While you're at it, get rid of any more thoughts of feckless wind and solar.

Bill Gates’s Nuclear Venture Plans Reactor to Supplement Solar, Wind Power

 
August 28, 2020 Updated: August 28, 2020

WASHINGTON—A nuclear energy venture founded by Bill Gates said Thursday it hopes to build small advanced nuclear power stations that can store electricity to supplement grids increasingly supplied by intermittent sources like solar and wind power.

The effort is targeted at helping improve grid reliability.

TerraPower LLC, which Gates founded 14 years ago, and its partner GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, plan to commercialize stations called Natrium in the United States later this decade, TerraPower’s President and Chief Executive Chris Levesque said.

The project has not previously been reported.

Levesque said the companies are seeking additional funding from private partners and the U.S. Energy Department, and that the project has the support of PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, along with Energy Northwest and Duke Energy.

If successful, the plan is to build the plants in the United States and abroad, Levesque said.

By 2050 “we would see hundreds of these reactors around the world, solving multiple different energy needs,” Levesque said.

The 345-megawatt plants would be cooled by liquid sodium and cost about $1 billion each. Critics of advanced nuclear have also warned that smaller nuclear is even more expensive than conventional.

But for TerraPower, its new plants are designed to complement renewable power because they will store the reactor power in tanks of molten salt during days when the grid is well supplied. The nuclear power could be used when solar and wind power are low due to weather conditions.

Molten salt power storage has been used at thermal solar plants in the past, but leaks have plagued some of the projects.

Levesque said the Natrium design would provide more consistent temperatures than a solar plant, resulting in less wear and tear.

Gates, chairman of TerraPower’s board, said in a statement that Natrium innovation was “extremely difficult” but its team had “the expertise, commercial experience, and the resources necessary” to develop viable reactors.

Levesque said Natrium plants would first be built in the United States and other developed countries, but could later spread to countries that do not have yet have nuclear power.

Nonproliferation experts have warned that advanced nuclear projects could become targets for attack because their uranium fuel would be more highly enriched and more easily converted to fissile material than conventional fuel.

Levesque said the plants would reduce proliferation risks because they reduce overall nuclear waste.

Gates had initially hoped to build an experimental nuclear plant near Beijing with state-owned China National Nuclear Corp. But last year, TerraPower was forced to seek new partners after the Trump administration restricted nuclear deals with China.

By Timothy Gardner

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Comment by Willem Post on September 4, 2020 at 10:49am

On a separate note:

Fancy, computerized “climate models” predict SUBJECTIVE results all over the place.

THIRTY YEARS of satellite data, OBJECTIVELY showed, the world temps went from 0.34 + 0.43 = 0.77 C, or 0.0256 C/year.
Temps would likely increase another 0.77 C from 2020 to 2050.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/04/uah-global-temperature-updat...

According to AOC, Markey, Biden, Bernie, McKibben, Hair-do Pelosi, and other such Calizuela-like charlatans, we need “invest” tens of $$TRILLIONS, to turn the US economy upside down, ban fossil fuel by 2035 (according Biden’s “platform”), as otherwise, THEY SAY, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, “WE WILL ALL FRY AND THE WORLD WILL COME TO AN END”

Biden said he would not ban EXISTING fracking, only NEW fracking.
That is a grossly, obfuscating, misleading statement.

That would be a death sentence for ALL fracking, because sites produce for only a few years.
Then fracking at another site needs to be started to maintain production levels, so called NEW fracking.

Trump is right again, because it is common sense.

Biden is against any NEW fracking, which means existing sites would peter out in a few years, and THERE WOULD BE NO GAS, and, eventually, NO COAL AND NO NUCLEAR as well, which is exactly what BIDEN’s advisors, Bernie, AOC, Markey, etc., want.

That is like paddling, in a canoe, upstream of Niagara Falls.
No sane person would vote for Calizuela-like folks

Comment by Willem Post on September 4, 2020 at 5:27am

Wind and solar are heavily subsidized, coddled, expensive, unreliable CRIPPLES.

They need all sorts of support systems to make them useful for reliable electricity service, 24/7/365

The Bill Gates plan is to use a support system of NUCLEAR plants, WITH STORAGE, to make unreliable, variable/intermittent, expensive, wind and solar electricity useful to the grid.

Bill Gates would be OK with placing thousands of 3 to 4 MW, 500-ft tall wind turbines on NE ridge lines (disturbing millions of people and wild life), and in off-shore locations, and plastering about 200,000 NE acres with solar panels.

The life of wind turbines is about 15 to 20 years, of solar panels about 25 years.

The alternative would be battery systems (life about 15 years), but New England would need about 8 to 10 TWh of storage to cover frequently occurring, 5-7 day wind/solar lulls, and seasonal variations.

Turnkey capital cost = 9 billion kWh x $500/kWh (large, engineered-systems) = $4.5 TRILLION, or $1.8 TRILLION, if $200/kWh, at a future date

WALL STREET WILL LOOOOOVE BILL GATES.

DECADES OF TAX SHELTER SELLING AND MANAGEMENT

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-vagaries-of-solar-...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-na...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-demand-and-low-win...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plant...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-res...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/analysis-of-a-6-day-lul...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/ne-wind-and-solar-elect...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/nuclear-a-more-rational...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/wind-and-solar-conditio...

Comment by Penny Gray on September 3, 2020 at 1:08pm
With nuclear power, no backup generation is needed. Why bother with all the boutique add-ons?
Comment by Mountain View on September 3, 2020 at 11:48am

Good find arthur qwenk!  Good comment also.

Comment by arthur qwenk on September 1, 2020 at 9:13pm

Gates is like ALL Liberal Elites. As long as they’re making money, it’s OK for them to do exactly what climate change frauds have condemned as they closed conventional nuclear plants. Liberals only believe in Marxism for everyone else. They’ll stick with Capitalism as they gain power and money .

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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