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.'"

Comments

They're still safer even with mistakes

[Solandri]

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.

Jerry Pournelle

[Orgasmatron]

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?

it uses Uranium fuel with molten sodium coolant

[PinkyGigglebrain]

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.

Re:Geothermal

[angel'o'sphere]

There never was a problem. There are losses, most grids have a loss of 5% - 7%.
However no one talks about the transmission losses of an oil or gas pipeline (they are much higher).

In AC grids transmission lines compensate for losses by scaling up the voltage. E.g. about 130kV in Germany and over one million volts in 3rd world countries like Kasachstan.

AC lines have the problem that they loose power by radiation and induction to surrounding metal structures. E.g. if the wires hang low you can hold up a flurescence light and it glows by the power loss of a high voltage line.

The modern bust word is HVDC - high voltage direct current, as opposed to AC ... the losses to radiation don't exist and if you put the voltage in the 10 million volt range, the losses due to DC versus AC (as in Ohm and resistance) are acceptable.

But to say it bluntly: with a 7% loss you only need to produce 7% more energy. The current grid you are using at the moment already does that. But for some absurd reason it is a problem for renewables ...