Bill Gates' China Nuclear Reactor Project: Microsoft Co-Founder Aims To Develop Safer Version

BEIJING -- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates confirmed Wednesday he is in discussions with China to jointly develop a new and safer kind of nuclear reactor.

"The idea is to be very low cost, very safe and generate very little waste," said the billionaire during a talk at China's Ministry of Science and Technology.

Gates said he had largely funded a Washington state-based company, TerraPower, that is developing a Generation IV nuclear reactor that can run on depleted uranium. TerraPower says it has discussed its plans with India, Russia and other countries with nuclear energy programs.

The general manager of state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation, Sun Qin, was quoted in Chinese media last week saying Gates was working with it to research and develop a reactor.

"TerraPower is having very good discussions with CNNC and various people in the Chinese government," said Gates, cautioning the talks were at an early stage.

Gates says perhaps as much as a billion dollars will be put into research and development over the next five years.

TerraPower says its traveling wave reactor would run for decades on depleted uranium and produce significantly smaller amounts of nuclear waste than conventional reactors.

"All these new designs are going to be incredibly safe," Gates told the audience. "They require no human action to remain safe at all times."

He said they also benefit from an ability to simulate earthquake and tidal wave conditions. "It takes safety to a new level," he said.

Since leaving Microsoft Corp., Gates has concentrated on philanthropy and advocating on public health, education and clean energy issues. He is an investor and strategic adviser to TerraPower.

Gates was at the Ministry of Science and Technology to talk about a joint project between China and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support innovative research and development to help alleviate poverty.

Gates said the ministry will help identify entrepreneurs and companies to manufacture new products in global health and agriculture to "change the lives of poor people," including new vaccines and diagnostics and genetically modified seeds.

"China has a lot to contribute because it's solved many of the problems of poverty, not all of them but a lot of them, itself, and many Asian, south Asian and African countries are well behind, whether it's agriculture or health," said Gates.

No specific poverty alleviation projects were mentioned.

Comments

[AuldLochinvar]

03:48 PM on 09/12/2012

I don't know whether to be afraid of the probability that China will be the world's dominant energy supplier when my grandchildren grow up, or to be glad that at least somewhere in the world there will be a government with the means to prevent the human world's energy bankruptcy and consequent destruction of civilization. Bill Gates seems to have despaired of the US electorate coming to its senses about the utter inadequacy of the officially "renewable" sources of energy currently fashionable. Forests are a well known renewable biomass resource, which in practice is not sustainable at our recklessly profligate usage rate, so they're not renewed. Wind is notoriously fickle, the rain we get is inadequate, or else why are the aquifers being pumped dry? ======================================================
In one hour, the Earth receives as much energy from the Sun as human industry, etc, consumes in a year. Note that this does not count human food consumption. But the global warming problem is, that to stay the same temperature, the Earth must re-radiate tis same prodigious amount of energy to Space. Seemingly trifling changes in the atmospheric gas composition can make an astonishing difference to the heat energy held in the oceans.

[AuldLochinvar]

12:55 AM on 09/12/2012

This is a grim reflection upon the USA, once the most advanced country in the world in nuclear research. Plutonium was first synthesised by the American Glenn Seaborg, and we have to our credit americium, californium, and berkelium. Seaborgium is also down there, after curium.

If you simply go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html , you will find that Argonne National Labs had a project, the IFR, which was stupidly canceled in 1994, that was then far more mature than the TerraPower project is now. It had demonstrated, by actual test, its immunity to meltdown a week or so before the Chernobyl meltdown.

The IFR is safe, renewable, and sustainable. It breeds as much fissile fuel as it consumes, and the only nuclear waste is on the order of one ton per gigawatt-year, and it loses half its radioactivity in about ten years, 99.9% of it in two centuries.
As for the toxic waste per unit energy, the coal burned in a year in a 1000 MW coal plant produces two or three tons of uranium, and five to seven tons of thorium, and yet the radioactivity of that is a trifling nuisance compared with the gaseous poisons.
There is a company in Virginia, Advanced Reactor Concepts, which has a design for a reactor descendant of the IFR, that runs at 100 MW for 20 years on an initial load of 20.7 tons in a modular fuel core.

[Genders]

01:33 AM on 01/29/2012

Sad, more nuke bs. Nukes are more expensive than rooftop solar, over 16 cents per KWH.
"Concept criticism

Kirk Sorensen of Flibe Energy has criticized the TWR as "a particularly difficult implementation" of the fast breeder reactor, which he characterizes as "already hard to build in the first place", as well as for plans for its eventual nuclear decommissioning.[17]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

Invest in rooftop pv solar, offshore wind, efficiency, and waste bio char bio fuels Bill. It's the ONLY solution that it forever, 24/7, safe, clean, ready to go now, and cheaper than nukes.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:13 AM on 09/12/2012

"Nukes are more expensive than rooftop solar, over 16 cents per KWH. " is false. The fuel cost even using a fraction of the 7 parts in a thousand that's immediately fissile, is very few cents per kWh. The capital cost per megawatt is driven up by delays encouraged by the ill informed enthusiasts for the 18th century technologies that the Industrial Revolution displaced.

[Genders]

04:53 PM on 09/12/2012

Nope, that';s the reality.  Capital cost is the cost of nukes that they pay.  Solar even more so.    Even before you include nukes MASSIVE External const to our health.nukes cost more than solar, because solar panels have dropped from 20$ a decade ago, to less than 50 cent per watt for panels today.  
External costs of nukes are what should kill it forever.
Trillion dollar million cancer disasters, million years, millions of cancers waste, and civilization ending proliferation. 
Solar cheaper
than nukes and energy source amounts:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/08/23/solar-power-intro-3-key-solar-power-points-top-solar-power-news/
Note the fossil and nuke numbers are totals, the solar wind and
waste are PER YEAR!

http://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/NCW-SolarReport_final1.pdf

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Comparative_electrical_generation_costs

shows overlap in solar and nukes costs
at around 13 cents.

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

http://nukepimp.blogspot.com/p/renewable-and-energy-efficiency.html
3 cents per KWH rooftop solar.

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm

[Terry Floyd]

03:59 AM on 12/29/2011

Mr. Gates, is “Nuclear waste” waste or is it "WAMSR nuclear fuel" or “LFTR nuclear fuel” via Kirk Sorensen???

MIT WAMSR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAFWeIp8JT0&feature=player_embedded

LFTR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE

Just build a WAMSR on onside and a LFTR on the other ?

Get her done the FIRST TIME !!!!!!

[Michael Mann]

09:11 AM on 12/21/2011

Westinghouse has also developed a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) kind of a little sister to the AP1000 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11354/1198025-28-0.stm?cmpid=news.xml
Thorium reactors are a good goal for longer term future generation.
http://thoriumremix.com/2011/

[lilpeg]

12:04 PM on 12/12/2011

Oxymoron Title?

[Angelocracy]

09:03 PM on 12/11/2011

Thorium is the only safer version . http://www.mi7.co/2011/12/if-ignorance-is-bliss-america-is-heaven.html

[Genders]

10:46 PM on 12/11/2011

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/thorium2009factsheet.pdf Not the answer, and waste still need million year storage.

rooftop solar, offshore wind, waste bio char, underwater turbines and efficiency is the real answer. No nukes.

[Silken17]

01:03 PM on 12/13/2011

Your link is complete nonsense. No surprise, it is a hit piece by a bunch of pediatricians who don't know squat about nuclear power.

Where were you each time that that doc was debunked? Genders, even the anti nuke activists stopped posting that junk months ago.

Here's the rebuttal:
http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/03/23/sorensen-rebuttal/

[aligatorhardt]

09:24 AM on 12/12/2011

Thorium claims to be safer, but then most claims from nuclear power have been lies.
Thorium is not an environmentally safe alternative type of nuclear energy, Norwegian report says - Bellona

[Silken17]

01:16 PM on 12/13/2011

Your link is another example of nameless people talking about a technology they don't understand. The greatest advantages of thorium can only be realized in an MSR like LFTR. Your link talks about thorium in conventional solid fueled reactors so it is irrelevant. Did you read the posted comments? Here is one of them:

"This post is VERY misleading. It cites a Norwegian report without a title or a link. In addition, it claims that the unnamed report suggests that all Thorium reactors have the same problems as uranium reactors. If the report actually says that, it's wrong. While Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors may have problems, they aren't the same problems as Pressurized Water Reactors or Boiling Water Reactors that use uranium or plutonium as fuel. Please look at the following for more information:

Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

Nuclear's next generation
http://www.economist.com/node/15048703?story_id=15048703

Thorium and the Liquid-Fluoride Reactor: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/ "

[Atoms4Peace1]

09:47 AM on 01/12/2012

Baloney dot org is a koolaid site

[Aerin Gael]

03:22 PM on 12/11/2011

What on earth is Bill Gates doing talking to China about a depleted uranium reactor when we are converging on inertial fusion right here in the States. We need to get our act together and focus to make it real. Think Apollo, to the Moon in a decade.
http://life.llnl.gov/
http://lasers.llnl.gov

[Genders]

10:48 PM on 12/11/2011

No, laser fusion is 25 year away.

Look up Polywell, that's the best fusion system around, if it works.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:18 AM on 09/12/2012

The trouble with hydrogen fusion, which in my youth 40 years ago I thought was the future, is that even in the core of the sun, a bumble-bee sized volume is producing less power than a bumblebee consumes when it flies. A human sized volume comes closer to what a human consumes, bcause we're not as busy as bumblebees. But still not enough. Electro-thermo-fluid dynamics is fiendishly difficult, even before you deal with hot ionisation.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:01 PM on 01/08/2012

Sorry, Gael, the Moon shot was not science, it was propaganda. By contrast, Voyagers 1 and 2 were doing things with their obsolete computers eight years after they were launched.

[kanda]

12:28 PM on 12/10/2011

I am pleased that nuclear power is finally being shone as the green solution to the worldwide energy need. Who needs alternatives when the best solution for global environmental issues is already here.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-briefing.html

That is what makes sense to save humanity. Man can do nothing to prevent the planet from dying.

[Genders]

10:52 PM on 12/11/2011

Nukes: million years wastes, trillion dollar disasters, world destroying proliferation and terrorist threats, 15 cents electricity more expensive that rooftop solar, and you think nukes are good idea???????

rooftop solar, offshore wind, waste bio char, underwater turbines and efficiency are the solution: forever. 24/7, cheaper than nukes, clean safe and faster to install.

[kanda]

02:52 PM on 12/15/2011

You do all that until the sun dims, the planet cools, and ice envelops the planet forever. It is a losing battle your way. To do what you suggest is a waste of resources that can be better utilized exploring space. My way is to move on to other planets and expand our horizons. Eventually man populates the galaxy and beyond. God's plan for mankind is dominion over all creation. We are not limited to one world.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:04 PM on 01/08/2012

The "discovery" of the two American continents did precious little to relieve Europe's overcrowding, and you don't need hyper-light ships to cross the Atlantic.

[Overtone]

02:09 AM on 12/10/2011

There are much better alternatives without the need for radioactive fuels.

See CHEAP GREEN on the Aesop Institute website for some examples.

An Australian claim of hot fusion with 40 watts in and a megawatt out has surfaced.

Several Nickel-Hydrogen systems are moving to market.

These systems are much closer to production and far safer and less expensive.

[vmf211]

04:21 PM on 12/10/2011

Solar is 8 times more expensive than nuclear and wind is 4 to 5 times higher in cost per megawatt/hr produced.

[Overtone]

04:48 PM on 12/10/2011

Solar is becoming directly competitive in price at this time.

Nickel-Hydrogen systems are quoting prices far below anything now available..

[Genders]

10:53 PM on 12/11/2011

Solar and nukes about the same cost 15 cents. Nukes get 500M$ per reactor per year, and 54B$ in loan backing even with the expected 50% default rate.

[maslin]

03:48 PM on 01/08/2012

Still pushing your discredited felon's black box fraud?

[figlesias]

01:45 AM on 12/10/2011

This is my take from this news item: Nuclear Energy is the new Internet. ... so if Bill Gates puts his eye, talent and money on building safer and cheaper nuclear reactors, then we will soon have safe and clean nuclear energy available at home. As an engineer I shall say: great news !.

[Genders]

10:54 PM on 12/11/2011

You take wrong. Bill is out of it. Nukes are cancer.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:12 PM on 01/08/2012

Nuclear Energy can get the same energy out of a millionth of the quantity of fuel that chemical energy needs, and with comparably little waste, so let's just ignore Genders. Of course, our present technologies, which Gates and (God help us, if there is one) China are about to supersede, are about half a hundredth as efficient as what the USA has TWICE shown can be replaced by alternatives 200 times as safe and efficient -- and with waste one thousandth as long lived! I refer of course to LMFBR and LFTR options.

But the thing to which we'd better wake up is, that if Gates and China succeed, humanity is saved from barbarism, but the USA and Europe are doomed to Chinese CIVILIAN nuclear power domination.

[Moose Luck 99]

11:41 AM on 12/09/2011

MIT study with major corporate “advisers” promotes centralized control of power grid
Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer

The researchers claim that due to the lack of a single entity controlling the security of the entire grid along with preparedness, response, and recovery, there is a gaping security vulnerability.

Their proposed solution is for the federal government to “designate a single agency to have responsibility for working with industry and to have appropriate regulatory authority to enhance cybersecurity preparedness, response, and recovery across the electric power sector, including bulk power and distribution systems.”

We’ve seen how well centralization works, and any sane person would not continue to promote the fallacy that putting more power in fewer hands is somehow going to solve everyone’s problems.

This is exactly what happened with the Department of Homeland Security (which, incidentally, the Obama administration has said should head up securing the grid) which has become a behemoth organization so wildly out of control that it is almost surreal.

Yet the MIT study, chaired by John G. Kassakian and Richard Schmalensee, still recommends that we unify our system under the command of a single government entity.

Not to mention, so-called “advisory committee members” from corporations that could very well stand to gain considerable amounts of money if such a plan were put into action.

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/mit-study-with-major-corporate-advisers.html#more

[Genders]

03:15 PM on 12/13/2011

Maybe not this plan, but I do think the grid needs to be run like our freeways. Owned and maintained by the state, because companies will cut corners on infrastructure till things break. Bad plutocracies do too, but we have to fix our Republic anyway or nothing works.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:14 PM on 01/08/2012

We've recently seen, in Enron and Lehman Bros. and GM and Chrysler, how very efficient the megacorporate private economy is.

[Moose Luck 99]

09:43 AM on 12/09/2011

We want de-centralized alternative power!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RHMuFF0B-k

Here's A House That's Totally Off The Grid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJsDOD0dTQI

How to have a home with no house payments and no utility bills!

[Moose Luck 99]

09:17 AM on 12/09/2011

http://www.emwatch.com/

What other kinds of EM waves are dangerous?

We didn't realise that low frequency electromagnetic radiation (including the 50/60Hz frequency commonly used for power supplies) was dangerous to our health, so we've not been very careful about that.

And although we knew that radio and microwave energy was dangerous at high intensity (for example inside your microwave oven), we thought it was safe at lower intensities. It now appears we were wrong about that.

[AuldLochinvar]

01:22 PM on 01/08/2012

There is no real evidence that EM radiation at frequencies of less than a kilohertz can possibly be harmful. There is overwhelming evidence that the photon for a given frequency has an energy proportional to that frequency. So the energy of each photon emitted by 50 Hz power supplies is a million times less than what a 50 megaHertz radio signal's photons carry. Actual infrared in the microwave oven happens to be tuned to the frequencies of water and fat molecules, or it would hardly count.

[Moose Luck 99]

09:14 AM on 12/09/2011

REDUCE GRID STRESS 20%!!

http://www.powermax3000.com/index.html

Here's what Florida Power and Light says about Power Factor:

"Under voltage, single phase, phase reversal and imbalance protection (power factor correction) are all available through the installation of an electronic phase loss protector in the motor control circuit. Such protective devices are supplied and installed by the Customer. Surge protection should also be considered for installation at the motor breaker panel. Surge protection can help reduce damage to a motor's windings from external spikes, as well as reduce damage to customer equipment from power spikes generated by large motors starting and stopping."

ALSO, the federal government says: "Heating and cooling costs the average homeowner about $1,000 a year — nearly half the home's total energy bill. If your central air conditioning unit is more than 12 years old, replacing it with an ENERGY STAR qualified model could cut your cooling costs by 30 percent."
By installing the POWER-MAX, you accomplish the same results for thousands of dollars less.