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Wow! I hope his fusion push works out. I think he was working with that tokamak design from MIT last I checked. The design used a magnetic tape that was a new b

Wow! I hope his fusion push works out. I think he was working with that tokamak design from MIT last I checked. The design used a magnetic tape that was a new breakthrough, there is a youtube video explaining the details.

gotocake 8y ago
This isn’t about fusion, but fission. I would assume that Gates being a famously bright man, understands that none of us are seeing fusion power in our lifetimes. Of course Gates is backing an extremely challenging form of breeder reactor called a TWR. Still, any progress on nuclear at this point is good, and desperately needed.
- vertline3 8y ago
  Oh okay I thought Terra power was working on this magnetic tape thing It's called ybco tape
  - tim333 8y ago
    Nah different technology. The tape is used in prospective fusion designs like MIT SPARC. Terra power have a fission design called a traveling wave reactor.
    - vertline3 8y ago
      Thanks! I will look it up
- bsder 8y ago
  > This isn’t about fusion, but fission. I would assume that Gates being a famously bright man, understands that none of us are seeing fusion power in our lifetimes And the reason for that is because the funding for fusion is below the "fusion never" stage. https://imgur.com/sjH5r https://imgur.com/sjH5r If Gates were really interested, he'd commit a billion dollars every single year to fusion. That would roughly speaking quadruple the amount of funding driving fusion forward. And, to top it off, even if you didn't get fusion you'd start getting real engineering spinoff technologies that you could use in other facets of power generation, transmission, storage, etc.
Retric 8y ago
This seems to be about fission not fusion. Spending billions on fission research seems wasteful when you could leverage that into wind solar projects whose profits could then be reinvested into even more clean energy. Add in leverage and say 2 billion in research could represent 10-20+ billion worth of clean energy investments before the fruits of this research could come online. And even then you would need to spend even more money actually building something useful. This could be my own bias talking but fission has seen 100+ Billion in R&D. I have my doubts this is going to move the needle much. PS: I am more than open to any counter arguments you have...
- krastanov 8y ago
  Seems silly you were downvoted without being responded to. But I do believe you are misinterpreting/misstating facts. If you take into account externalities, fission is cleaner and kills fewer people than other renewables (and both are much better than fossil fuel). This is true even after including the grossly incompetent (but thankfully rare) disasters in the history of nuclear energy. There are a couple of research paper references that always pop up in conversations like this about deaths per MWhour for each type. Even storage of waste is a solved problem: bury it in dry old mines in seismically dead locations, or start moving to the known novel reactor types. Politically, the issue is much different though...
  - Retric 8y ago
    Costs are the real issue not worker safety. The trucking industry kills lots of people and nobody saftyreally cares. So, it’s really a straw man argument about non issues. Really, I would have no problem with Nuclear if it was cheap, but nobody can get it to be cheap (not even China) even without the need to load follow. We need cheap power and supplemental load following / storage. But, Nuclear is simply well behind the curve on both sides of the equation. Safe, stead production at 4c/kWh without subsidies would be a game changer or load following at much higher prices. Now, if the economics looked great then sure, but this stuff is all about minor improvements that don’t really change the game.
    - 8y ago

gotocake 8y ago

This isn’t about fusion, but fission. I would assume that Gates being a famously bright man, understands that none of us are seeing fusion power in our lifetimes. Of course Gates is backing an extremely challenging form of breeder reactor called a TWR. Still, any progress on nuclear at this point is good, and desperately needed.

vertline3 8y ago
Oh okay I thought Terra power was working on this magnetic tape thing It's called ybco tape
- tim333 8y ago
  Nah different technology. The tape is used in prospective fusion designs like MIT SPARC. Terra power have a fission design called a traveling wave reactor.
  - vertline3 8y ago
    Thanks! I will look it up
bsder 8y ago
> This isn’t about fusion, but fission. I would assume that Gates being a famously bright man, understands that none of us are seeing fusion power in our lifetimes And the reason for that is because the funding for fusion is below the "fusion never" stage. https://imgur.com/sjH5r https://imgur.com/sjH5r If Gates were really interested, he'd commit a billion dollars every single year to fusion. That would roughly speaking quadruple the amount of funding driving fusion forward. And, to top it off, even if you didn't get fusion you'd start getting real engineering spinoff technologies that you could use in other facets of power generation, transmission, storage, etc.

Retric 8y ago

This seems to be about fission not fusion. Spending billions on fission research seems wasteful when you could leverage that into wind solar projects whose profits could then be reinvested into even more clean energy. Add in leverage and say 2 billion in research could represent 10-20+ billion worth of clean energy investments before the fruits of this research could come online. And even then you would need to spend even more money actually building something useful. This could be my own bias talking but fission has seen 100+ Billion in R&D. I have my doubts this is going to move the needle much. PS: I am more than open to any counter arguments you have...

krastanov 8y ago
Seems silly you were downvoted without being responded to. But I do believe you are misinterpreting/misstating facts. If you take into account externalities, fission is cleaner and kills fewer people than other renewables (and both are much better than fossil fuel). This is true even after including the grossly incompetent (but thankfully rare) disasters in the history of nuclear energy. There are a couple of research paper references that always pop up in conversations like this about deaths per MWhour for each type. Even storage of waste is a solved problem: bury it in dry old mines in seismically dead locations, or start moving to the known novel reactor types. Politically, the issue is much different though...
- Retric 8y ago
  Costs are the real issue not worker safety. The trucking industry kills lots of people and nobody saftyreally cares. So, it’s really a straw man argument about non issues. Really, I would have no problem with Nuclear if it was cheap, but nobody can get it to be cheap (not even China) even without the need to load follow. We need cheap power and supplemental load following / storage. But, Nuclear is simply well behind the curve on both sides of the equation. Safe, stead production at 4c/kWh without subsidies would be a game changer or load following at much higher prices. Now, if the economics looked great then sure, but this stuff is all about minor improvements that don’t really change the game.
  - 8y ago