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Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

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Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#41

Post by [deleted] »

jjoonathan wrote: post #19
dsign wrote: post #10

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 ... :-( ...

Nuclear energy is spurned by many (most?) self-styled environmentalists. That alone could win it favor in this administration. If Republicans could be persuaded to "own" it and Democrats could be persuaded to go along with it, we might just wind up doing something good for the planet. 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…

[deleted]

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#42

Post by benj111 »

arduanika wrote: post #20
hristov wrote: post #12

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…

> much cheaper sources of green energy 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.

Re green jobs: I think that's meant as a retort to the "what about coal miners?" Argument.

I'm trying to understand your nuclear -> fuel plan. Nuclear reactors already use a storage solution, why are you adding an extra step? Why not combine it with wind/solar?

Edit: Are you suggesting the green jobs would lead to high wages and costs? Don't forget theres no fuel cost with renewables.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#43

Post by tim333 »

vertline3 wrote: post #14
gotocake wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh okay I thought Terra power was working on this magnetic tape thing It's called ybco tape

Nah different technology. The tape is used in prospective fusion designs like MIT SPARC. Terra power have a fission design called a traveling wave reactor.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#44

Post by ianai »

noobermin wrote: post #30

I'm pro-nuclear fission (full disclosure, I work on fusion related research, but I don't care about who wins more than I want society to win), but I think talking to any random person in the public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record. Make as many arguments you want to make about fukushima facing a natural disaster, w/e, and how the field has advanced since three-m…

The public opinion isn’t skeptical of nuclear. They assume nuclear is some white hole of cancer that’s going to kill them and everyone around the plant or uses its power. It kills people, makes them turn green, and grow a third eye/flippers. It’s prejudice.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#45

Post by vertline3 »

tim333 wrote: post #43
vertline3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh okay I thought Terra power was working on this magnetic tape thing It's called ybco tape

Nah different technology. The tape is used in prospective fusion designs like MIT SPARC. Terra power have a fission design called a traveling wave reactor.

Thanks! I will look it up

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#47

Post by foobarbazetc »

noobermin wrote: post #30

I'm pro-nuclear fission (full disclosure, I work on fusion related research, but I don't care about who wins more than I want society to win), but I think talking to any random person in the public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record. Make as many arguments you want to make about fukushima facing a natural disaster, w/e, and how the field has advanced since three-m…

Isn’t there also a cost argument here? Both time to ROI and decommissioning costs are enormous?

Or have things changed?

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#48

Post by pjc50 »

aiyodev wrote: post #13

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.

Last week the Federal budget was "object not set to an instance of a budget".

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#49

Post by justin66 »

noobermin wrote: post #30

I'm pro-nuclear fission (full disclosure, I work on fusion related research, but I don't care about who wins more than I want society to win), but I think talking to any random person in the public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record. Make as many arguments you want to make about fukushima facing a natural disaster, w/e, and how the field has advanced since three-m…

> the fact remains the public is skeptical regarding fission for good reason: history has not been kind to the kind of disasters fission reactors have wrought

It's a problem even if you assume the public and the public's view is a bit more sophisticated. If we are precise, the problem was not the disasters the reactors wrought, it's the problem people - operators, corporations, regulators, etc. - wrought with careless operation of reactors and stupid ways of handling fuel processing and waste.

So, if you're that slightly more sophisticated member of the public, you ask the question: are we doing any better today in terms of nuclear regulatory apparatus, governance, and general corporate responsibility? It might actually be a bit better now than forty years ago, but we all know where public sentiment is today. Industry and regulators will very understandably need to do some work to earn everyone's trust. It's not about the reactors, it's about the people operating them.

> They aren't dumb, they just know rightly that engineers can't foresee the everything in the future and are understandably skeptical.

That's exactly right.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#50

Post by m0zg »

microcolonel wrote: post #40
m0zg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like First Step Act did not originate within the administration. Jared Kushner was the primary driver of it since day one.

Yes, but it enjoyed broad support, and was progressive in substance. The assumption that the Trump administration would be futile to engage with on what could be construed as a "green" cause seems to stem from a broader assumption that they are incapable of, or resistant to, progressive policy. My point is that if you couch it in the same balanced terms, there's no reason why an equally progressive initiative in ener…

But it was the other way around: _the Trump administration_ (of which Kushner is perhaps the sharpest instrument; I had a media-distorted view of him until I watched some interviews -- dude is super smart) engaged with others in a bipartisan way to make this happen.
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