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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: 5, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Monday November 22 2021, @02:00PM (11 children)
I'm all for next-gen nuclear power, but why have they decided on using liquid sodium??? As the article states that has been tried before, but disingenuously the article doesn't mention that most/many suffered multiple sodium fires or leaks [osti.gov] and had either significant downtime or outright mothballing of the reactor as a result.
I know LFTRs aren't the panacea they're hyped to be, but at least they could've lifted (har har) the best part of the design - the FLiBe coolant, or at least a fluoride salt variant that doesn't hate water like sodium.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 22 2021, @02:14PM (9 children)
And they're siting this in OIL country. What do you think the odds are of a sabotage event? Do you think the strategy is to blame the first sodium fire on sabotage then attempt to learn from it and maybe perfect the tech using the insurance settlement as development funding?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @02:45PM (2 children)
You don't know how insurance works do you ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @03:32PM
That's that socialism stuff I keep hearing about on Fox News?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 22 2021, @05:51PM
I know how pride and selective perception works. Insurers in the area would be too prideful of the "good folk" in their part of the country to ever rate the risk of sabotage upwards due to local sentiments.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 23 2021, @02:19AM (5 children)
My Cynical Little Voice RTFA, and the sodium-fires document someone linked above, then opined that this is more about siphoning the equivalent of venture capital out of the government... because the project itself is a failure waiting to happen. And if that contaminates a few million acres of formerly good grazing land.. oh well, you didn't need to eat all that meat anyway, Bill Gates says as much.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 23 2021, @03:01PM (4 children)
There's also the possibility that they can proceduralize and train and design a system that works properly without fires, the first time. Bill Gates would seem to be the last person on Earth I would nominate to lead such an effort, but maybe he's stepped back from the day to day management and learned a thing or two with his big BSOD presentations. Maybe, probably not, but maybe.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 23 2021, @04:08PM (3 children)
And that doesn't, as mentioned somewhere in yesterday's reading, make the sodium become radioactive, so you've got =another= disposal problem...
...yeah, I'm hopin' regulatory red tape strangles this one in its crib. Cuz otherwise it might well be the glowing blue screen of death.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 23 2021, @05:41PM (2 children)
Oh, just keep the whole thing in a double-walled pressure cylinder with pure chlorine gas in the middle layer- if the sodium gets out of hand we'll just have some radioactive salts (water soluble to boot, hello water table!) What could possibly go wrong?
Sadly, Gates may have the connections (appropriate bribes paid in advance) to slice through the red tape, and I bet the venue was chosen in part because of the economical nature of the local regulation costs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 23 2021, @06:08PM (1 child)
Oh, that sounds even safer! And glowing blue salt is sure to be a hit in the gourmet market!!
Yeah, good bet they plan to take advantage of Wyoming's relatively streamlined regulations, but won't help 'em with federal regs. But as you say, a campaign contribution here and there, and those problems go away.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 23 2021, @07:06PM
An IP attorney and I were onboarded at a Texas company on the same day in 2003. Little did I know at the time, said atty was the campaign treasurer of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. He thought he and I would be working together drafting and submitting patents. Little did he know, he would spend the next 18 months lobbying his buddy Tom virtually non-stop, ultimately resulting in some kind of unpleasant pressure being brought to bear on the FDA - coercing them to approve our new indication for use, but not stopping them from publicly squealing like a kicked dog over the move. Said squeal was all the excuse the insurance carriers needed to deny coverage for the new indication, but the CEO's golden parachute clause didn't say anything about getting insurance reimbursement, only FDA approval so he took a $5M exit a few months later.
It really happens.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 22 2021, @07:19PM
Thorium Fluoride gets along with water pretty well, the problem it has that is holding it back is that in a liquid state they are very corrosive. Because of this it's easier to build a container for molten Sodium that will last 50 years than it is to make one for molten Fluoride salts with the same lifespan.
There are alloys that can handle the molten fluoride salts but they are difficult to form into the shapes needed and work with in general so it's been a stalling point for the molten Fluoride salts concept. The people who worked on the original prototype LFTRs back at Oakridge National Laboratories were confident that it could be resolved given time.
I know it's not going to happen but a "Manhattan Project" or "Man on the Moon" level push to develop MSRs and other safer nuclear reactors would probably get a really good and safe design done within a decade. I mean they went from first self sustaining chain reaction in hand built reactor pile on December in 1942 to an implosion* type nuclear device using Plutonium in just 2 and a half years.
* imagine uniformly crushing a grapefruit to the size of a baseball using explosives. Easy concept, very hard in practice.when starting from scratch
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