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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.
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.
we can affordably transmute lead into gold. How cool is that?
Converting lead into gold is a very messy process that produces lots of radioactive contaminants.
It is easier to convert bismuth into gold, but still no where near worth it. Even getting gold from asteroids would be more cost effective than nuclear transmutation.
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.
stars give us fusion power and gold from other elements, so we don't have to do either one.
in other words, let's get those 100 square miles of desert paved with panels and storage and stop worrying
Asteroids you say! Let me tell you about asteroids.... blah blah blah blah blah blah... asteroids... blah blah blah blah.
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.
It's not like it's all liquid assets. Some is invested, some is in banks, etc. Society is getting use of his money already
...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.
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
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.
Let me tell you about my mother.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We have a pretty limited amount of "infinite energy" we can deal with before "waste heat" boils the oceans.
Heat is usually the result of inefficient energy conversion. If you're generating heat, you're doing things inefficiently. Unless you're trying to heat your house.
(We're talking about infinite energy here, why not talk about perfect efficiency at the same time? About as realistic)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As long as that storage is hydrogen - which is the lowest cost mass-storage means, and can also be quickly and easily used for transportation needs, too...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That dumb old white guy has already given away $28+ billion, and is literally responsible for thousands of millionaires, and much of the Internet and IT revolution over the last 30 years. Not bad for a dumb old white guy...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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?
Why’d you have to bring race into it? Or would we somehow be better off it Gates was a dumb old black guy?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
Because collecting that energy in solar has massive land use, landfill and ecological implications.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The thing is nuclear is not cheap at all, and it'S cost will only increase.
Usual electricity pricing for nuclear does not take in account the cost of cleanup, which is extremely high.
Also, nuclear base load has to give way to renewables today, which means it is not baseload any more, and so the general load factor will reduce, driving costs of nukes up.
aaaaaaa
No.
We don't care about your mother.
aaaaaaa
Actually something can be accomplished by doing the first two.
Something like 40% of energy usage in the US is consumed by HVAC in BUILDINGS.
We have all these badly designed structures that simply bleed heat and waste power trying to eternally play catch-up.
We can individual homes to the point where you could space heat them with a TOASTER and solar gain when people aren't actually in the home warming them with waste body heat. And even current homes could be retrofit to this standard.
It's possible to engineer far larger buildings to similar levels of energy efficiency as well. And in many cases, current buildings could be retrofit to nearly this standard.
If done properly, we do NOT need to simply replace the entire energy generation capacity of the US at peak demand with Nuclear.
We could replace most of our baseline with nuclear, our remaining Hydro, and geothermal.
We ca then offset peak demands with judicious use of Solar, Wind and Wave power alongside power storage options (batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, solar thermal, etc).
If done while slowly tweaking building code across the country, ACTUAL demand can be brought down while capacity ramps up.
There WILL be carbon footprint from the construction and manufacturing end. But, long-term, the carbon offset would be huge.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And what do we do in the mean time? Just suck it until such power beaming is feasible?
As I've said about nuclear and fusion.
Fission-for-now, and fusion-when-feasible.
The same thing would go for power beaming.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
He tried.
Recent changes in US laws have made doing so unfeasible for him.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No. An MSR is actually fairly simple. The expensive part is all the regulatory BS, plus the endless lawsuits.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
True. But the same can be said of ANY form of generation technology.
And, due to nuclear power's sheer power density, it's carbon offset point comes FAR sooner than anything else out there.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
He's not looking to build an actual power plant.
He's looking to build a test reactor and explore how to reduce costs via unitization and economies of scale.
The biggest cost for reactors (outside of the regulatory burdens and lawsuits) is the fact that each and every reactor is it's own unique thing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you throw that billion dollars the right way, it just might.
If his endeavor can deliver a modular reactor design that can be unitized to take advantage of economies of scale?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You're envisioning it this way because you've been indoctrinated by decades of "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!" groupthink.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Nuclear is only expensive because of all the regulatory hurdles that've been put in it's way, as well as the nigh-endless lawsuits from greenie-weenies.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Additionally, he's not looking to build a nuclear plant right off the bat.
He's looking to build a test reactor so he can explore ways to make building them more efficient and better able to take advantage of economies of scale,
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
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?
Yep. But when you aged bulldog farts the house will stink for days.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Old vehicles are highly recyclable.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
No. An MSR is actually fairly simple. The expensive part is all the regulatory BS, plus the endless lawsuits.
Another problem is they need to stay warm or risk rocking up; as well as issues of coolant reactions causing problems. The Soviets had several Alphas do that and as a result were decommissioned. They kept the reactors running even in port to key the bismuth warm. The US Navy tried a liquid sodium reactor in the Seawolf since it was a lot quieter than a water cooled reactor but wound up replacing it with one because of the problems maintaining it.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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.
Yep. But when you aged bulldog farts the house will stink for days.
Unlike Gates' claim that "The problems with today's reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.", that is a problem that might actually be solvable with innovation, like charcoal filters, or heat-exchanging house ventilation.
When nuclear is used, the baseload for the design(s) is to hold around 60-70% of all the generation for a specific area. Gen II reactors have a cleanup cost that's high, Gen I are astronomical. The reason those old reactors keep being used is because environuts keep protesting the replacement of aging nuclear plants. See the glorious fuckup that led to in Japan for instance, since replacing PWR designs with Gen III were and are still stuck in the courts. You can see similar circumstances in the US, and you can see the same in Canada for example with the Chalk Lake medical reactor, which was supposed to be shutdown over a decade ago. Court cases tying up the replacement, leading to massive overruns, then nimbys and more environmental bullshit. Now Darlington Nuclear(Toronto) is supplying most of those isotopes and other countries which have nuclear reactors have had to pick up the slack. Europe for example relies now mostly on French reactors for their medical isotopes.
Chalk Lake if you're wondering supplied most of the world's medical isotopes(between 70-80%), for everything from targeted radiation treatments, to short-lived radioactive used for MRI's and CT scans.
Om, nomnomnom...
It is. Dicking around with the NRC is expensive as fuck. And that's IF they'll pay attention to you.
And yes, the main problem is that the reactors AREN'T standardized and therefore can't be mass produced.
And we DO have new-generation equipment that's orders of magnitude more safe than anything that's been built in the last 50 years.
All the stuff that people are afraid of has essentially been obsolete equipment design for nearly 70 years.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No, that's actually what the mechanical ventilation is for. Automated number of air changes per hour.
if it's so bad that doesn't take care of it, buy some stink-slayer.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
I think he meant cleaning up once the plant shuts down and possibly disposal of spent fuel. I'm sure there's at least some set aside as insurance in regards to accidents. The biggest question is why do coal power plants get away without "clean up" costs since they have magnitudes more nuclear waste than nuclear? Seems to me that coal should play by the same rules. Watch prices skyrocket to nearer what they should be.
Gold isn't created by fusion but is a by-product of the star previous to the sun going supernova. IIRC, this is the case for all element above iron in the classification, ie. their fusion doesn't yield energy but *consume* energy.
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.
So an MSR is basically impossible?
Never mind that we've actually BUILT MSRs in the past...
1: Aircraft Reactor Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2: Molten Salt Reactor Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
After which the US government basically "picked a winner" and research was shut down.
So, in light of your information being wrong, would you care to modify your position at all?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No. An MSR is actually fairly simple. The expensive part is all the regulatory BS, plus the endless lawsuits.
Another problem is they need to stay warm or risk rocking up; as well as issues of coolant reactions causing problems. The Soviets had several Alphas do that and as a result were decommissioned. They kept the reactors running even in port to key the bismuth warm. The US Navy tried a liquid sodium reactor in the Seawolf since it was a lot quieter than a water cooled reactor but wound up replacing it with one because of the problems maintaining it.
Liquid sodium explodes and is flammable. Its only suitable for military applications. Keeping MSRs running is more difficult, yes but its in exchange for not having to keep the reactor from running out of control. Anyone can see the obvious point of that change in design and all the benefits that brings. Basically, you control the moderating rods with something like a float, when the fuel expands, you pull them out a little. Then the fuel contracts, you push them in a little. Even if they wouldn't work for whatever reason, the natural change in density of the hotter liquid fuel would contain the reaction. Then on top of all of that, there is a plug in the bottom of frozen salt that will melt if the fuel mixture becomes too hot and drain the reactor to a vessel shaped so that nuclear chain reactions are not possible. Its a pretty simple and neat system that uses a lot of very simple components.
Now, I've drastically oversimplified all of this and there are many other issues to consider with MSRs (mostly the online fission product removal) but you can clearly see the safety and management benefits of such a design when compared with the LWRs. This is why folks keep pushing for them. I can understand your objections to LWRs (I don't agree but I understand). MSRs are an entirely different kettle of fish.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Tesla makes shitty solar systems (cost-wise); I don't see why you're bringing up one of the worst examples. It's like bringing up Chernobyl when mentioning nuclear power.
Ezekiel 23:20
That are experimental "one time" reactors.
To refuel them you have to empty them and put new fuel inside.
They do nothing of the things the MSR enthusiasts try to sell us. They are not even close to "proof of concept", as in "waste burning" and other myths.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
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...
I didn't say fusion made gold, just that stars do. plenty of gold in the ground from some ol' star.
and plenty of energy for us from the nearest star
gold is made by neutron capture, by the way, not fusion
Haven't seen an commercial-scale hydrogen production and storage though, sounds like "beaker scale looks good but big doesn't work"
salt works at big scale.