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Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

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Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#21

Post by jingo »

DaniFong wrote: post #7
btilly wrote: post #6

They say Bill Gates because he's famous. This is a spinoff of Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures - which is a patent trolling company. They may talk about plans to produce actual nuclear power, but I'll believe it when I see it. However it is guaranteed to create a lot of patents. Personally, even if it does succeed, I would have a bad taste in my mouth for anything and everything involved because I do not like…

Do you know him? Honesty I don't have a huge amount of information about his other dealings, but I think there is a genuine case for what he is trying to do with IV, even if you disagree with with methods. With me and my company, he has been a man of tremendous character and generosity. I daresay you and most others are prejudging the situation. In error. Keep in mind, I am no fan of the patent system either. http://…

"Do you know him?"

How does that matter? Maybe the issue the commenter is raising is not personal. Maybe it has nothing to do with personalities or generosity. Maybe he is raising the issue of IV's business model: further exploiting a broken system.

Some might opine that such exploitation is not a good thing, and we should not condone it let alone support it.

We can all make solid returns from patent trolling with very little risk. Seriously. The money is great. The USPTO is not going to fix the problems any time soon.

Does that mean we should all be working on patent troll "businesses"? Should we be doing all our business through shell corporations with PO Boxes in Eastern Texas? What if I could guarantee you a reasonable return? Would you invest in my patent trolling business? Why did Myrvold have to use his own money to start IV? Did he not want to take outside investment? Or maybe there was some other reason?

I'm not sure what you think he and Detmer are trying to do with IV. I think they're trying to make money as a tax collector on innovation. More power to them. The system allows this. It's all legal.

However, I can't quite see how the taxes innovators must pay to IV are adding any value. At best, they are paying for protection (nevermind why they should need such protection in the first place).

Educate me. What am I missing?

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#22

Post by adventured »

btilly wrote: post #6

They say Bill Gates because he's famous. This is a spinoff of Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures - which is a patent trolling company. They may talk about plans to produce actual nuclear power, but I'll believe it when I see it. However it is guaranteed to create a lot of patents. Personally, even if it does succeed, I would have a bad taste in my mouth for anything and everything involved because I do not like…

Doesn't Bill Gates have a substantial personal investment in TerraPower? And he's the chairman of the company. That sure seems like they're not just saying Bill Gates because he is famous: he has a meaningful personal involvement. Gates also has a track record of making sound investments, judging by his performance with Cascade Investments.

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#23

Post by erikpukinskis »

anigbrowl wrote: post #17
cabalamat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know him? I didn't know Adolf Hitler, but I know enough of him to know that he wasn't a nice person. Patent trolling is a legal form of extortion. It is evil. Myhrvold is an evil man.

Calling Myhrvold 'evil' and putting himself in the same context as Hitler is absurd. One is a businessman whose tactics you disapprove of and consider to be unethical, the other instigated the murder of millions of people, over and above the casualties of the numerous wars that he started.

I agree the Hitler comparison is absurd, but I think the whole "I'm gonna patent this obvious concept, not do anything with it, and then sue everyone who comes up with the idea independently while actually making an attempt to solve the problem in practice" is sort of evil.

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#24

Post by adventured »

acchow wrote: post #3

Why is it so obvious to the internet and no one else that thorium is the future of power? What do they (the experts) know that we don't?

It's a very expensive and time consuming switch-over to thorium. And it has to work at multi-decade reliability levels. That's a pretty big deal to get right. The real mistake was not staying with thorium R&D decades ago.

If it works as hoped, other countries will lead in it (rather than the US, although the US will supply some technology); countries like China or Norway for example. China in particular has been very happy to build out large scale nuclear power, and they're not as likely to be beholden to shielding old nuclear plants and tech from new competition.

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#25

Post by dragonshed »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #14
acchow wrote: post #3

Why is it so obvious to the internet and no one else that thorium is the future of power? What do they (the experts) know that we don't?

People who talk about the awesomeness of Thorium reactors rarely mention the very real downsides and technical hurdles. Such as the gamma radiation issue, or the fuel processing difficulties, and so forth. Moreover, aside from overcoming those issues building a suitable commercial power reactor will take a lot of time and investment. We're on the cusp of the 4th generation of Uranium/Plutonium fueled fission power re…

Two nitpicks: LFTR would be much much further along if it had the interest and research that fusion has had. Plus, LFTR went undeveloped for 25 years for some very stupid reasons.

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#26

Post by ghshephard »

btilly wrote: post #6

They say Bill Gates because he's famous. This is a spinoff of Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures - which is a patent trolling company. They may talk about plans to produce actual nuclear power, but I'll believe it when I see it. However it is guaranteed to create a lot of patents. Personally, even if it does succeed, I would have a bad taste in my mouth for anything and everything involved because I do not like…

"I do not like Nathan Myhrvold."

I dislike what Nathan Myhrvold has done with IV, the business model is despicable, and essential hacks major errors/bugs in the legal system to extrapolate money from productive members of society, and creators. The entire approach is a scam.

But, it's important to separate the bad that people do, from the good. Bill Gates and Microsoft (criminally) leveraged a monopoly to drive a good portion of a company (Netscape) I worked for out of the browser business.

But, that doesn't mean I can't respect and be amazed by the good that Bill Gates now does.

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#27

Post by ghshephard »

DaniFong wrote: post #7
btilly wrote: post #6

They say Bill Gates because he's famous. This is a spinoff of Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures - which is a patent trolling company. They may talk about plans to produce actual nuclear power, but I'll believe it when I see it. However it is guaranteed to create a lot of patents. Personally, even if it does succeed, I would have a bad taste in my mouth for anything and everything involved because I do not like…

Do you know him? Honesty I don't have a huge amount of information about his other dealings, but I think there is a genuine case for what he is trying to do with IV, even if you disagree with with methods. With me and my company, he has been a man of tremendous character and generosity. I daresay you and most others are prejudging the situation. In error. Keep in mind, I am no fan of the patent system either. http://…

How on earth can you defend Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures? If there was a single venture that I thought was completely indefensible, it was IV. "Genius" is not the word that comes to my mind, "Patent Trolling and extrapolating money out of productive members of society" is.

He may be a nice person, but IV is doing very bad things. Sometimes it does matter how you make your money.

Re: Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium

#28

Post by anigbrowl »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #23
anigbrowl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling Myhrvold 'evil' and putting himself in the same context as Hitler is absurd. One is a businessman whose tactics you disapprove of and consider to be unethical, the other instigated the murder of millions of people, over and above the casualties of the numerous wars that he started.

I agree the Hitler comparison is absurd, but I think the whole "I'm gonna patent this obvious concept, not do anything with it, and then sue everyone who comes up with the idea independently while actually making an attempt to solve the problem in practice" is sort of evil.

It's the unfortunate logical conclusion of our private property philosophy applied to intellectual capital. I'd like to see some sort of 'use it or lose it' clause enshrined at the core of property law, but obviously that approach could bring its own problems.
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