Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Team Up to Transform Nuclear Power

Oil Price ^ | 06/27/2024 | Haley Zaremba

[SeekAndFind]

• Bill Gates is pledging billions to promote next-generation nuclear power through TerraPower, focusing on innovations that could make nuclear a key player in global decarbonization.
• Increasing energy demands from the AI sector prompt tech leaders like Sam Altman and Bill Gates to advocate for nuclear power as a sustainable solution.
• Innovations in nuclear technology, including smaller, more standardized reactors, aim to reduce construction costs and compete with natural gas.

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Bill Gates is ready to sink billions into getting next-generation nuclear energy off the ground in the United States. The world’s sixth richest man has been a staunch nuclear supporter for years now, and has already sunk over a billion dollars of his own money into his innovative nuclear power start-up TerraPower LLC. But according to Gates, that cool billion is just the beginning. “I put in over a billion, and I’ll put in billions more,” Gates was recently quoted by Bloomberg.

Nuclear power has been gaining traction around the globe as a viable option for national and private decarbonization strategies. Nuclear advocates argue that we can no longer afford to ignore nuclear’s immense clean energy potential, as it is a proven technology with plenty of existing infrastructure, legal precedent and huge output capacity. While it is not considered to be a renewable energy, nuclear energy emits zero carbon emissions and could be a key part of a viable pathway to meeting global emissions targets.

Finding new ways to drum up a whole lot of clean energy output in a hurry has become increasingly urgent as the tech sector, and Artificial Intelligence in particular, suck up rapidly increasingly colossal amounts of energy.

[cymbeline]

“Small Modular Reactors (SMR) can become the primary source of generation ...”

What’s the big deal about small nuclear power plants? Over the years conventional power plants are built large because they are more efficient and cheaper per kilowatt hour to maintain. Same with nuclear.

[Socon-Econ]

I Gates can pull this off, it will offset much of the evil into which he is pouring his money.

[wita]

they broke ground June 10th in Wyoming for the “secondary” plant and awaiting NRC approval.

All very interesting considering the involvement of the Wyoming Governor in his approval of the project with Bill Gates, at the expense of Wyoming Coal and Oil business. If I was an owner of Wyoming coal, I would be gunning to replace the Governor at the first opportunity based on his slap in the face of what built the latest face of the great State of Wyoming.

Project approval is also a bit of a misnomer, as there presently is no approved plan by the NRC of any SMR to be constructed on site in Kimmerer, WY or anywhere else in these United States that I am aware of. I have been following this slow walk of Nuclear power since Admiral Rickover built the finest, safest nuclear navy way back before history began.

The slow walk leaves most of America wondering who is responsible for the attitude that exists vis a vis civilian use of nuclear energy when the US Navy stands as the supreme example of what “We the People” are capable of achieving when loosed from Government control. If we truly were attempting to have reliable nuclear base load energy I’m thinking someone big besides Bill Gates and the Wyoming Governor would be involved.

[wita]

What’s the big deal about small nuclear power plants? Over the years conventional power plants are built large because they are more efficient and cheaper per kilowatt hour to maintain.

I believe that principle went out the window with common sense over ten years ago when the idea of 24/7/365 grid reliability began to suffer with the attack on CO2 and so called fossil fuels. The shrinking of available reliable base load, vis a vis unreliable additions such as wind and solar have totally distorted reality in the energy production business.

[Salman]

Sounds good, but I don’t trust those two.

[Reeses]

Efficient co-generation

If decentralized, the waste heat from AI cloud servers could be used to heat homes and buildings. Computers get about 10% cheaper every year and the time is right for robot bakeries, 3D gun printers, robot brick curing machines, etc., to co-generate heat for homes, or evaporate gases to power pumps for cooling. At this point, burning limited energy resources for just the heat without any economic product is stupid.