Stephen Colbert - Guest Bill Gates: The Vaccines Offer Americans A Chance To Return To Normal Life

[Rhiannon12866]

Bill Gates says that if enough Americans are inoculated with the Covid-19 vaccines, the country could return to a relatively normal life by this Fall. Bill Gates has also been working to fight climate change and you can read about it in his new book, "How To Avoid A Climate Disaster."




Bill Gates On Texas: We're Going To Have More Of These Crazy Weather Events

Bill Gates comments on the causes of the energy crisis in Texas and argues that nuclear power should be a linchpin of the world's clean energy strategy. Bill's new book, "How To Avoid A Climate Disaster," is available now.

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Thanks!

And I agree! This was a really worthwhile interview!

[SheltieLover]

3. Absolutely!

I am adamantly opposed to nuclear power, favoring renewables, but a timely & important interview with great points!

Yw! Ty for posting this!

[ancianita]

4. Gates' investment in developing TerraPower is his attempt to make nuclear energy safe again.

As I understand it, he thinks this is a scalable substitute for fossil fuel generation of electricity.
Right now it looks as if he's just pushing the idea, but when he's ready to demonstrate it, he should have a real energy alternative to fossil fuel, even for use in global transportation, that would allow electric shipping and air travel to exist at the current scale of their fossil use. Maybe that's why his deadline for net zero is 2050.

from wikipedia:

TerraPower has chosen traveling wave reactors (TWRs) as its primary technology. The major benefit of such reactors is high fuel utilization in a manner that does not require nuclear reprocessing and could eventually eliminate the need to enrich uranium.[6] TWRs are designed to convert typically non-fissile fertile nuclides such as U-238 into fissile nuclides like Pu-239 in-situ and then shift the power from the highly burned region to the freshly bred region, as an integrated breeder reactor.

This allows the benefits of a closed fuel cycle without the expense and proliferation-risk of enrichment and reprocessing plants typically required to get them. Enough fuel for between 40 and 60 years of operation could be in the reactor from the beginning. The reactor could be buried below ground, where it could run for an estimated 100 years.[7] TerraPower described the concept of its main reactor design as a "Generation IV, liquid sodium-cooled fast reactor".[8]

In October 2020, the company was chosen by the United States Department of Energy as a recipient of a matching grant totaling between $400 million and $4 billion over the next 5 to 7 years for the cost of building a demonstration reactor of their "Natrium" design, which uses liquid sodium as a core coolant (this reduces the cost by having a non-pressurized primary loop). It then transfers that heat to molten salt which can be stored in tanks and used to generate steam for electricity production on demand, enabling the reactor to run continuously at constant power while allowing the electricity generation from the power station to be dispatchable.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower

terrapower.com