Bill Gates favors nuclear power to help limit climate change

[wtmusic]

"Microsoft Corp co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates said that expanding nuclear power and making it safer was the most economic way to ward off climate change.

In an address to the IHS CERAWeek conference of international energy company executives, he said safe and reliable reactors were the best option and dismissed wind and solar energy as less practical.

'The only way to solve the climate challenge is have some source of energy that's economic,' Gates told the gathering on Thursday evening."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/ceraweek-gates-nuclear-idUSL1N0C01HV20130308

Bill's company Terrapower is developing a Traveling Wave Reactor prototype (TWR-P):

"In addition to producing energy for the grid, the TWR-P is expected to accomplish these goals:

Demonstrate the first electricity-producing TWR.
Confirm our traveling wave design.
Demonstrate key plant equipment.
Serve as the last step in our fuels and materials qualification program.
Provide the technical, licensing and economic basis for future generations of TWRs.

Once operational, the TWR-P will be an important piece of the world’s energy puzzle. It will produce affordable, sustainable, base load energy that is carbon-free, secure and produces a minimum of seven times less waste, which can more easily be disposed."



http://terrapower.com/pages/twr-p

[MichiganVote]

1. So long as its not near him that is. Thanks Bill. Now quit trying to "save" us.

[wtmusic]

2. The prototype reactor will be two miles from his house.

Fail.

[MichiganVote]

3. Doesn't say that in the article.

[cprise]

7. Actually, I thought the opposite

Only highly-policed, wealthy neighborhoods will be deemed safe enough for small nuclear reactors. These things will be used to keep their lights on should the rest of society become too unstable.

[MichiganVote]

10. Well you're probably right about that.

[wtmusic]

12. Yep, they're either too safe or not safe enough.

Depends on what side of the bed the antinuke wakes up on.

[cprise]

16. We both implied the possiblity of unsafe conditions

The difference is whether one considers a Bill Gates to be aware of the risks and social implications of his project, and also whether one includes the motivations that class brings to the stage.

Capitalists, particularly from Gates' generation, are conditioned to reject as "marxism" or "communism" any wariness towards actions that might socially exclude the poor. He famously (in the IT world) said that open source / libre software projects were like "communism" and then paid an author and a corporation to smear the Linux project and drag its licensees into the courts with meritless accusations.

To this day, many companies who use Linux (including Android) pay Microsoft a per-user royalty for undisclosed patent infringement claims which they have vaguely repeated to the press (incidentally, this is illegal). So Bill turned one of the wealthiest corporations in the whole world into a patent troll whose primary target is users of software intended to be shared freely.

Gates himself stated in the early 90s that he wanted to own the "toll bridge" to the Internet (apparently Windows was to be the toll booth). He got to where he is by being a monopolistic bully and I think his attraction to nuclear power supports this view of his persona.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Bill thinks win8 is great.

[wtmusic]

5. D'oh!

Hopefully it won't be in the TerraPower control room.

[quadrature]

6. can I borrow your mind-reading-machine?

how do you know what someone else thinks?

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Oh he could have been lying, but he did an online reddit session

Where he represented his mental state with respect to win8 as "it's great" or something similar.

Did you have a point?

[joshcryer]

8. I love this part of this video about TWR:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=P9M__yYbsZ4#t=01h00m25s

[wtmusic]

11. Sorenson makes some really good points.

Unless they're onto some really advanced tech they're not sharing, the concept sounds farfetched.

[kristopher]

13. Bill Gates Speak

"he said safe and reliable reactors were the best option and dismissed wind and solar energy as less practical"

Translation of Bill Gates Speak to standard English
"safe and reliable" = "Bill Gates can corner the market"
"less practical" = "Bill Gates cannot corner the market"

[Bill USA]

14. I guess he figures someday we'll figure out how to deal with thousands of tons of radioactive waste

from the reactors. Big assumption.

[wtmusic]

15. The nuclear industry is dealing with it right now.

Though irrational fears and politics closed Yucca, New Mexicans are welcoming waste storage at their Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. It will probably become the nation's permanent nuclear repository.

Nuke Us: The Town That Wants America's Worst Atomic Waste

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/01/25/nuke-us-meet-the-town-that-wants-americas-worst-nuclear-waste/

[tinrobot]

17. One point of his that I agree with...

Is that we have to get to zero carbon emissions to stop/slow the warming.

Zero. That's a pretty tall order in our fossil fueled economy.

If he can get nuclear power to be safer, I'm more than willing to listen. We have to explore all possibilities in order to get to zero.