Bill Gates May Build Small Nuclear Reactor 347
Hugh Pickens writes "TerraPower, an energy start-up backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is in discussions with Toshiba Corp. to develop a small-scale nuclear reactor that would represent a long-term bet to make nuclear power safer and cheaper. Toshiba confirmed it is in preliminary discussions with TerraPower, a unit of Intellectual Ventures, a patent-holding concern partially funded by Gates. Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori says the two sides are talking about how they could collaborate on nuclear technology, although discussions are still in early stages and that nothing has been decided on investment or development. TerraPower has publicly said its Traveling Wave Reactor could run for decades on depleted uranium without refueling (PDF) or removing spent fuel from the device. The reactor, the company has said, could be safer, cheaper and more socially acceptable than today's reactors. Gates's recent focus on nuclear power has been fueled by an interest in developing new power systems for developing countries where he says that new energy solutions are needed to combat climate change. Terrapower faces a lengthy, multi-year process to get its "traveling wave" reactor concept reviewed by regulators but if TerraPower succeeds in advancing its plans, it could provide an alternative blueprint for the nuclear industry at a time when new reactors may be coming online."
The blue screen of death... (Score:5, Funny)
...finally.
Cherenkov radiation (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Steve Jobs? Rumor says that his RDF has a faintly glowing, aura-like appearance hardly visible to the eyes of us unwashed, barbarian, infidel freetards... ;)
Re:Cherenkov radiation (Score:5, Funny)
Steve Jobs? Rumor says that his RDF has a faintly glowing, aura-like appearance hardly visible to the eyes of us unwashed, barbarian, infidel freetards... ;)
I believe that glow comes from his halo, you infidel!
Re:Cherenkov radiation (Score:5, Funny)
You mean iNfidel.
Re:The blue screen of death... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't "Blue mushroom of death" be more appropriate?
Live Demonstration coming soon (Score:2, Funny)
It's gonna say, hey I think I got a new device.
It's gonna load the appropriate driver.
You now expect this nuke react.. Wooww!!
Non story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Non story (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Non story (Score:5, Funny)
... or is he?
Tune in next week for the continuation of this exciting episode!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Non story (Score:5, Funny)
That's just something a loyal minion would say to cover his/her/its boss evil doings.
I'm stockpiling twinkies.
Re:Non story (Score:5, Funny)
He's not personally building a reactor like some kind of comic book super villain.
No. That's what the underlings are for. Steve Balmer goes nuclear quite often.
Re:Non story (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Non story (Score:4)
Why do they always have to be villains? Tony Stark wasn't a villain.
Re:Non story (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but you think Slashdot is going to portray Gates as the hero?
Re: (Score:2)
Tony Stark is the non whiny version of Batman with a way better suit :P
Re: (Score:2)
Haven't decided on the hero/villain aspect, but I'm not a big fan of capes, regardless.
Off course not (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Off course not (Score:5, Funny)
And this is better than building a cat and stroking his organ?
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I'm not sure how one can take anything an article says seriously when it starts out with:
"At a time when anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is becoming broadly recognized as a politically driven, pseudo-scientific power-grab,"
LOL
Re:Non story (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates' actual quote:
“if we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that [his initial 2050 global population projection of 9-billion] by perhaps about 10 to 15 percent.”
Sure, I suppose that could mean that he advocates surreptitiously sterilizing Third-World women under the guise of providing health services.
But what it probably means is that he believes societies with better access to health care have a greater fraction of children survive to adulthood and see far, far, far fewer of their women die in childbirth. Access to birth control permits women to space out their children more, with benefits to the health of mother and child. Those societies (like, say, the villianous dystopias of Canada and Switzerland) tend to have lower overall birth rates and stable populations.
Re:Non story (Score:5, Funny)
I just did!
Oh wait...
And so it begins (Score:3, Funny)
I have been waiting for years for Bill Gates to start using his money for something in the mad scientist realm we all knew it was coming. . .
Nuclear-powered Bill Gates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I don't get is why he doesn't invest in an American company, like Westinghouse, or B&W, or GE...
It's nothing personal it's just good financial sense nowadays.
Lesson (Score:2)
Pride goeth before the meltdown.
Preparing for standoff with Axis of Evil (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps he's hoping to get Bing into the Iranian and North Korean search engine markets by threatening them with nukes.
Or free nukes in exchange for search engine monopoly.
Re:Preparing for standoff with Axis of Evil (Score:5, Funny)
He'd have more luck keeping nukes from Iran and North Korea by threatening them with Bing.
Seems very comic book (Score:3, Funny)
I Don't Know Man (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Tony Stark would whup Bond's ass and not even break a sweat.
Then he'd take all the Bond babes home - including Moneypenny, leaving Bond wondering just how the hell he's going to get laid in that movie.
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Tony Stark would whup Bond's ass and not even break a sweat.
Sure, with his Iron Man suit and gadgets and whatsits...put Stark and Bond in a straight up fistfight though? I think Bond would be the winner there.
Re:I Don't Know Man (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Dr. Jonathan Osterman. [wordpress.com] - Now with Cherenkov radiation effect!
Re:I Don't Know Man (Score:4, Funny)
Stark - "Have a drink?"
Bond - "Thank you, Martini sh..."
Stark - "...Shaken but not stirred, I know, Q and I are old friends. By the way, next time you see him, tell him I built something he might like. But for now.." Pours two very large martinis.
Four hours later Bond has his own suit of power armor that looks like a tux and Stark is off chasing skirts.
Re: (Score:2)
With a little mechanical arm holding a collapsible cocktail shaker that pops out the front to shake Bond's drinks!
Re:I Don't Know Man (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, you know the Windows monopoly is finally threatened with real competition when Bill Gates begins development of a new means of holding the world ransom, for one billion dollars.
Mud Bucket Brigade (Score:2)
Not what we need (Score:2, Informative)
We need "Mr. Fusion." All this nuclear fission based energy is so last-century. We need to get back to the future and use nuclear fusion technologies.
Re:Not what we need (Score:5, Informative)
There's still huge potential [youtube.com] for fission power. It's just that civilian reactor technology is basically stuck in the 1970s.
Re: (Score:2)
Having a load of intensely radioactive fission products just sloshing around rather than sealed in a solid fuel element doesn't seem like the best idea. All the mess of a reprocessing facility without the benefit of a cooldown period to dramatically reduce the activity of the fuel.
Re:Not what we need (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm right on it, just give me oh... say.. 20 years?
anyway, old school 1960s fission isnt all that interessting, these newer reactors which burn spent fuel from the old school reactors, is very very interesting. It reduces the amount of radioactive waste we have to store, and extracts energy in the process. Fusion, is off course the ultimate goal in nuclear technology, but optimising fission to the point where waste is kept to a minimum, and fuel cycles/reactor designs are far more efficient and safe is definitely a good thing
Re:Not what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
I still be the greens will oppose this tech under the grounds that it doesn't reduce waste ENOUGH.
It will encourage growth, the very last thing the greens want. Expect to see opposition to it.
Re:Not what we need (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not what we need (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientific American on fusion... (Score:3, Informative)
... the upshot: don't hold your breath. It turns out that achieving (or surpassing) energy break-even, as difficult as it is, is actually the least of your problems. Among the others: such reactors use deuterium/tritium fusion processes, and while deuterium is relatively plentiful on earth, tritium (with a half-life of around 5 days) is not. The reactor would need to breed its own tritium, and would need to do so with nearly 100% efficiency (in other words, virtually all the deuterium supplied to the breedi
Well let me figure this out... (Score:2)
Business see that the Government is now ready to invest in nuclear power and come up with some long term research project that will probably end up getting funded by said government. Yes, $Bill has thrown in his few coins, but I'm sure none of the investors will do it with out any potential for a return in 5 years. Smart business.
It's official (Score:3, Interesting)
The world has it's first true supervillain.
So who is our superhero? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Obamaman? Anyone?
Remember: no capes!
This being Slashdot... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So who is our superhero? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Obamaman? Anyone?
Remember: no capes!
Well, that leaves out Doctorow. Dang. Lessig?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn that dastardly Bill Gates with his plan to save millions of lives through vaccinations and effective health care for the third world!
Gives new meaning to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Blue screen of HOLY MOTHER OF...
Seriously though, this is a good idea. And these should power water-treatment and desalination plants.
Obvious concern... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obvious concern... (Score:5, Funny)
See Ted Talks (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill gave a speech on this at last years tedtalks.
http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html [ted.com]
Uncle! (Score:2)
Gates tries to make amends, but... (Score:5, Funny)
If one of Bill Gates' projects leads to clean and plentiful energy and saves the world from global warming, it still won't make up for IE6.
Maybe nothing will come of it. (Score:2, Interesting)
Intellectual Ventures, eh? If you believe all those article in Techdirt (here [techdirt.com],
here [techdirt.com] and
here [techdirt.com]), it is not so much a patent-holding concern as a patent-scam concern. Maybe Gates is getting ready to milk the nuclear power industry in the same way it is milking the IT and communications industries. If that is so, Gates just might save us from the perils of nuclear power, as the industry would be too busy defending itself in court to build any new plants.
Emerging Market Countries (Score:2)
The beauty of this technology... (Score:4, Interesting)
Toshiba makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
How large is this 136 HP reactor? If it's small enough I can certainly see a great future for electric vehicles.
Re:Toshiba makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
. . . and the obligatory: (Score:5, Funny)
"640 volts ought to be enough for anybody. . . "
Scorpio, you're mad! (Score:2, Insightful)
He'll sting you with his dreams of power and wealth.
Beware of Scorpio!
His twisted twin obsessions are his plot to rule the world
And his employees' health.
He'll welcome you into his lair,
Like the nobleman welcomes his guest.
With free dental care and a stock plan that helps you invest!
But beware of his generous pensions,
Plus three weeks paid vacation each year,
And on Fridays the lunchroom serves hot dogs and burgers and beer!
He loves German beer!
Blue Mushroom Cloud of Death??? (Score:2)
Probably has a more complicated activation process than a real reactor too.
Sane environmentalists, rejoice! (Score:4, Interesting)
I, for one, am glad to see the words "nuclear power" and "combat climate change" in the same sentence (which is not also another Slashdot comment).
Hopefully, something does come out of this in the end.
Microsoft Nuclear Reactor 1.0 (Score:2)
New Name (Score:2)
The sick part on this .... (Score:2)
Re:The sick part on this .... (Score:4, Informative)
Well Toshiba bought Westinghouse when the US stopped building nuclear power plants. Rather than letting all that know how go to waste and allowing mindless fear to control their energy policy Japan kept building nuclear power plants.
GE also builds reactors for the Navy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well Toshiba bought Westinghouse when the US stopped building nuclear power plants. Rather than letting all that know how go to waste and allowing mindless fear to control their energy policy Japan kept building nuclear power plants.
More importantly, Japan* has the heavy industrial base to handle the enormous steel ingots required to produce single piece containment vessels and they are able to scale that up in just a couple of years. IIRC, Japan Steel Works currently has 80% of the market, with China and Russia covering the last 20%. The USA never had the capacity to do it and AFAIK never planned to try.
You could use a two-piece containment vessel, but it has to be welded together and those welds must be inspected for life... which su
Start Button = Startup and Shutdown (Score:2)
Will the Start button be designed for both Startup and Shutdown of the reactor?
Will the paperclip show up on Computer screens stating, "I'm detecting a meltdown, would you like some help?"
Double standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Gates is boring (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know, there was something about Gates that always struck me as boring.
He is one of the few people in the world who have access to enormous resources and yet, he just does not do anything with it that I would qualify as fun.
Springer has his cars or maybe he used to, Woz flew airplanes, right? The Virgin guy, this dude Branson, he sounds like a kind of fella who knows how to have fun with the money he made. Airplanes, submarines, space craft! Now that's the kind of stuff I am talking about.
Gates is doing his charity of-course, but common, give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and .... there goes your fishing monopoly. What I mean is, he should be doing something fun with his money before he crocks. What's the point of having all that dough and do nothing exciting with it? Well, maybe he is excited with the charity works, again, I don't know. If I had crazy money, I would definitely build the biggest robots or biggest guns ever or biggest freaking submarine or a Enterprise at Moon's orbit. Something that would be hard and fun to do.
Common, Gates, do something that would show us that money can really cause great amounts of fun. Build a freaking nuclear reactor and attach it to a shark's head or something!
Re:Gates is boring (Score:5, Insightful)
He is one of the few people in the world who have access to enormous resources and yet, he just does not do anything with it that I would qualify as fun.
Springer has his cars or maybe he used to, Woz flew airplanes, right? The Virgin guy, this dude Branson, he sounds like a kind of fella who knows how to have fun with the money he made. Airplanes, submarines, space craft! Now that's the kind of stuff I am talking about.
IIRC, Bill Gates has a 30 car collection, it's just that he doesn't really talk about his toys. His (and Paul Allen co-founder of MS) most famous car is the imported Porsche 959 which spent over a decade impounded by customs until they helped get a Federal law passed allowing for "show and display" of cars that hadn't been crash certified in the USA.
There are a lot of Bill Gates stories, they just don't get brought up when talking about his charity work.
Your UID is low enough that you should already know some of them.
Nuclear; Does too little, cost too much (Score:4, Informative)
The answer is yes, and Rocky Mountain Institute [rmi.org] and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins [rmi.org] were featured in a New York Times [rmi.org] blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs [rmi.org] work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI [rmi.org] and Amory Lovins [rmi.org] have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here [rmi.org].
When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!
These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear [rmi.org], and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion [rmi.org], available for download here [rmi.org], which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.
Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.
Re:Nuclear; Does too little, cost too much (Score:4, Insightful)
For those interested, Rocky Mountain Institute loves to creatively play with numbers [blogspot.com], just like any other organization created for the purpose of propaganda of a particular idea; so take it all with a grain of sault, and double-check the sources for both numbers and context.
Re:Nuclear; Does too little, cost too much (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Living closer to work does not equal a more efficient car, so you are not making sense right off the bat.
2. If you do have a more efficient car, it is more efficient all the time, even if you end up driving a bit more. The amount of extra driving people are prepared to do if gas prices go down is nowhere near the amount of gas we could save if we doubled passenger vehicle efficiency. People don't have the time to double their driving, but doubling vehicle efficiency is already possible.
3. All transportation energy usage is only 28% of the energy usage of the US. This includes trucks, planes, trains etc... In all of these sectors efficiency can drop usage more than lower prices can increase demand.
4. We are talking about nuclear, which creates electricity. Most vehicles are not powered by electricity.
5. People don't actually care about how much electricity they are using. They care about the services they get from their energy. If energy prices go down because everyone has more efficiency TV's and refrigerators, most people are not going to think "SCORE, let's get ANOTHER refrigerator."
6. In states with high efficiency standards, energy usage per capita, and per unit of economic productivity does down. Better efficiency does in fact work, and we are just scratching the surface of the potential. see: http://ert.rmi.org/research/cgu.html [rmi.org]
For further reading, I recommend http://rmi.org/rmi/Reinventing+Fire+Solutions+Journal+Fall+2009 [rmi.org]
Re:Oh man (Score:4, Funny)
The bad part is it'll be like japan where his neighbors all have "An error has been detected with your computer and it has been shutdown for your safety...." burned into their skin.
Re: (Score:2)
I just hope this thing never bluescreens
Why? Does the article say he's going to put Windows ME on it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Naaa, Bill G. is a closet OpenBSD fan for all his personal use. He would never trust something as slipshod as windows to support anything he is personally involved in.
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There, fixed that for them. Alas, it's still not all that readable.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well, that's what the ALL-CAPS DISCLAIMER texts are for.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
isnt there some clause in the windows EULA that specificly prohibites using it in nuclear installation?
and damn, the MS-shills are out in force today, not a single post with a BSOD joke above the -1 level...
Re:Oblig Windows Ref (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Preemptive military strike (Score:5, Funny)
He's building a bomb, I tell you! A bomb! Send in the troops right now to stop him.
Running a pirated copy of windows has suddenly become a lot more dangerous.
Re:Preemptive military strike (Score:5, Funny)
Windows Genuine Advantage has detected that you are running an unregistered version of windows. Your power supply has registered itself as a Travelling Wave Reactor. Your thirty day trial period has now expired, and your Travelling Wave Reactor will begin its self destruct sequence.
Self destruct in
15 minutes...
6 days...
30 seconds...
Re:Preemptive military strike (Score:5, Funny)
Poppycock. One cannot defeat Googol the Destroyer with mere bombs. This is an attempt by Gatus to deny Googol the Detroyer the power needed to run the antipodal LHC in order to create the bipolar quantum energy conundrum in which Googol will temper the world's data before using it to complete the Rite of a Million Targeted Ads.
When last we saw our heroes [slashdot.org], Gatus and Joba continued in the diverse efforts to thwart Googol the Destroyer. But we saw a new hero rising, in the persona of T-Bone Pickings, who aims to control the world's power supply via creation of wind farms under his control, thereby making fossil-fuel energy obsolete and useless to Googol the Destroyer. It appears that Gatus and Pickings have been coordinating their efforts -- while Pickings is being thwarted by legislators who secretly serve the Dark Master, Gatus has come up with a plan to use small nuclear reactors to make fossil fuels obsolete, thereby denying Googol both the power to run the antipodal LHC and the power upon which his Webcrawling Spiders of Doom feed.
It appears that Googol the Destroyer has been partially thwarted in China -- there may be additional heroes there who we could celebrate, should we ever be able to get information out of the Great Firewall. Can Gatus have the same kind of Legislative and Bureacratic success against Googol the Destroyer here in the United States? Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, rumors circulate that Joba, contrary to popular belief, has not been ill. Rather, he underwent a series of surgeries to enhance his natural charisma, marketing abilities, and since he was under the knife anyway, a titanium-clad skeleton, actuator-enhanced musculature, and a bone-white monochromatic epidermis. Cyber-Joba is now a real force to be reckoned with -- but will his new powers be enough to thwart Googol the Destroyer?
And lest we forget, the roving Druid Stallmanx has ceased roaming for the time being, and spends his days and nights directing the efforts of his Beard Gnomes in his secret laboratory. Just what is he cooking up? Can he reconcile the anarchist developers with the money-grubbing and low-self-esteem developers that Gatus and Joba have converted to the cause of stopping Googol?
All these questions possibly answered, and more, in next week's episode of Googol the Destroyer!
Re:Preemptive military strike (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Preemptive military strike (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see why anyone would be surprised by this. He's already a multi-billionaire business tycoon with his own custom-built fortress. Since the job of Batman is already taken, the transition to supervillain is the next logical step.
But he's SO far behind Larry Ellison in that area.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Having survived Chernobyl it gives me a great fear if such reactor runs Windows. We will all be glowing in a dark after that blue screen....
Clearly you know very little about the Chernobyl disaster. If the people responsible for it had been forced to put up with 1,000,000 "Allow or Deny" requests, they would have never managed to disable enough safety devices to make the reactor fail. "Security through annoyance" wins again!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)