Bill Gates: "Chill Out Guys, I've Got This One Solved"

[Mikey]

New form of nuclear energy production? Are you kidding? Fast reactors, which burn waste uranium no matter matter how strontium-laden it is, have been developed since at least before the Yucca Mountain litigation... which IIRC is over a decade and a half ago.

[sunnyside]

Alright. Since we keep speculating I've finally just gone out an looked into what he's talking about.

The technology he's funding is for a traveling wave reactor. This is a particular type of a breeder reactor, it's advantages over some other breeders are:

-it doesn't need to have it's fuel removed and reprocessed. You load it up, run for 60 years, and than take down the whole plant.

-it's designed to run primarily off of the waste from the US's existing light water reactors. It's an old saying in nuclear that "the fuel is free" because the cost of the uranium is so low compared to other costs. However they'd probably get paid to take that stuff off other peoples hands. Actually that's been a stumbling block for breeders and recycling in many cases, economically it's a bit like buying something for your toilet that extracts the water from waste. You could do it, but water is so cheap nobody would bother. However with Yucca off the table for the moment, the nuclear septic tanks as such are filling up and this might start looking like a very attractive option.


I wouldn't consider the technology involved to be significantly beyond what we know of today.

However there is a large gulf between CAN be done and what IS done, especially in a country that hasn't built a nuke plant of any kind in decades. I think Gate's efforts are to get a breeder design from the drawing board and into reality.

[Tyyr]

Reprocessing isn't as cheap as simply mining new. However that changes if the government simply mandates that fuel be reprocessed.

Again, this can happen far more quickly and simply with existing technology and the right steps. This is just another case of ignoring something that can be done immediately and successfully but isn't because it's not the absolute perfect solution.

[sunnyside]

In practice current breeder designs have had a shakey past.

Putting out a nuclear reactor isn't like printing up a new T-shirt design.

The effort required in actually getting a design licenced in the US, convincing people to let you put the thing up in their backyard, and actually making it are all substantial hurdles costing many millions or billions of dollars each.

It is not unreasonable to try and have something really good before making the attempt.

I don't know how the details of how things balance out economically. However Gates has a pretty good rep as someone who knows a good opportunity.

[Tyyr]

In practice current breeder designs have had a shakey past.

I'm not talking about breeders, I'm talking about conventional fuel reprocessing. You can do it without a breeder reactor. Now breeders only make sense with reprocessing but reprocessing can take place without breeders.

Putting out a nuclear reactor isn't like printing up a new T-shirt design.

Thank you Captain Obvious.

The effort required in actually getting a design licenced in the US, convincing people to let you put the thing up in their backyard, and actually making it are all substantial hurdles costing many millions or billions of dollars each.

It is not unreasonable to try and have something really good before making the attempt.

Actually yes it is.

You are correct that there are serious issues in getting a nuclear reactor on the ground. However technology and standardized designs exist right now for them with decades of experience. Energy is needed right now and conventional nukes can be built right now. The spokesman for this company won't even guess when they'll be ready to go but instead relies on "there are lots of people in the world who think." For a TWR you're going to have to not only actually finish a design and test it (which hasn't been done) but you're going to have to demonstrate reliability and safety to the NRC and then you're going to have to convince a power company to take a risk on building one of these. All before you try and convince a few million people to let you build an experimental nuclear reactor in their backyards. I wish you the best of luck with that.

Conventional technology exists that can do everything a TWR proposes to do without the drawback of being a research project with no firm date as to when something could actually be built. I'm not against developing new and innovative technology but what's the point here?

Savings on Fuel: Marginal at best as a motivation. Fuel for nuclear power plants is a marginal cost of no real consequence.
Utilize Spent Fuel Waste: Reprocessing can already do this and in a more timely fashion*
Run on Unenriched Uranium: The Canadian CANDU design beat them to this by about half a century.

What is the pressing need for this technology? Why do we need to delay the construction of new nuclear power plants for twenty or more years until this technology is ready for commercial use? Why does this technology trump what we can already do?

I don't object to developing TWRs and let them compete with other designs but I can't see any logical reason to wait on TWRs and frankly I don't see the huge benefit of them versus things like CANDU's.

*Actually relooking over things this claim for the benefit of a TWR is actually rather weak as they are supposed to operate on their initial fuel load indefinitely. So each TWR could help you dispose of the spent fuel waste of a single refueling of a single nuclear reactor. You'd have to build several hundred TWR's to make use of all the existing nuclear waste.

[Aaron]

Just a note: the CANDU doesn't run on unenriched fuel, it runs on very low enriched fuel (20%) IIRC, but it can burn a number of things, including waste and weapons grade stuff. We occasionally dispose of Russian weapons grade stuff in them.

I know why it won't happen (not invented here) but the US should just buy the plans for the CANDU and start plopping them down everywhere. Or Canada should put them all along the border and sell the US power at exorbitant fair prices.

[Tyyr]

CANDU's can run on unenriched uranium. They run on slightly enriched uranium because its an efficiency boost. I'd get behind us buying the technology and then just giving it to whoever wants it. It's a great technology.

Really any Gen 3+ reactor design is good to go. Westinghouse's AP1000 series has design approval from the NRC and its a cookie cutter design.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I never much understood why we don't sell it to anyone who asks.

[Lighthawk]

Yeah, I never much understood why we don't sell it to anyone who asks.

Because anything nuclear makes people freak out

[sunnyside]

Yeah, I never much understood why we don't sell it to anyone who asks.

You more or less do. The CANDUs are part of the mix of competative plant designs. As I understand it their pros include fewer requirements for heavy industry and fuel enrichment and generally lower fuel costs(which are already rather low though). Their cons are overal higher construction costs, the cost of the heavy water, and the increased radioactive contamination from their little tritium problem.

Hmmmm That last bit might explain why they're primarily built worldwide in the sort of countries that buy asbestos from Quebec. Also, while I don't know it for a fact, I'd be inclined to think that the lack of of a proper sealed reactor vessel might make them more risky. Though I'm sure the risk is quite low in any case.

Regarding Gates, he isn't stopping anybody else from building whatever they can pull off, he's just throwing his hat behind this technology because he believes it will ultimately be much cheaper. The lack of having to recycle or swap out fuel might provide that. Maybe construction costs are lower. I dunno.