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Bill Gates' nuclear power company selects a site for its first reactor
On Tuesday, TerraPower, the US-based nuclear power company backed by Bill Gates, announced it has chosen a site for what would be its first reactor. Kemmerer, Wyoming, population roughly 2,500, has been the site of the coal-fired Naughton Power Plant, which is being closed. The TerraPower project will see it replaced by a 345 megawatt reactor that would pioneer a number of technologies that haven't been commercially deployed before.
These include a reactor design that needs minimal refueling, cooling by liquid sodium, and a molten-salt heat-storage system that will provide the plant with the flexibility needed to better integrate with renewable energy.
While TerraPower is the name clearly attached to the project, plenty of other parties are involved, as well. The company is perhaps best known for being backed by Bill Gates, now chairman of the company board, who has promoted nuclear power as a partial solution for the climate crisis. The company has been selected by the US Department of Energy to build a demonstration reactor, a designation that guarantees at least $180 million toward construction and could see it receive billions of dollars over the next several years.
Also at Ars Technica.
Previously: Bill Gates & Warren Buffet to Build Nation's First Natrium Reactor in Wyoming
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @10:57AM (6 children)
I hate Bill Gates.
I want him to make me look like an asshole by creating stuff like clean energy and toilets etc.
I will still hate him, and I think it's a lot more about ego than about helping people, but I want to live in a world where people can point to objects and say "look, bill gates is a good person".
I'll never know if he's doing it because he has a genuine shame/guilt he's trying to get over, or because he's a lot more visible and he's forced by circumstances to do what other rich assholes don't.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Monday November 22 2021, @02:42PM (3 children)
This is why there are so many libraries and university buildings with Andrew Carnegie's name on it. He literally had striking workers killed, so maybe it was part guilt, part ego.
He was still an asshole, but we did get some stuff out of it. Not the best use of funds, since he did it to plaster his name all over it and a lot of the stuff is needlessly frivolous. (The Cathedral of Learning is cool, but ultimately one of those kind of useless gilded age buildings.)
Any time I see a college building named after a person, I just assume that person was a rich asshole. Still glad to have the stuff, though.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @03:51PM (2 children)
CL is a University of Pittsburgh building.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @07:47PM (1 child)
Carnegie Libraries are public libraries across the America. I used to read in one in a small town in Montana.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday November 23 2021, @02:14AM
I didn't realize we had 'em. A whole bunch, as it happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_Montana [wikipedia.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @04:38PM (1 child)
Gates not only gives directly to charity but helps persuade other wealthy people around the globe to do likewise
https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx [givingpledge.org]
Is a wealth tax better? Maybe but then that money is subject to government inefficiency and waste
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @06:01PM
lmao. it must be nice to be such a fucking idiot.