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Bill Gates Promises Congress $1 Billion To Build Nuclear Reactors For Fighting Climate Change (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
Bill Gates thinks he has a key part of the answer for combating climate change: a return to nuclear power... Gates, who founded TerraPower in 2006, is telling lawmakers that he personally would invest $1 billion and raise $1 billion more in private capital to go along with federal funds for a pilot of his company's never-before-used technology, according to congressional staffers. "Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that's available 24 hours a day," Gates said in his year-end public letter. "The problems with today's reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation."
Gates's latest push comes at an important turn in climate politics. Nuclear power has united both unpopular industry executives and a growing number of people -- including some prominent Democrats -- alarmed about climate change. But many nuclear experts say that Gates's company is pursuing a flawed technology and that any new nuclear design is likely to come at a prohibitive economic cost and take decades to perfect, market and construct in any significant numbers... Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said TerraPower is one of many companies that is raising the public's hopes for advanced nuclear reactor designs even though they're still on the drawing boards and will remain unable to combat climate change for many years.
Jonah Goldman, of Gates Ventures, stressed to The Post that Gates was not advocating for TerraPower alone, according to GeekWire.
"Gates thinks the U.S. has 'the best minds, the best lab systems and entrepreneurs willing to take risk,' Goldman told the newspaper. 'But what we don't have is a commitment on Congress' part.'"
Gates's latest push comes at an important turn in climate politics. Nuclear power has united both unpopular industry executives and a growing number of people -- including some prominent Democrats -- alarmed about climate change. But many nuclear experts say that Gates's company is pursuing a flawed technology and that any new nuclear design is likely to come at a prohibitive economic cost and take decades to perfect, market and construct in any significant numbers... Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said TerraPower is one of many companies that is raising the public's hopes for advanced nuclear reactor designs even though they're still on the drawing boards and will remain unable to combat climate change for many years.
Jonah Goldman, of Gates Ventures, stressed to The Post that Gates was not advocating for TerraPower alone, according to GeekWire.
"Gates thinks the U.S. has 'the best minds, the best lab systems and entrepreneurs willing to take risk,' Goldman told the newspaper. 'But what we don't have is a commitment on Congress' part.'"
"Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that's available 24 hours a day,"
Geothermal would also meet this criteria.
The cheaper we can get energy, the better and cooler things we can do. If we can get energy cheap enough, then we can affordably transmute lead into gold. How cool is that?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As usual. These new modular reactor designs need more time than money to perfect.
There is already existing nuclear technology that is relatively cheap per kWh generated. It is just that it typically has large upfront costs.
1 To get a temporary waste repository in place. Note I don't say long term because what we call waste will be very very valuable, it's all transmuted isotopes most of which don't occur in nature.
2. Get the NRC out of the way and have them actually trim down and simplify the regulation of power plants.
3. Streamline the licensing so new plants can actually get built.
Spending money on new designs or upgrading and standardizing current design, would be great as well. Imagine if we had a national standard design that could be quickly deployed and licensed without endless approvals needed.
For once though I feel sorry for Mr. Gates, he is going to find just how much joy dealing with the idiocy environmentalism and the off grid hippies have injected into our society.
It seems to me that human management is not reliable enough to assure that there won't be disastrous consequences with nuclear plants.
And... Is Bill Gates working to make more money? We could all send him a dollar.
If $1billion built a 1gigawatt plant (pretty sure it's not usually that rosy), that'd be $1/watt. Didn't photovoltaic pass the $1/watt threshold a few years ago? Solar panels are scaleable and mass-produced, whereas nuclear requires years of building before you get the first watt of power. Might photovoltaic + energy storage be cheaper than nuclear?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Why nuclear when we already have a super huge fusion reactor blasting its energy onto us.
Sounds like Gates has money to burn. This is why we need a wealth tax.
$90+ billion that we could be using to solve real problems, but it is in the hands of a dumb old white guy.
10-12 year payback for a Tesla solar installation with 20 year guaranteed lifespan.
Solar is negative cost.
How's mosquito killer doing Gates? Zapping them with lasers?
The thing that is missing in the debate is the math. A recent article in the WSJ does the math very carefully, and concludes that nuclear is the ONLY feasible option.
The fact that nuclear has become a bogey-man is sad but irrelevant. There are only three choices: nuclear, MUCH less energy use, or burn the planet.
n/t
So his opinion appears to better than everyone else's simply because he's rich.
I'd rather have a new reactor than keep using hunks of junk built in the 1970's though. If Gates wants to pay for them I say let him.
He has enough money to prove that it works before pitching it to the public. Do your homework, come back when you have a working product, Bill. Another way to put this: Nuclear is so complicated, risky and expensive that even Bill Gates wants the government to pay for it.
...they say.
The oldest Reactor in Swirzerland, Beznau 1, turns 60 this year. So we already had 60 years to come up with a better reactor design.
Even if we assume nobody worked on the concept since Tchernobyl, which I highly doubt, in 1986, that gives uns 1. 5 decades of further innovation.
Not to mention block 3 in Tchernobyl was in operation until the year 2000... Considering there are still people living around reactor block 4 despite the catastrophe... And considering that you almost exclusively get a higher risk in ver treatable thyroid cancer and almost nobody died as a direct result to either Tchernobyl or Fukushima (vs thousands that died due to the panicked evacuations), I think it's about time to revisit the topic and see where we actually stand. You know with facts and stuff. Environmentalists keep sounding like they're parrotting very used propaganda at this point.
I keep hearing building those things would take decades but Beznau 1 was built in 4 years. That brings me to reason any delays beyond that must be man made.
Big mirrors focused on (steam) generators, then microwave the energy to ground stations. It's scalable, there's no shortage of room in orbit. And no environmental issues.
It even gives us a reason to be in space.
Expensive, And hard. A lot of things worth doing are expensive and hard. The survival of the human species might just be worth it. Maybe.
Seems like a Win-Win to me.
$1 billion pays for the planning permit and the gate house, maybe. Rich people are not in the habit of paying for expensive risks. Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. Bill Gates isn't a good enough programmer to be rich. He's good at making other people give him money.
Nuclear plants have an average capacity factor of of 0.90. That is, after you take into account downtime due to maintenance, refueling, testing, etc, a 1 GW plant will over a year produce an average of 900 MW.
PV solar has an average capacity factor of 0.145 in the U.S. for fixed installations. That is, after you account for night, weather, movement of the sun, dirt accumulating on the panels, maintenance, etc, 1000 Watts of PV panels will over a year produce an average of 145 Watts.
So
Gates should be able to build a nuclear facility for far less than the government could. Unlike the government, he can build a project management team and skip the entire government tender process which lets companies like Honeywell and Lockheed bid on contracts while intentionally undercutting each other knowing they donâ(TM)t have to build anything, just win the bid.
Gates, if given the go-ahead could probably streamline manufacturing of nuclear facilities to 1/10th or less than what the government would pay before simply declaring the project a failure.
In addition, he could productize them and reduce them to Ikea style flat pack like delivery to developing countries as alternatives to coal. I wonder if he could make a full, modern reactor for a price of $100million installed with training.
When you eliminate the profit mongerering from the equation, it could actually happen
Yes..i mean it. As long as humans shit, there is methane. Use it.
Gates just can't bring himself to eat the bullshit salad being served up by activists. His solution is realistic and solves the problem, but that's not what they want now is it. No they want a revolution and climate change is just a scam.
Nuclear is the safest power source man has ever invented. Even with the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, it has killed fewer people per TWh generated than any other power source.
What's going on is that people are really bad at appraising big but rare risks. Their mind focuses on the magnitude of the risk, exaggerating the larger risks. Simultaneously, their mind glosses over the lower frequency of the risk. Consequently, big, rare events like nuclear disasters get overemphasized in people's minds, while small, common events like maintenance workers falling from wind turbines get overlooked.
It's the same reason plane crashes are splashed over all the TV news, while car crashes rare make the news, even though going to a destination by car is 1-2 orders of magnitude more dangerous than going by plane. The magnitude of the carnage from a plane crash is greater and overwhelms our minds, while the much lower frequency of plane crashes is overlooked. Or on the flip side, it's why people spend money on lottery tickets even though on average they'll lose money. The magnitude of the payoff if you win overwhelms our mind, to where we completely ignore the infinitesimal odds of winning.
Gates should invest outside the US if he wishes to accomplish anything. There is no longer room for debate about nuclear power in the US or EU nor are they suitable environments for nuclear research.
Japan uses nukes out of necessity and more reliable, safer plants are clearly in its interest.
Astonishing that Gates is this naive about Congress. It's just a log jam of pressure groups and special interests. How on Earth could he imagine that a piddly $1 billion is going to move anything? Either the guy is grandstanding for profile or he is sincerely ignorant of the situation. I can't decide which is worse.
In our days you don't build a nuclear power plant, especially not with "new technology" for a mere 2 billion dollars.
This one costed 8.5 billion : https://www.reuters.com/articl...
And a similar one built in France about 10.5 billion. And that news is old, I'm to lazy to dig out the actual costs. And mind you, that are , not dollar.
If you want to build a plant of significant size, with a more modern technology, as e.g. molten salt reactors, I would not set the price mark below 20 billion dollars and the delivery time below 20 years. On top of that just add all the time and money you need if still need to develop the technology. Molten salt e.g. is extremely tricky.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Climate changes because of two different processes.
One is the release of gases like COX and NOX in the air. Nuclear reactors would allow to lower those by switching a lot of plants burning something off.
One is the excess production, consumption and wasting of stuff and food. This could get worse because of the extra cheap electricity available thanks to the nuclear reactors.
For example, giving everyone an electrical vehicle (from a monocycle to a truck), we'd get mountains of old vehicles to be disposed and mountains of new ones that need to be manufactured and disposed later on.
Not to talk about the waste of cheaper stuff and food.
Nope, I don't buy that idea.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
1 BILLION DOES NOT BUILD 1/5 OF 1 NUCLEAR PLANT get with the program please
Article summarized:
Eccentric bazillionaire argues that in order to save the environment the public must spend megabucks on uninsurably dangerous technology that risks badly wrecking the environment.
Back in the mid 2000s, Jerry Pournelle was saying that we should have spent the Iraq War money on nuclear power instead. The first year cost something like $100 billion. We could have spent the first 20 billion (or whatever) of that developing a better nuclear power plant and refining the design to the point where subsequent plants would cost $1 billion each.
The financial hit to Saddam's oil revenue would have done about the same damage to him as the war did, and we' have somewhere between 50 and 80 brand new, state of the art, top of the line nuclear plants generating cheap power until 2050.
Personally, I prefer government small and would rather private industry tackle a project like this. But since we seem to be committed to tossing a few trillion dollars into the bonfire every year with no end in sight, why not push for something like this and at least have a chance to get something useful out of the deal?
See that "Preview" button?
Considering nuclear power plant investment sizes (many billions for meaningful capacity) it sounds not so much like donation than a price cut, relative to a possibly high baseline price. Or in other words, incentivizing the first sales to the reference customer. Not saying it's a bad thing. But it's not like giving away a large nuclear plant for free.
This was proposed for the EU. Solar power towers in Spain and northern Africa, wind turbines in the North Sea, and HVDC lines between them.
If you spread the wind turbines far enough, there's always gonna be wind somewhere.
Add covered pumped-storage hydroelectricity, and you've got a system that can serve you 365 days and 24 hours a day, no problem.
But dumb pseudo-ecologists bitched because pumped storage "ruins the landscape". Yeah, that *totally* makes it better than RWE tearing up half the landscape and literally deplacing towns!! --.--
And spineless pussy politicians could not manage to get the shitty northern African countries to get their shit together or become vassals so we can un-fuck them. So they're too unstable for that kind of thing.
All we're left with, is a few solar farms in Spain, plans for more in Greece, and way too litw wind turbines in the North Sea.
And with Greece and Spain not exactly being fans of Germany leeching off of them via the EU, and hence probably leaving the EU at some point if the can, they would have the same problem as North Africa.
Ok, I'm starting to ramble.
My point is: The USA has it all, in one country. Sun in Arizona, wind in Chicago, no qualms to build some covered pumped-storage lakes.
It would be almost perfect for you!
Maybe Bill should get an update on current real cost of construction and decommissioning a nuclear plant. 1B is nowhere near. I wonder if energy price from new plants can even be competitive in that light.
This guy seems to think that just throwing a few billions in the right spots will solve any problem. That is just utterly naive.
Why am I depicting Gates riding a fat, free-falling nuclear bomb, waving a cowboy-style hat?
"Quickly! deploy this all-new and never tested nuclear tech!"
Yeah, right.
That's a lot of power just to run Windows.
Has anyone of you used his biggest project to date, Windows?
That level of reliability might be enough to play Hunie Pop, but is it enough for nuclear power?
" First, TerraPower has discovered that the traveling wave didn't travel so well, and that it would not evenly burn the depleted uranium in the "candle." Second, and partly as a result, it needed to change the design to reshuffle the fuel rods - and do that robotically while keeping the reactor running. Third, it has struggled to find a metal strong enough to protect the fuel rods from a bombardment of neutrons more intense than those commonly used in reactors - and for a much longer period of time. "
So, Bill Gates has a nuclear reactor design, which will robotically move fuel rods around while the reactor is running, and come up with a new alloy, which withstands more damage from neutrons. Those are serious issues for nuclear power. Congress should turn him down.
what a fucking joke.
nuclear is expensive as fuck. that wouldn't even buy 10% of one plant.
And was there a mini Bill next to him?
In case anyone was wondering.
Had to skim almost the whole article to find out this simple little bit of info.
Gates wants to build a Uranium based "traveling wave" style reactor using molten sodium for cooling. The technology is problematic, hasn't ever been tested on large scale. Requires metal alloys that are still being developed and still uses a rare, expensive and inherently dangerous fuel.Some experts say the tech is potentially decades away from being viable.
Disclaimer: I am an advocate of LFTR (Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor) based energy generation. The tech still needs work but its closer to reality than what Gates wants.
5 minute intro to LFTRs" if your curious.
Bill has softened and shown he gives a shit about the planet. Maybe it's a 'token gesture' or something but it's more than most at his wealth level.
Good on him.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26152/the-u-s-military-wants-tiny-road-mobile-nuclear-reactors-that-can-fit-in-a-c-17
Three branches of Congress?!? Did you pay attention in school? This is one of the major problems in our country today. Public education has failed to accomplish its mission. We now have several generations that are totally ignorant of how the federal government is organized and how it works. What's really scary is that those people VOTE!!
A very short primer:
There are THREE branches of our federal government - Executive (the President), Legislative (Congress), and Judicial (the Supreme Court). Congress has TWO houses or chambers, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
That is all.
Donate $ to pivotal politicians ( committee chairs). might redirect some or much of the billion but collateral costs that unfortunately are part of the systems. Many Politicians want to secure their power as survival means. Guessing the foundation backs friendly political efforts thru normal legal means. So consider stepping up $$$
Gates is not "donating" anything. He's asking for billions of dollars in government subsidies for his failed (and technically impossible) nuclear project.
Kind of like when he "donating" Windows to schools and developing countries... just a scam to lock people into his POS OS.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
He or she probably modded you down "-1 overrated" because there is no "- 1 batshit insane" option.
Heavy capacity, small footprint, easily scalable.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
He or she probably modded you down "-1 overrated" because there is no "- 1 batshit insane" option.
Point to the part you disagree with, and I'll provide a citation to cure your ignorance. Otherwise, run along kid, the adults are trying to have a conversation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A normal one costs over 10 billions nowadays, if you could convince the nimbys, but hey, if you can get an insurance company to cover the risks, I'm all for it.
But good luck with that.
This is true. On the other hand, you could say that building _safe_ nuclear power is also location specific. ie. don't build it in an earthquake, hurricane, or flood prone area. So on that basis, do whatever makes the most sense for the area. If you're in the desert, go solar. Canadian Shield, go nuclear. etc.
Not trolling here, I say this on every thread. I don't trust nuclear for the United States.
I've yet to see a reactor that's cheaper to run safe than unsafe and that's the bar America needs. Americans like to privatize thing. A lot. We also have a strong distrust in government regulation.
What I see happening is the same thing that happened in Fukushima: Reactor gets built, 20-30 years later it's time to decommission it. It's been handed off to a private company that wants to keep making money off it. Cost of building a new reactor is X. Cost of buying off politician to weaken oversight it Y. If X - Y is positive you go with the bribes. Sooner or later there's a disaster, but you're the CEO. You don't live in the area, can blame the engineers, will tie everything up in court and you've got a PR firm that'll make it stick.
Finally, I'll just leave this little gem right here.
Maybe nukes work in Europe where folks don't distrust their government as much and/or are better educated and thus more capable of resisting calls to privatize things that should not be privatized. But not in America. Fix out social & political situation first.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"take decades to perfect, market and construct in any significant numbers"
If worst of Global Warming will hit sooner than any new tech can be ready, is that really means, we should/must not pursue that tech, because it will be impossible to fix/reverse Global Warming after that "worst" point in time?
Or, no matter how worse Global Warming is/gets in any point in time, it can be fixed/reversed, if humanity has the right tech?
Global Warming is caused by excess CO2 in atmosphere, it can be fixed/reversed any point in time, by removing that excess in any way, if humanity has the tech ready that is!!!
If we give up R&D of any promising new tech, what if, later it turns out that tech was our best chance?
Actually, IMHO, the real solution of GW is increasing total forest/woodland area of Earth back to pre-industrial levels!!!
But, IMHO, humanity will need a lot more clean electric power to reach whole new levels of civilization in the future (which only nuclear power can provide; solar & wind etc will never be enough)!!! (Just one example: Imagine there is no water shortage anywhere in the world anymore, because massive amounts of water desalinated from oceans and pumped everywhere needed thru a global pipeline network!)
Better not comment; some people are just hardwired to an opinion.
if you argue, they will just turn it around and use it against you.
the fact that nuclear is impossible to be safe and not dangerous and the fact
that you don't have to even grow to the middle of your life expectancy to have witnessed
(at least) three nuclear catastrophes with global fallout can still not convince some people.
i assume this article is just to test the the waters so see if the (sane) anti-nuclear supporters have any new argument-ammunition ready and if it thus calls for increased armament of pro-nuclear arguments.
nukes for electricity is bad, just like making debt, not wearing your seat belts, driving a motorcycle without a crash helmet (-aka- anti-bug splatter helmet), not changing your oil, playing the stock market and installing windows.
fortunately some of the above things have been outlawed and if they haven't been yet, some people will continue to try and make money from your misery.
Always blaming regulations like Pavlov ringing his bell...
Nuclear physics is hard stuff, it's not mass produced, not standardized, most stuff is a custom build. They keep wanting to try out new stuff for that future tech that is 5 years away for the last 50 years... maybe it could be if it didn't take 10 years to build a dangerous expensive experiment to see if it's actually viable. 100 experiments later maybe it will be but that's probably 50 more years off.
TONS of welfare from the public to insure and support the industry is required which totally gives the public the right for oversight; aside from the threat to public (security, main purpose of government...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
typo is when you make an error when *typing*
Move fast and break things would be...
bad.
We clearly and objectively need to collectively get over the Nuclear Boogie-man mentality, redesign fission reactors using more innovative designs to make them simpler, less expensive, and more foolproof, and start building them again.
Maybe congress hasn't acted because the people they represent what a long and healthy life. Gates go suck an egg. who is he to tell us how how we should live or get power. He should be in jail from having an illegal monopoly.
Nuclear in it's present form is highly dangerous and should be eliminated. However if the fuel source is changed to I believe a Thorium isotope instead of Uranium or Plutonium, it can be made much safer. He'd better include that is his plan. Also Nuclear like Oil is limited supply so it's not a real solution.
The real solutions are solar and fusion. Both of which have greatly improved. Fusion plants can be made a reality now...we passed the break even point... though not easy, and not very efficient yet, it's time to put fusion and not fission and to decrease per capita energy usage though LED light bulbs, localized heating (kotatsu) and such like in Japan and other innovations I am working on that are not yet mainstream.
Uranium Nuclear MUST NOT BE THE FUTURE! Do not make that error!
For some important reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#2010s
(Which incorrectly headlines it as theortetical... if you read the full article you see it is now PRACTICAL)
In South Australia they power their geothermal sites using nuclear energy.
Really.
Much of the world's Uranium is there and it makes the ground hot as it very slowly fissiles naturally.
Woosh. The comment you are replying to continues the satire of young US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thinks congress has three chambers, armageddon has a scheduled date of 2030, and thinks it's a good thing to eliminate all immigration and customs enforcement. Because we all know baby food tastes better with lead flavoring.
The major problem with our country is too many people have no sense of humor.
One billion dollars should be able to buy every congressman.
1. Decentralization, not more centralization/concentration is what would help most of us who aren't energy company CEOs. Centralized control is what has screwed up electric power, natural gas, the internet, the food supply, you name it.
2. I've yet to hear an acceptable solution to nuclear waste containment/disposal. Dig around and every proposal has serious shortcomings.
entrepreneurs willing to take risk
and
Nuclear Power
What could possibly go wrong?
"Gates thinks the U.S. has 'the best minds, the best lab systems and entrepreneurs willing to take risk,' Goldman told the newspaper. 'But what we don't have is a commitment on Congress' part.'"
Interesting that Gates has turned into the run of the mill rent-seeker. If the entrepreneurs are will to take the risk why do they need a commitment from Congress. Imagine if Henry Ford said I can't start the assembly line until I get that commitment from Congress. Or if Gates or Jobs had said, nah, can't build that until I get a commitment from Congress.
If it was just overturning regulations to free the way for Gates' vision, that's one thing, but he's specifically asking for matching funds.
The U.S. NRC has a reputation in the U.S. nuclear industry of not being as predictable and transparent as it tries to advertise. This is likely the reason that Gates chose China at the testing ground
The Congressional Budget Office reported in May 2008 that the actual costs of building 75 of the existing nuclear power plants in the U.S. exceeded industry quoted estimated by more than 300 percent. The industry, in other words, reported average construction costs for these plants at $45.2 billion (in 1990 dollars) but the facilities ended up costing $144.6 billion (in 1990 dollars).
Nuclear power has been a political issue and not a financial one for decades now. If Gates can convince the Hill to unfreeze effectively 30 years of bullshit that has hamstrung the US civilian nuclear program, I'd be happy to jump in the boat with my own money (albeit, much, MUCH less than he has.) Until then, you could promise a bajillion dollars and not move the needle when it comes to a viable solution for getting us off the fossil teat.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
A 2006 MIT study, The Future of Geothermal Energy funded by the US Department of Energy provides a comprehensive review of geothermal as a base load energy resource. It concludes that the primary impediment to the development of this virtually unlimited, pollution and carbon free energy resource is the political will to invest in the necessary technical development for very deep drilling ie greater than 3 kilometers. The investment required is far smaller than has been invested in nuclear power systems. The threat that this technology represents to entrenched interests probably explains why all funding for this area of research was cut.
https://energy.mit.edu/wp-cont...