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Bill Gates thinks he has a key part of the answer for combating climate change: a return to nuclear power. The Microsoft co-founder is making the rounds on Capitol Hill to persuade Congress to spend billions of dollars over the next decade for pilot projects to test new designs for nuclear power reactors.
Gates, who founded TerraPower in 2006, is telling lawmakers that he personally would invest $1 billion and raise $1 billion more in private capital to go along with federal funds for a pilot of his company’s never-before-used technology, according to congressional staffers.
“Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day,” Gates said in his year-end public letter. “The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.”
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 28 2019, @04:52AM (4 children)
Like running a reactor past the intended end of life of the reactor because the next generation didn't come on line?
You know this because? Which of those "corners" happened to be relevant to the accident?
When did they "know" this? Last I heard, it was within a few years of the Fukushima accident. Such modifications don't happen overnight. Hindsight is always so much more amazing than foresight especially when one conveniently forgets that nuclear regulation doesn't turn on a dime.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @04:57AM (1 child)
shut the fuck up, khallow, you're out of your depth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 28 2019, @05:12AM
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @06:20AM (1 child)
It's like the giant pot hole on a main road on the way to work, lasting two years before they finally fixed it properly. Took a big multi car pileup and associated lawsuits that paid out at least fifty times what the hole would have cost to fix in the first place. Prior to that, instead of fixing it, they just kept re-pouring asphalt to fill it in. Naturally, the hole was back two months later, wider and deeper than before.
So, they somehow had the money when the shit hit the fan, but nothing before that. I call bullshit on this, and heads should have rolled.
Same goes for taking years to increase the size of a wall. If they wanted it done, it could have been up in under 6 months. But, instead, they sat on the information and did nothing. Maybe they could have been lucky and avoided any disasters for another 10 years before they finally (if ever) got around to doing it. Might have even been excusable if they were in the middle of building it up.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 28 2019, @03:34PM
What would have been the reason to do it in under 6 months? Remember, they couldn't know that the earthquake would have happened before their reactors would have been decommissioned.
That's what reinsurers are for.
They were in the middle of building it up. Still had to decide whether to build the thing. That's part of building it up.