Bill Gates launches into the future nuclear
March 24, 2010
When the richest man in the world embarked on the nuclear information is provided to irradiate. And when the Japanese giant Toshiba, one of the world's leading manufacturers of jet engines, says U.S. billionaire, the news is taken seriously. Toshiba announced Tuesday it had signed an agreement in November with Bill Gates, shareholder of a small company called TerraPower to study the feasibility of a revolutionary nuclear reactor.
Bill Gates, who now devotes himself full time to his charitable foundation and private investments, outlined his plan last month at a conference in California, TED 2010, bringing together visionaries from all walks of life. He claims the consistency of his approach as "energy and climate are extremely important" for people in poor countries which helps the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."We need miracles energy" as the PC was the computer calls the founder of Microsoft. For the technophile Gates, the miracle without CO2 will be atomic.
The young firm TerraPower expects to be able to design in twenty years a reactor burning uranium depleted and can work sixty or one hundred years without being charged! His angels are Bill Gates and another former pillar of Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold, who founded the company Intellectual Ventures, which funds innovative projects. The richest man in the world has already spent "tens of millions" of dollars to make computer simulations of reactor no faxing cash advance . It burns slowly depleted uranium "as a candle" by analogy Gates. Manufacture the prototype, however, require "several billion" dollars.On paper, the "reactor combustion wave (TWR, English) has the advantage of using fuel as depleted uranium (U238), the isotope which constitutes 99% of natural uranium and is currently stored as radioactive waste.
Disadvantages
The concept of TWR goes back sixty years and physicists of the world have revived in the 1990s. In 2000, the Generation IV Forum, a group of international experts, however, did not consider it had sufficient promise, says Bernard Bonin, deputy scientific director of the CEA (Commissariat ? l'Energie Atomique). The physicist in Saclay recognizes the interest of the reactor but said disadvantages. To work for decades, the TWR will need large quantities of fuel and a facility will be very expensive.Another concern, safety: the materials they will withstand a long period of irradiation? Bernard Bonin, "sign and persists in his skepticism of TWR. However, yesterday announced support of the Japanese manufacturer Toshiba reactor Bill Gates is, he admits, a surprise.
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