Bill Gates To Help China Build Traveling Wave Nuclear Reactor

First time accepted submitter BabaChazz writes "Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates says he is in discussions with China to jointly develop a new kind of nuclear reactor. During a talk at China's Ministry of Science & Technology Wednesday, the billionaire said: 'The idea is to be very low cost, very safe and generate very little waste.' Gates backs Washington-based TerraPower, which is developing a nuclear reactor that can run on depleted uranium."

Comments

Too bad

[wmbetts]

Too bad he's prohibited from doing something like this in the US. If it weren't for ill-rational fears of nuclear power the R&D would be done in the US.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad he's prohibited from doing something like this in the US. If it weren't for ill-rational fears of nuclear power the R&D would be done in the US.

Well, the trick is that if another country does it cheaply enough, the rest of the world *has* to follow.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be done cheaply enough in the U.S. RIGHT NOW. The problem is NIMBY and anti-nuclear activist groups have literally made it impossible.

Re:Too bad

[mug funky]

except when someone develops a safer, cleaner method of boiling water that burns through most of the "pollution" (actually viable fuel) created by the last 3 generations of the technology.

just because it's not the best now, doesn't mean it can't (in fact SHOULD) be made better, if only we were allowed to learn from past mistakes, rather than running those mistakes well beyond their designed lifetimes.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

All the more reason I hope Bill can get a couple of these running in China - Show that it can be done and done pretty safely.
 

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it irrational? Ever heard of Fukushima? Go back and follow the timeline of events. At *every* stage of the disaster experts were reassuring the public that according well accepted nuclear community engineering standards--which the plant adhere too--the next event in the timeline wouldn't happen. It became almost comical after awhile. The news about Fukushima continues to get worse to this day.

No. It's very rational to fear nuclear power, just like it's rational to fear driving on a highway. Coal plants might spew out more radiation, but they're an extremely simple, stable, and well-known quantity. You can probably predict with a high degree of accuracy exactly how many people will die of cancer from a coal plant. But nuclear plants very clearly have many unknown and unpredictable characteristics. Nuclear engineers earned a giant *FAIL* on Fukushima.

I'm still very pro-nuclear. But after Fukushima nuclear engineers really should learn some humility, as well as nuclear fan boys.

Re:Too bad

[bemymonkey]

Since when does autocorrect create non-existent words?

And the L and - keys are pretty far from R... o.O

Re:Too bad

[Billly Gates]

Except in the US businessmen are cheap and have more interest in cutting costs than following safety rules. Fukashima had the same attitude of costs and could have avoided the meltdown. I would feel better if governments ran them rather than for profit deregulated corporations who have brainwashed the populace that anything else is evil socialism.

Re:Too bad

[rasmusbr]

Ill-rational? Oh dear. Leave science ( and written communication ) to those capable of said tasks.

There is nothing irrational about being against the most dangerous, polluting and expensive method of boiling water ever conceived.

Hear, hear.

Coal* mining and burning has to stop. It's deadly and dirty.

The fastest way of displacing coal at present is to build natural gas plants and wind turbines, so that should be our current industrial focus. Solar will play an increasingly important role as solar technology gets cheaper and more effective.

But none of these come close to nuclear in terms of safety and environmental performance. It's hard to beat the inherent power of E = mc^2. Gas emits CO2. Solar and wind rely on the mining of huge amounts of toxic materials, much of which will have to be deposited in underground storages unless we develop ways of recycling it. (Does that sound familiar?) Nuclear is both cleaner and safer because it relies on mining of small amounts of toxic material.

If we could develop a nuclear reactor that could be produced on production lines in factories and shipped out to the customers in shipping containers nuclear could not only be the cleanest and safest alternative, but also the cheapest.

*You meant coal, right?

Re:Too bad

[Mashiki]

Apparently you've never lived in Japan. If you did, then you'd know the anti-nuke hysteria that goes on when a company tries to build a replacement plant for aging tech.

Re:Too bad

[Anthony Mouse]

You can probably predict with a high degree of accuracy exactly how many people will die of cancer from a coal plant. But nuclear plants very clearly have many unknown and unpredictable characteristics.

You're doing it wrong. First of all, you can get a pretty damn good estimate of the likelihood of a major nuclear incident by dividing the world-wide number of operating hours of all nuclear plants by the number of major incidents. It isn't predictability that's the problem, it's the scope of the damage that occurs when something does go wrong.

But that isn't even a problem either -- it just sounds a lot scarier. People are irrationally afraid of things that are very rare but when they occur are very bad. It's like movie plot terrorist threats: Hardly anybody is killed by terrorists, but we spend trillions of dollars trying to reduce the amount of terrorism with unnecessary wars and security theater.

Do the math. Something which is fifty times as bad but occurs ten thousand times less often is a Good Thing. (I mean honestly, go visit an abandoned coal mine once. Then tell me the damn Superfund sites they leave behind aren't each individually worse than Chernobyl.)

Re:Too bad

[msclrhd]

Fukushima happened because:
1. it was a 30 year old plant 1 month away from being decommissioned;
2. it was hit by an unprecedented earthquake that damaged the walls of the plant -- immediately after which the plant was shut down (the fuel rods removed);
3. it was then hit by an unprecedented tsunami and is close to the sea -- this knocked out the diesel power generators and flooded the plant.

It was an extremely unlucky sequence of events -- the reactor was designed to withstand something like a magnitude 7 earthquake (and was hit with a magnitude 9 one), and survive a 7 ft tsunami (but was hit by a 10 ft one).

During the incident, the people at the plant worked selflessly and continually to help prevent the incident from escalating further, often putting themselves in danger due to the amount of radiation they were taking.

We can look back on this with hindsight and improve things, but what could they have done better with the reactor they had and the knowledge they had when it was built and even a year before the incident? Yes, there are now better and safer reactor designs, but they were not available 30 years ago.

Re:Too bad

[alci63]

Making several square miles of land unfriendly to human life for several decades (centuries...) in case of problem is not what I would call a cheap method. Having to handle dangerous wastes for thousands of years seems like a dangerous bet... might not be so cheap...

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not pay attention to the Chinese train crash? The Chinese government is just as bad as western business for cutting corners.

Re:Too bad

[Joce640k]

Thing is... there are SAFE reactor designs.

No, really. The fact that everybody is still using those old 1950s reactors is ludicrous.

Re:Too bad

[sFurbo]

Yes, you are right, coal mining and burning coal should be forbidden. Wait, what were you talking about?

Re:Too bad

[BlueParrot]

I would feel better if governments ran them

You mean like Chernobyl?

The problem is lack of effective regulations and oversight. Making something government owned doesn't stop that. You need the people who inspect the stuff to be independent from those who profit from it. If the government wasn't full of industry lobbyists then private run - government inspected , would probably do the job pretty well.

Re:Too bad

[angel'o'sphere]

If you want to educate people with "facts" you should get your facts right:

1. it was a 30 year old plant 1 month away from being decommissioned;

The site had 6 reactors, only the three oldest ones where planned to be decommissioned. Also switching the reactors of would not have helped the stored fuel there ... so I don't get your point.

2. it was hit by an unprecedented earthquake that damaged the walls of the plant -- immediately after which the plant was shut down (the fuel rods removed);

The earth quake was 450km away! So the plant was certainly not hit by a magnitude 9 "shake".

3. it was then hit by an unprecedented tsunami and is close to the sea -- this knocked out the diesel power generators and flooded the plant.

Neither the tsunami nor the quake was unprecedented. Japan was hit by similar and even worth tsunamis in history often enough.

It was an extremely unlucky sequence of events -- the reactor was designed to withstand something like a magnitude 7 earthquake (and was hit with a magnitude 9 one), and survive a 7 ft tsunami (but was hit by a 10 ft one).

You know the difference between yards/meters and ft? The tsunami wave was over 14m high. Not 10 ft wich is roughly 3 yards or 3 meters.

Yes, there are now better and safer reactor designs, but they were not available 30 years ago.

How hard can it be to have some mobile power generators available and palce them at the plant in case of emergency? That has nothing to do with "reactor design". Putting the diesel engines in a water tight envirnoment is not that hard either. Or simply making a damm like wall around the plant which is high enough ...

Re:Too bad

[AmiMoJo]

Why you write off as hysteria is actually just people's legitimate concerns. In a country where everything has to be earthquake and tsunami proof and yet occasionally people still get hurt or killed the pragmatic view is that accidents will happen, no matter how hard to try to prevent them. People simply do not believe that you can build a completely safe nuclear power industry where not on the reactor but all the support services like fuel refinement and waste disposal are immune to natural disaster or human error.

The question then is do we accept that risk and build new nuclear plants anyway? You can accuse people of NIMBYism but having seen what happened to people living around Fukushima I think you have to admit that the potential for having your life ruined is not something people can ignore. Of course it doesn't just affect people living near the plant, it has affected the whole country and if it had been much worse it could have reached other countries too, like Chernobyl did.

Japan is fortunate in that it has enough natural resources to replace nuclear with renewables now. It won't happen over night but then again neither will developing new metldown-proof thorium reactors. Given the choice people prefer the safe and clean option.

On top of that there is also some general anti-nuclear sentiment because of the two atomic bombs that the US dropped, but it isn't as simple as you think. North Korea almost certainly has nuclear weapons now, as does China. Japan could probably build one in a few months but doesn't because it would just escalate the situation, but some politicians have been advocating more military build-up so naturally there is opposition.

Re:Too bad

[AmiMoJo]

So the 20 odd years that people have been blocking to shut down the old BWR's to replace them is hysteria?

Wipe the foam away from your mouth and listen to what they are telling you. They did not block the shut down of existing reactors, in fact they wanted it. They are anti-nuclear, so obviously they want to close nuclear reactors. Are you really so stupid you can't understand that?

And yes, there are alternatives that are not nuclear or coal. Again, you seem to have missed that part.

Before you accuse people of hysteria you should at least try to understand their rather simple message.

You might find it funny, but there's been an on-going series on mainichi(read japanese, or use a translator) about the problems and screw ups over the reactors and how environmentalism is as much as fault as the government.

Care to link to the actual thread? Anyway, just because there are others like you who don't listen proves nothing.

Not a chance, it's not feasible. TUoS, did a report on it not much than 4mo after people started clamoring to shut down all of their nuke plants. If they did, they'd need to come up with another 60% of their power from no where.

Well that is clearly bullshit because nuclear accounts for less than 20% of power in Japan and currently 80% of reactors are offline.

Actually, this is good news.

[Ramin_HAL9001]

China is one of the largest CO2 polluters in the world. Traveling wave reactors are known to be incredibly clean and safe. If you give the Chinese abundant safe and clean energy, this is going to really help the global warming problem.

The reason traveling wave reactors were never used, even though the technology has been know for half a century, is that they produce no waste that is useful to making nuclear weapons. That is only reason why all nuclear power nations wanted the more dangerous reactors that ran on uranium and plutonium fission.

But modernizing the safer, non-weaponizable form of nuclear power is a great way to go.

Re:Actually, this is good news.

[c0lo]

Bad news for the Australian Coal industry.
But hey, if we are going to export Uranium to India, why not China too...

What, China doesn't need steel anymore?

Re:Actually, this is good news.

[alendit]

While I agree with everything else, I am not sure, why everyone has always to mention absolute numbers to China's CO2 production. China ist also the most populous county in the world. And the its CO2 emission per capita for 2008 is on par with Sweden or Israel and less than third of the US one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita).

Unless one argues that the Chinese people are less valuable than the US citizens (you can't even tell them from one another!), I don't see, how one can critisise China without being a hypocrite. That goes not only to the US, Germany, France and half of the developed world in worse in that regard.

Of course, if China was to provide an equal living standard to every citizen, the situation would be entirely different. And you can surely use some metric like CO2-emission/GDP, where China would look quite terrible and make a valid argument about their efficiency. But right now, China as a whole is more CO2-free than most of the developed countries.

Re:Actually, this is good news.

[bluemonq]

It's because all the expertise was in enriched uranium reactors, and the same reason why American companies used slightly enriched uranium plants for it: it's cheaper to improve on a current process than to throw it out and start from scratch. Sure, there's diminishing returns, but why bother with something new when in the current situation where the public is afraid of anything nuclear? But when you're in a country where public opinion is less of a problem and you have a large budget surplus, you're freer to mess around.

I'm not sure what analogy there is in GP's comment.

Re:Actually, this is good news.

[mug funky]

wasn't criticism. was a statement that lots of CO2 comes from China, and reducing that is a good thing.

reducing it anywhere is a good thing. it's not a race or culture statement, just a numbers game.

Re:Actually, this is good news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Canada in the process of pulling out of the Kyoto protocol, while the EU is still preparing for stricter limits? Canada may claim to have higher regard for the environment, but actions are more important than words here.

Re:Older than "clean coal" or Roswell Aliens

[unkiereamus]

In Japan they no longer have the honor they once had in their leadership so the responsible ones do not kill themselves anymore

I call bullshit.

Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that suicide is the honorable response to a fuck-up?

The fuck it is. The honorable response to a fuck-up is devoting your life to cleaning it up, until either you fix it or you die of natural causes.

Suicide is a coward's way out, it passes the problem to the next guy and somehow through the power of death magically absolves you of your sin.

Re:Makes sense

[bloodhawk]

This sort of tech has been pushed and rejected by most of the western world due to fear mongering and morons that can only think of japan or chernobyl when they hear the phrase nuclear power. Sadly China get a jump to clean and safe energy because the rest of the world panda to the irrational morons in society, on the whole though at least this reduces the worlds Coal burning.

Re:Older than "clean coal" or Roswell Aliens

[dave420]

Suicide is not a coward's way out. Yes, it passes the buck, but what needs to happen in someone's head which allows them to go against every instinct every living thing has had for billions of years - survival - has to be pretty god-damned tough to go through.

Don't judge until you try it yourself.

Re:Blue Screen of Nuclear Death ?

[Joce640k]

Joking aside, If Bill can manage to kickstart this it might be the greatest thing anybody ever did for humanity. Future generations will look back on this as The Turning Point.

(assuming that it works anywhere near as well as it works on paper)

Re:Blue Screen of Nuclear Death ?

[Vectormatic]

Adding "Microsoft" to already crazy picture doesn't improve things either.

This is Bill Gates as a private person backing a company which does new nuclear stuff, dragging microsoft into this makes no sense at all.

Give me the list

[ThatsNotPudding]

of actual decommissioned nuclear power plants. If such a list exists, it would be microscopic in comparison to the list of aging plants given a rubber stamp extension on life just so the owners never have to foot the bill or more accurately not until they bailout with their golden parachutes. This may be more of a US problem, given that corporations are firmly in control of government.

Re:Blue Screen of Nuclear Death ?

[whargoul]

Steve Jobs at least had to die before people were making comments like that about him.

No he didn't. Apple fan-boys have been bowing down to him like he was the next Messiah or Obama for years.

Re:Blue Screen of Nuclear Death ?

[AmigaMMC]

That's because Bill Gates DID great things for humanity. He has given over a billion dollars to humanitarian causes including organizations to help children with HIV/AIDS. Sorry guys, I'm out of the hate game. The days when I thought Bill Gates was evil are long gone.

Re:Blue Screen of Nuclear Death ?

[Shotgun]

How did Bill get all that money to donate? Sorry, but I was there, reading the bogus warning messages that Windows produced to scare people off of DR_DOS. I compared the DR_DOS and MS_DOS 6, and wept as per processor licensing choke the better product out of the market.

Re:Blue Screen of Nuclear Death ?

[nukenerd]

Yes, but what else does a guy do with more money than is physically possible to spend on himself? A billion dollars is only 2% of his wealth and he remains the second richest guy in the world [www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires] - I would be impressed only if he gave away money such as to leave himself no better off than the average US citizen. Did you ever hear the Bible story of the widow's mite?

And how did he get that money he is being so generous with? By shady and sometimes downright illegal business practices. First thing he should do if he has a guilty conscience would be to re-imburse the customers and companies at some of what his company has ripped off them over the years. He cannot give back Microsoft money, but he could at least return some of his portion; then let them decide if they want to give any to charity, and if so to a charity of their own choice, not Gates' choice.

He is following the likes of Carnegie, Rockefeller and Nobel - when they retired from their unsavoury business lives they also panicked about how history would remember them, so they threw some of their excess money around too.