did he actually come off as a man who didn't know what he was talking about?
One of the links is to Donald Sadoway's research group at MIT. His group works on the very topics that will make or break the shift to better energy sources and greater efficiency.
He's also a wonderful teacher who's put up a course at MIT open course ware. It's Solid State Chemistry 3.091 and it utterly rocks. If you want to understand how chemistry impacts energy efficiency and the properties of materials, this is the course for you. And, it's in a format that is great for self teaching.
3.091 course link
I know it's a shameless plug, but give me a break. I work in a chemistry department that does a lot of work on improved energy related materials and methods.
Because he's one of the world's premier professional philanthropists with lobbyists and a research staff who's been involved with political and humanitarian advocacy full-time for ten years now?
Internet Explorer sucks and all, but Bill Gates is a very accomplished and intelligent man with a lot of influence. His opinions matter a great deal.
He's a technology geek, with lots of money. Has a charity foundation that's trying to find ways to help the other 80% of this earths population.
The #1 thing to help those people is to get them ENERGY.
So he invests in groups, companies, people to find solutions. That's what foundations do.
And as someone else mentioned, did you read the interview? I has very good points and insights even if some of them have been obvious to the geek /. crowd.
What's the total life-cycle cost comparison though?
With solar I see the following:
up front:
Mining raw material for the panels, batteries, and electrical converters
manufacturing the components in a low-security factory
transporting the components on standard truck
installing the panels and conversion equipment to an existing structure or building frames to install on bare earth
down the road:
cleaning the panels
maintaining the circuitry
replacing batteries
having an electrician or homeowner possibly replace individual components over time if things fail
end of life:
remove panels from frames
remove frames from structure or earth
remove switching equipment and batteries
send panels, frames, and switching equipment to recycler
send batteries to mild hazardous waste disposal for disassembly or recycling
Potential problems:
solar panels smashed en masse in a hail storm - solar is offline until panels are replaced and structure is back on grid power. If owner has insurance, that is used to pay for the replacement.
Batteries leak, owner stops storing power for overnight use and goes back on to the grid, and replaces batteries and cleans up acid spill
Absolute Worst Case- solar system causes a fire and the small structure burns.
Contrast to nuclear:
Startup:
Spend billions to build obtain land, fight local opposition, and build the plant.
spend millions to obtain ROW to install power transmission lines
Refine nuclear fuel in a high security factory
transport fuel in an expensive manner via truck convoy
employ dozens, if not hundreds of engineers and technicians to fuel, power up, and baby sit the reactor
down the road:
continue to employ dozens, if not hundreds of engineers and technicians to baby sit the reactor
spend millions to refuel reactor as necessary
spend millions to store spent nuclear fuel in the proper fashion, forcing it to stay cool until it's no longer generating its own heat
maintain security at the facility
end of life:
spend billions to decommission and clean up plant site
find solution for storage of spent fuel?
possible problems:
contaminated water spills posing an environmental hazard requiring expensive cleanup
mismanagement of the reactor leading to core meltdown and environmental contamination (worst case similar to Chernobyl, but without the graphite moderator)
natural disaster leading to core meltdown and environmental contamination (Fukushima)
attractive target for terrorism
I'm for solar subsidy, especially once solar panel efficiency exceeds 40%, which they're almost to on the newest panel designs, especially for structures that can receive solar panels without spoiling the appearance of the structure. Commercial and residential structures with flat roofs, retrofitting houses with the backyard side on the south (as to no put the panels on the roof on the front of the house, for appearance), and building new structures with solar in mind from the planning stages all appeal to me. Give subsidy for Photovoltaics with battery storage, grid-tie-in, and intentional islanding (leaving the structure powered by the PV or batteries but separating from the grid when the grid itself loses power) and suddenly every home becomes a mini power plant. It might even cost more per unit of energy than bulk production like at large power facilities, but it also reduces or eliminates a need for more wiring infrastructure, adds failover, and in places like the southern portion of the country, provides power when it's needed most, during the sunniest days when the air conditioning is cranked down and when power grids tend to fail due to a lack of capacity. A big enough solar installation at a house can power the whole house and can sell back to the grid easily.
If people are worried about safety, have cities implement an inspection regimen at installation, significant modification, and every ten years or so. Nothing really expensive, just something to make sure that everything is hooked up properly and safely.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Politicians do not get enough kickbacks (I mean "campaign contributions") from the Basic Research crowd. Until this fundamental deficiency is addressed, the lack of public funding for basic research will not improve.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
That's waaaay too late.
Twenty years may be too late to get from R&D to product, but it's 20 years sooner than if you never make the effort. if you want to make progress towards your goal, you have to start towards that goal.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
If you put Bill Gates, Vinod Khosla, and Sergey Brin & Larry Page in a room together it would be a massive love fest; From statements each has made independently it appears they are in close agreement on the subject energy. Bill Gates states the issue well. Compare to interviews with Khosla on the subject of his investment strategy and the google.org REC initiative.
People who gained wealth and fame by bringing improved technologies to market instinctively apply the same approach to energy. That is the Silicon Valley approach. In contrast, the energy policy emanating from Washington D.C. is a combination of vote buying using cash handouts to favored constituencies, e.g. corn ethanol subsidies, and using government coercion to extort cash payments from the public directly into the hands of the politicians, e.g. Al Gore's carbon offsets business.
Genuinely greener technologies do not require government handouts. In fact, it is the opposite, they are cash cows for private investors. That is because efficiency is inherently and simultaneously more green and more profitable than inefficiency. The higher the ratio of outputs the more you get for less. That means spending less money on inputs and impacting the environment less by consuming fewer inputs in production per unit of output.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
How is there not a single post on the actual nuclear technology he is researching and advocating for! C'mon nerds!
Traveling wave reactors (google them) are projected to run without refueling for 60 years on what is 'waste' now and then become the storage facility for the next ~500 years until it fades into background rad. Oh, and they're made to be put in the ground like missile silos. Think of them as nuclear candles. Without having to refuel by hand and taking people out of the equation as much as possible the chances for error get reduced significantly. They also have large negative energy coefficients so a loss of coolant does not lead to a meltdown.
After researching as much as possible into TWRs I'd say the current stage of developement is trying to get the exact alloy of uranium, burnable poisons (look these up too, they're sweet), etc just right to create a long lived sustained reaction. I'd imagine that such work is really heavy on the super computer time.
I hope that these researchers have access to lots of money and super computer time. If only there was some tech billionaire funding them...
Nuclear energy, the short version.
Pro: there's plenty of uranium and thorium.
Con: every 20 years or so you have to evacuate an area 50km across on short notice.
It comes down to a couple of simple questions. Firstly do you support a level of civilization that we currently have? That means all the things we use every day which requires energy. If you do, then you need lots of energy. If you don't then feel free to go back to the stone age and die from the next polio outbreak, cholera outbreak or famine. It really is that simple.
I ask you to do a couple of searches for:
1) How many people died as a result of Chernobyl?
2) How many people died as a result of Fukushima?
3) How many people died as a result of Coal mining?
4) How much radiation is released as a result of burning Coal?
Remember Chernobyl and Fukushima were not nearly as well designed as modern reactors. Unfortunately, we are forced to keep running these older designs because:
A) The public still wants to continue to live in a civilization with a standard of living similar to before while population increases, B) The public didn't want new nuclear plants built. Which would have allowed older plants to be retired.
C) The fuel rods at Fukushima should have been shipped to a long term storage facility scheduled for the U.S. but it was never built.
D) Chernobyl is a special case. Read the detailed report. The operators did the equivalent of taking a pressure cooker on a stove and filling it up with loads of water and then shoving it onto the exhaust of a jet engine.
So it's really that simple. Solar and Wind are all well and good, but they will not support the current level of civilization we enjoy. They may someday, and the use of them is not bad, but they simply wont cut it right now without deploying a huge number of them all over the place.
So if you want to keep your current standard of living, you need reliable base-load energy, and that energy needs to come from somewhere. Nuclear provides lots of energy and if you do the research you will find has actually - even accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima included killed and harmed less people than fossil fuels. You may soon find more people die falling from wind turbines than Nuclear has killed.
So choose what you want. You may decide that you do want to live in a technological civilization that needs energy, but you don't want nuclear. Just don't be surprised if when you take a cold hard look at the numbers, you discover you actually made things worse by building huge wind farms and solar plants, and that your level of civilization collapses somewhat due to the costs.
So to sum up this thread, and how Slashdot is broken in general. "Bill Gates is right!" "I agree." "You're right and I agree with you." "Everybody above is right and I agree with them." Even though the Bonneville Power administration was running 100% with renewables already (without even using microhydro, solar thermal, or tidal), and is making money at it, it's important to notice that Slashdot's mod system says this can't be done.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Why are you disposing of most of that waste? That is still perfectly good fuel for a slightly different reactor... If you use and reuse the fuel it becomes significantly less dangerous. You don't have to use just Uranium/Plutonium to power a reactor you know...
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
The part of his comment that I think is most significant is his comment on energy strategy, at least in the US. Our long-term strategic energy policy makes no sense; government subsidies are going to the wrong technologies and partisan politics inhibit any real solutions. You may disagree on which tech is the right one - but everyone should agree with Gates that we have no viable current plans for the long-term energy needs of this country.
I think he has a lot more field-specific knowledge about business, and particularly technology business, than he has about PCs, though not through formal education.
He also has some field specific knowledge about public policy for much the same reason, though not as much as about any of those other areas.
A Ph.D. in science, math, or engineering qualifies you as an expert in any area of policy about as much as a Ph.D. in Public Policy and/or Administration qualifies you as an expert in science, math, or engineering.
Though, again, academic credentials aren't the only source or indicator of expertise.
There are plenty of people terrified of nuclear power executives, cutting corners on design, maintence, staffing, and most especially corrosion prevention and a scientifically valid and permanent EOL date.