Have you read it? If so, how is it? Worth the $10?
I have not been able to find a review.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Yeah, I read it. It gives a lot of details on why Gates should shift over to lftr—including links to detailed ongoing discussions between many physicists over the years that show how they shifted in favor of lftr; also a link to a paper written by Edward Teller—father of the H-bomb. In his last years —around 2004—at age 91— he wrote a paper which supported thorium reactors. I’m not quite sure what reactor design he specified. But the link to Teller’s paper is part of the report. Then there’s stuff like how to get across the valley of death —and around federal regulations...actually the US military wants to buy portable reactors for their bases in the USA so that they can get off the vulnerable grid—so they provide away around regulations as well as a first buyer.
There’s also some interesting stuff on desalination. Thorium lftr reactors promise to cut the cost of electricity to 1/10 current lowest cost coal produced electricity. This has profound effects on the cost of desalination—including the grand possibility of making desalinized water cheap enough for desert agriculture.
The ebook also mentions something the oil industry has since picked up on. Lower electricity costs will make insitu mining for oil shale in the green river basin (and in israel and elsewhere)....competitive. (because more than half the cost of insitu mining is the cost of electricity.) That’s the reason they have been involved in recent events that have promoted lftr companies like transatomic power. This would have been particularly galling for gates because one of the young MIT students who formed the company worked for Gates company and walked away to form TerraPower.
Those are the stories that stand out most to me. But there are a bunch of others. Including many that relate to water desalination. Its a good read with a good grasp of technology history and...if you’re into future history...that sort of thing too.
This would have been particularly galling for gates because one of the young MIT students who formed the company worked for Gates company and walked away to form TerraPower.
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I didn’t write this quite right. This should read....
This would have been particularly galling for gates because one of the young MIT students who worked for Gates company called TerraPower .... walked away to form Transatomic Power.