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posted by martyb on Thursday June 03 2021, @07:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the safe-like-ms-windows-and-real-estate-doing-fission-together dept.

Wyoming has selected billionaire Bill Gates's company TerraPower LLC and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway's owned power company PacifiCorp to build the nation's first Natrium reactor. As reported by Reuters:

TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), said the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant is expected to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels than traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

"This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative," Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said. "Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy" in Wyoming, the country's top coal-producing state.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system's power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion.

[...] Chris Levesque, TerraPower's president and CEO, said the demonstration plant would take about seven years to build.

"We need this kind of clean energy on the grid in the 2030s," he told reporters.

Also seen over at ZeroHedge.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @03:28PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @03:28PM (#1141796)

    Average Wyoming elevation is 6700 feet. The lowest point is 3100 feet near the South Dakota border. So, yes, if a tsunami was large enough to reach Wyoming, and then reach the location of the reactor, it would be an EPIC sized tsunami. And we'd have many more larger problems to deal with.

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday June 05 2021, @02:22AM

    by hendrikboom (1125) on Saturday June 05 2021, @02:22AM (#1141942) Homepage Journal

    Sounds high enough to be above sea level after Antarctica melts.