Slashdot Mirror
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 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
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.
I believe The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch was one of the earlier nuclear weapons, famously used to thwart the Rabbit of Caerbannog.
When I was young I heard proposals like this and the main argument against it was transmission line losses over very long distances.
Using DC means it's not a transmission line. Then you don't have issues with inductive losses. There's still resistance, though, but that part is compensated for by the high voltage (or more importantly, low current).
Has the technology improved to the point that this has become a lesser problem?
The problem in the past was efficient DC/AC conversion, or converting between different voltages of DC. Semiconductors have been used for HVDC since the 1970s and the hardware keeps improving. I'm not sure if there have been any specific improvements lately, though.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Both PV and the high induction motors used in those windmills require rare earths among other materials which is actually far worse for the environment and don't recoup their cost within the lifetime before failure(30 years).
It's kinda like all those people screeching batteries are the future. Seriously if you think that nuclear energy is dirty, it has nothing on either of those. On top of that the Gen III and Gen IV reactors can use multiple forms of fuel in varying quantities to create a stable reaction, unlike Gen I and Gen II which required very specific amounts of uranium and/or plutonium in their fuel rods.
Om, nomnomnom...