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Trump's Tech Battle With China Roils Bill Gates Nuclear Venture (wsj.com)
Add Bill Gates to the list of executives whose businesses have been ensnared by the Trump administration's battle with China over technology and trade. From a report: The tech tycoon and philanthropist said in an essay posted late last week that a nuclear-energy project in China by a company he co-founded called TerraPower LLC is now unlikely to proceed because of recent changes in U.S. policy toward China [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. That leaves TerraPower, which had been working on the China project for more than three years, scrambling for a new partner and uncertain where it might be able to run a pilot of the nuclear reactor it has been developing, according to company officials.
Mr. Gates, TerraPower's chairman, helped start and fund the Bellevue, Wash., company, which incorporated in 2008, in a long-term bid to make nuclear reactors smaller, less expensive and safer than current nuclear energy sources. The company has been developing something called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses depleted uranium as fuel, something that TerraPower says can improve safety and reduce costs. Regulatory restrictions and limited federal funding made building the facility in the U.S. difficult and led TerraPower to look for partners abroad, Chief Executive Chris Levesque said in an interview.
Mr. Gates, TerraPower's chairman, helped start and fund the Bellevue, Wash., company, which incorporated in 2008, in a long-term bid to make nuclear reactors smaller, less expensive and safer than current nuclear energy sources. The company has been developing something called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses depleted uranium as fuel, something that TerraPower says can improve safety and reduce costs. Regulatory restrictions and limited federal funding made building the facility in the U.S. difficult and led TerraPower to look for partners abroad, Chief Executive Chris Levesque said in an interview.
Negroes with swollen purple lips like slices of raw liver and huge pig nostrils squashed across their inky face.
It's not far from Seattle. Much easier to get to than China.
Thanks, Poverty Party, for running him as your president!
we don't need nuclear power now, the tech has evolved enough for smarter alternatives.
The breeding of U-238 is exactly what you do when you make a modern bomb and PUREX (how you separate out the Pu-239 from the Uranium) isn't exactly a secret process as it was developed 70 years ago. It seems safer to just use 50% enriched Uranium (which still require enrichment) and make less waste or ever better use a Th-U fuel cycle as no Pu-239 is produced in that fuel cycle. Anti-proliferation folks often come from foreign policy or military backgrounds and often don't have the science background to understand all the subtleties of nuclear power. So they choose the "more power" approach and often force civilian operations to run in a far more nasty and waste producing way in an effort to ensure nobody ever reprocesses the waste to make a bomb. This is classic risk telescoping as the pollution from the waste is far more likely to endanger lives than this fantasy that couldn't even happen in a movie because the audience wouldn't buy it.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Given how the chinese treat IP; isn't this a favor?
Basically they'd build the reactor in china, and within 2 weeks the plans and technical details would be 'appropriated' by the Chinese government.
Basically all that R&D wasted. Just because they aren't shooting at us (yet) doesn't make them an ally, or even a remotely-friendly country.
Who uses the word roil?
It's fundametally dangerous to transfer tech to an evil totalitarian coomunist regime that has a dictator-for-life and is trying to spread its influence globally.
These CEOs of western tech companies who have been giving China high tech as part of a trade for Chinese slave labor have been setting all the pieces in place that may eventually lead to another World War, just as businessmen both technology and materials with Japan and Germany prior to WWII provided those nations with what they needed to assert their expansionist dreams. The people who pay the price for this borderline treasonous behavior will be the middle class western workers who lost their jobs to the Chinese laborers, or the keds of the workers who paid the price.
Bill Gates got rich in America, selling products to Americans. If he had a shred of decency and loaylty, he would do his research in America with American workers.
Incidentally, if he had arisen in Canada or the UK, then I would say he should be doing his work there using those workers; my concern here is the safety and security of western civ versus fuelling the expansion of China's current evil (as opposed to a pure 'Murica! play).
I'm tired of hearing about how poor Bill Gates isn't getting his way.
first, not enough h1b visas
then, he wants africa to learn from china
then he didn't manage to wipe out polio
now his china stuff is messed up.
boo hoo for bill.
I guess it's back to coal for us. Trumpians like coal.
Before Trump: Slashdot and Media: We're worried about China, they don't play fair , steal our tech, and they have horrible human rights and they destroy our jobs in exchange for cheap trinkets. We should restrict ties with them. After Trump: Slashdot and Media: I LOVE CHINA: UNLIMITED OPENNESS OF ALL OUR SECRETS AND EXCHANGE OF EVERYTHING 4EVA!
"Regulatory restrictions and limited federal funding made building the facility in the U.S. difficult and led TerraPower to look for partners abroad."
Sounds like he's not allowed (cost or safety) to develop this tech in the US. Why not?
Safe enough to sell abroad? Why can't we do tech dev of new tech in the US? Regulation limited.
Safe enough to sell to the masses, but must go to non-regulated Chinese Govt who has very little care for environmental regs....
So, who's right on regs? Gates or Trump?
Kind of sinister to develop tech which is not safe enough (or cost prohibitive) via US regs to sell to the masses?
Or are we over regulated?
Funny way to describe it.
I always think about the civil war in the US.
The south lost because it had little in the way of factories, compared to the north.
Now that weâ(TM)ve outsourced what seems like the majority of our production to China, saying itâ(TM)s trumps battle seems a little late
It's called a CANDU reactor Bill. Yah dumb fuck.
The Clintons surely wouldn't leave a major donor hung out like that. Especially when the thought of more suitcases full of cash got dangled in front of them. I'm sure Hill has Bill on the phone already.
The issue isn't as much regulation (which allows nuclear power) as anti-science, ignorant, anti-nuclear NIMBYs. Basically anti-vaxxers protesting against a form of energy they know nothing about.
Why the fuck is US tech going to benefit China?
-Styopa
... and fuck this whiny faggot Jarwulf for pretending Americans can't see Russia's collusion and China's IP theft as separate issues that both deserve condemnation, like Trump's treason or lying or fraud. Traitors hang, faggot.
And someone needed a PC excuse to cut and run. Good business acumen. Laughs about it over drinks later. Amazing how many here don't have a clue how the world works for real. Downvoting begins now.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
And that part of the summary is the real issue. It just doesn't fit the anti-Trump narrative the submitter wanted to highlight. Trump's China policy is not new. Many, even liberals, have called for similar policy in years past. The Trump hysterics mean that anything that Trump supports, no matter what the origin and who used to agree with it, must be evil and horrible for humanity. The Left has lost all common sense and credibility because they refuse to ever agree with a single thing from him. It's impossible to reach any compromise or consensus when it's always "no" regardless. It just polarizes everyone in the country further and further apart, creating divisions and sowing discord. Oddly enough, exactly what adversaries such as Russia want to happen. A divided nation is a weak adversary.
The fact that this technology could not be researched and developed in the US because of over regulation and fear mongering environmentalists is the issue. We need to be able to develop better energy sources. Ones that are reliable and don't depend on nature's ebbs and flows. There's also the issue of rare earth metals that do not exist in sufficient quantity to go fully solar and wind. And even if they did, the mining techniques to extract them would soon get the ire of the same environmentalists that want nothing but solar and wind.
Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear, funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.
For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear.
The last thing the United States needs to be doing is supplying China with any type of Nuclear help.
Three baby-mamas, doesn't pay his bills and loves KFC. I think the white supremacist Trump supporters may be missing the obvious here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear, funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.
For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear.
Exactly. Also the Sierra Club took funding from Natural Gas CEOs
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Dupe from a couple days ago:
As China Option Fades, Bill Gates Urges US To Take the Lead in Nuclear Power, For the Good of the Planet
Better known as 318230.
He stole from America and gave to the communists. F'ing traitor.
Who is better?
a) An anti nuclear nimby who nows nothing about it
b) A pro nuclear idiot who knows nothing about it
???
Both vote. Some guys in the b) bracket even get hired ... and there is the problem.
From a risk management point of view: b) is the bigger risk.
Obviously there are two other groups: ... if you would not write so much nonsense about nuclear, I perhaps had put you here)
c) Anti nuclear protagonists who actually know their stuff, like Merkel
d) Pro nuclear protagonists who know their stuff (don't know/remember one in that bracket
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They were less than 10% in 2016, I don't think we've more than tripled our generation in California. And yes, I live in California. For the US, it's closer to 5%, not 18%.
The GP and you are confusing two different numbers. The GP is talking about total deployment. You are taking about how much power was actually produced. Which illustrates a great point. A 200MW wind farm doesn't equal a 200MW reactor. Solar and wind load factors are in the single digit percents. Nuclear's is north of 90%. So our 5% deployed nuclear generates 9% of our energy, but 18% of deployed renewables generates 5% of the power. Either way the real problem is the batteries needed to handle renewable deployments of more than about 20% energy generation. Without those batteries, its nuclear or natural gas.
Load factors for Wind, Solar and Hydro in the UK in 2017 according to the Digest of UK Energy Statistics published by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
Onshore wind: 28.0%
Solar photovoltaics: 10.7%
Offshore wind: 38.9%
Hydro: 36.5%
The load factor for UK nuclear plants hovered betweeen 65 and 77% and onshore wind in particular beats UK Nuclear on energy prices quite handily, onshore wind even managed to beat Combined Cycle Gas Turbines.
Now please start talking about 'breeder reactors' I have some choice quotes from the US navy and some scientific publications on those things.
In the world of globalization, we can't these nations which are also the 2 top economies in the world stop their trade war. As it impacts the economy of whole world instantly.
The state is recovering from a multibillion dollar mistake from a mismanaged nuclear project. Perfect opportunity to step in.
Who is better? a) An anti nuclear nimby who nows nothing about it b) A pro nuclear idiot who knows nothing about it ???
Both vote. Some guys in the b) bracket even get hired ... and there is the problem.
From a risk management point of view: b) is the bigger risk.
Obviously there are two other groups: c) Anti nuclear protagonists who actually know their stuff, like Merkel d) Pro nuclear protagonists who know their stuff (don't know/remember one in that bracket ... if you would not write so much nonsense about nuclear, I perhaps had put you here)
Nice false dichotomy there. I would rather decisions on nuclear power be made by those that understand nuclear power. Since those folks are overwhelmingly pro-nuclear that pretty much says it all.
And Merkel doesn't qualify given the fact that both Germany's energy prices and CO2 outputs have rocketed up under her direction. Her closing of the nuclear plants will probably (indirectly) result in ending her political career. Artificially raising energy prices has all sorts of negative unintended consequences.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Anything that makes Billy upset is good
Trump is like the Blob. A menace that grows and destroys until we destroy it. I think they froze it to death in the movie, not a bad approach.
The 'Gina thing is a puzzle though. Trump loves him some Russian dictators, Saudi Arabian dictators, North Korean dictators, Philippine dictators, and so on. Why doesn't he love the Chinese dictator? Seriously, what did Xi ever do to get on the naughty list? Did Xi fail to send a fawning birthday card? I know, he didn't poison a dissident, in a foreign country. He didn't support death squads either.
Well, know we know the price of Trump's love. You gotta kill someone with morals and a backbone. Perhaps Trump is looking for these in the bodies of the deceased, to give himself an implant?
CO2 is on a downward trend in Germany (at a much smaller per capita level than the US):
https://knoema.com/atlas/Germa...
For 2017 to 2018 CO2 emissions decreased by 6%. https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...
Electricity prices also didn't really increase it seems:
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...
Of course, residential electricity price are rather high.
https://www.statista.com/stati...
But the renewable surchagre is onlyl part of this:
https://1-stromvergleich.com/p...
It will go down in the future as it is mainly for old installations whose garantueed feed-in tariff will run out sooner or later while the cost of new wind and solar is much lower now. It is also important to understand that is was an intentional political decision to support renewables by a feed-in tariff which is paid directly from electricity prices. Coal and nuclear also got (and still get) a substantial amount subsidies but those are hidden in general taxes. Still, the high electricity price is a problem because it hits the poor, but one has to keep in mind that German households also consume much less electricity (due to better efficiency) than US households, so the overall energy bill is not as high as one might expect. Also the percentage of households who have trouble paying their electricity bills is still smaller than most of the rest of europe and certainly much smaller than in the US.
Finally, the exit from nuclear power had wide support in the German population:
https://www.unendlich-viel-ene...
Having said all this, shutting down nuclear plants first instead of coal plans was clearly a mistake.
Same reason why "Soros" is in every Republican made conspiracy theory. You thought you just had an original thought, didn't ya?
CO2 did not increase under Merkel. You must be an idiot. Percentage wise, Germany is the leader in CO2 reduction world wide.
Obviously you don't know that Dr. rer. nat. Angela Merkel has a PhD in Pyhsics, idiot!
Artificially raising energy prices has all sorts of negative unintended consequences. ... no idea under what rock you live.
Energy prices rose around 2000 or something. Since then they are more or less stable and since about 3 years decreasing
Then again: energy prices, as in ELECTRICITY are completely irrelevant for a german household, as we use not much energy. Half of the energy price already is grid costs. Grid costs don't change much, regardless how you create power. And what you forget: 75% of the energy price are taxes on CO2 and VAT.
I would rather decisions on nuclear power be made by those that understand nuclear power.
Obviously. But the problem is: you believe you understand it, and hence want to be involved in the decisions. However your previous dozen posts about e.g. enriched and depleted uranium and breeding etc. p.p. show: you have no clue. So? How can we prevent people who have no clue from voting? Obviously we can't. Who will decide who has a clue and who has not? Only PhD's are allowed to decide about stuff of a certain level of severity? Who decides that level?
Your fake knowledge is based on a few bloomberg articles .... why don't you ask how much a typical german actually pays for electricity instead of waving the (wrong) 28cent number around? (I pay about â50/$60, actually a bit less - to lazy to give the correct $ value)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.