Very good news - Bill Gates goes nuclear
BillG set up a company called
TerraPower
It's goal is to design and build a
Traveling Wave nuclear reactor.
The design is interesting but complex -- the fuel rods need to be shuffled continually and the reaction happens only at one layer in the fuel assembly.
I have been a fan of
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors for the last ten years or so. Inherently safe, able to burn spent fuel from conventional reactors and decent power density.
It seems that BillG is also interested -- from
The Weinberg Foundation:
Bill Gates� nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium
TerraPower, the Bill Gates-chaired nuclear company that is developing a fast reactor, is now investigating alternative reactor technologies, including thorium fuel and molten salt reactors.
While the company�s �big bet� continues to be on a fast reactor that TerraPower calls a traveling wave reactor (TWR), it is exploring other designs that could offer improvements in safety, waste and economics, CEO John Gilleland told me in a phone interview.
�We are an innovation house, so we like to look at other approaches,� Gilleland said. �Our big bet is on the traveling wave reactor because it fulfills so many of the goals that we would like to see nuclear achieve. But we�re always looking for innovations that lead to better safety or minimization of waste and so forth and so we have several things going there. Although those activities are small, that�s the way large activities get started.�
TerraPower�s interest in alternatives such as molten salt reactors (MSRs) came to light last month when the company�s director of innovation, Jeff Latkowski, surfaced in the audience at the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference in Chicago. The two-day gathering included presentations on thorium fuel and on reactors including molten salt reactors, high temperature solid fuel reactors, accelerator driven reactors, and others.
If you have a half-hour, this video goes into a lot of detail about Thorium.
Other nations are getting on the bandwagon -
China,
Norway and
India.
Posted by DaveH at July 24, 2013 4:41 PM