11–20 of 353 posts
Pushing for green energy and good deeds with the current administration makes me fear for the health of Bill Gates... is he running out of time and considering desperate options? ... now that I think about it, we all are running out of time ... :-( ...
I should add that there is such an energy glut in the world nowadays that companies that make turbines for nuclear/coal/gas plants are in dire financial straits. (See GE and to a lesser extent Siemens and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries).
What we need now is a good storage solution, or a flexible on demand power plant. Nuclear is very bad for both of these goals.
BTW Mr. Gates' offer is not that generous. He says if the tax payer puts billions of money in his company he will also put a billion of his money in his company. Well gee that is great for you but what does the taxpayer get out of it. What if a stranger comes up to you and says "Hey buddy, if you pay $5000 to fix my car, I will pay $1000 out of my own money to repaint it."
This is like asking someone with a 4 Gbps connection to transfer some files and offering to burn a single mini CD to help them.
Wow! I hope his fusion push works out. I think he was working with that tokamak design from MIT last I checked. The design used a magnetic tape that was a new breakthrough, there is a youtube video explaining the details.
This isn’t about fusion, but fission. I would assume that Gates being a famously bright man, understands that none of us are seeing fusion power in our lifetimes. Of course Gates is backing an extremely challenging form of breeder reactor called a TWR. Still, any progress on nuclear at this point is good, and desperately needed.
It's called ybco tape
Gates is worth ~$100B. The US federal budget is ~$4.1T per year. This is like asking someone with a 4 Gbps connection to transfer some files and offering to burn a single mini CD to help them.
Gates is worth ~$100B. The US federal budget is ~$4.1T per year. This is like asking someone with a 4 Gbps connection to transfer some files and offering to burn a single mini CD to help them.
What is the current US federal budget for building or supporting nuclear energy infrastructure?
Gates is worth ~$100B. The US federal budget is ~$4.1T per year. This is like asking someone with a 4 Gbps connection to transfer some files and offering to burn a single mini CD to help them.
Gates is worth ~$100B. The US federal budget is ~$4.1T per year. This is like asking someone with a 4 Gbps connection to transfer some files and offering to burn a single mini CD to help them.
Pushing for green energy and good deeds with the current administration makes me fear for the health of Bill Gates... is he running out of time and considering desperate options? ... now that I think about it, we all are running out of time ... :-( ...
That's probably optimistic, but there's a lot more hope in that idea than in fighting a pitched battle about solar panels, China, and "clean coal" in the current political climate.
Bad idea. We have plenty of much cheaper sources of green energy. And lets face it nuclear is far from green. Offshore wind energy is so successful that it is now negatively affecting solar as well as nuclear and fossil fuels. Furthermore, the greatest current innovation vis-a-vis energy is energy saving which is much cheaper than building new reactors. I should add that there is such an energy glut in the world nowa…
When people stop bragging about how many more jobs green energy creates than fossil fuels, I'll start believing that renewables are cheaper at scale.
> What we need now is a good storage solution
Collocate the new nuclear plants with facilities that (at high energy cost) recapture carbon into dense fuels.