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I remember Bill being involved in nuclear for a long time. Hope something of general use comes to fruition in our lifetime.
by Lorin 6y ago
I remember Bill being involved in nuclear for a long time. Hope something of general use comes to fruition in our lifetime.
- rtx 6y agoIn today's environment only a billionaire can pull such an project. I am very optimistic that this will come through. And we stop with land polluting windmills and solar farms.
- baybal2 6y ago> I remember Bill being involved in nuclear for a long time. Hope something of general use comes to fruition in our lifetime. Yes, for a very long time, and to very little result. He chases too risky, and unrealistic prospects.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y agoThis is a pretty horrible attitude to have, but to try to make something positive from this, which problems do you think Gates or someone in his position would be better suited to solving?
- baybal2 6y agoLet's take his toilet program. For the amount of money he spent, he could've build enough sewage treatment plant for a few African countries. Similarly, the "affordable" nuclear powerplant programs are not suitable for developing countries. It unequivocal that a cheapest fossil fuel station is the best option for places that never had an industrial economy. Once it has been kickstarted, you can think of more exotic options.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y agoFossil fuels are a finite and dwindling resource, and its use is possibly causing an extinction event. The human race can't really afford to buy the cheaper option here.
- baybal2 6y agoAn alternative to that is to sit and do nothing.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y agoYes, that is an alternative, but probably a better alternative is to invest in nuclear/renewable energy research. Which is what he is doing.
- baybal2 6y agoDo you understand that even in a 30+ years, with the most optimistic forecast of technological progression, and availability of funds, the nuclear option will still be incomparably more expensive, and impractical for a small size power station in an undeveloped nation?
- yakshaving_jgt 6y agoDo you have a source to support that claim? Because from what I’ve read and seen, the economics of nuclear are significantly better over a longer timespan. https://youtu.be/UC_BCz0pzMw https://youtu.be/UC_BCz0pzMw
- baybal2 6y agoI worked in the field of engineering since 2007. I can surely say that even simply the choice of materials, and metalworking processes mean that the nuclear reactor vessel alone costs like one diesel/LNG power stations. Steam turbines are bigger, and more expensive than equivalently powerful turbines of a gas-turbine engine, and not to say that gas turbine is also its own source of hot gas. I think the best option for undeveloped nations is to rent their power generation equipment until they can bootstrap their electric grid, and build proper power stations.
- skitout 6y agoRenewable energies, energy efficiency and demand response are already cheaper than most new dirty power plant...
- Schwan 6y agoI thought about this quite often. I do think one of the biggest possible changes could be a new religion based on 'working together', sustainability, education etc. but without any god figure. Build up this religion in form of a hierarchical network. Bring in everyone and give them a chance to do things together. Make basic rules which do not exclude too many people but make those basic rules clear and do not allow any racist crap, make it clear that its also not here to solve every problem. I would like to do things and i sometimes clean our park but i'm not religion. I'm not going to a group every week and i will not take part in a social group which is based on religion. But i would love to meet up every week in something like a youth club for adults, etc. With this network, he would be able to funnel money directly where it could make sense. Like the central club house which also hosts a school, basic internet etc. (more relevant of course in other countries); Add small hostel system to it, people travel around, share and care etc. One problem Bill Gates has: When he is gone, who really will pursue it like him? I thought its not to relevant who is doing it as someone will do it but it took Bill Gates years to think more like he does now for one thing and on the other side, it needed him to take action when the polio vaccine stagnated.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y agoI don't mean to be flippant, but what you have described sounds an awful lot like the economy. In the book Sapiens, the author describes organisations, money, Capitalism, Communism and more as religions without a deity. The detail that you included which stopped me from calling this utopian is "form of a hierarchical network". It is of course important to recognise that a classless society is impossible. As for solving racism, I think I'm less optimistic. I mean, I don't think people today can even agree on what "racism" as a term actually means.
- Schwan 6y agoI would prefer another name than just religion or so but this is a structure we know. I don't wanna look through a catalog of different organizations doing different things. I wanna build and do things together with similar minded people.
- 6y ago
- Mikhail_K 6y agoWell, his software products do meltdown quite often. The "blue screen of death" is going to take on the whole new meaning once this reactor project comes to fruition.
- baq 6y agoi think he missed the exponential growth in renewables. deciding to productize a new (in the market) nuclear reactor made much more sense a decade ago than it makes now.
- ewendel 6y agoIt's obviously great that renewables are getting better and cheaper. But, what energy source will we use when the sun is not up and there's no wind? They're not producing all of the time. Renewable power production vary greatly: it's actually problematic that they produce way too much at peak hours, while none at all on windless nights. You need a stable base production. What better to replace coal and natural gas than nuclear?
- Krasnol 6y agohttps://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374 https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374
- belorn 6y agoTo read the summery: "The intermittency of other sources such as wind and solar photovoltaic can be addressed by interconnecting power plants which are widely geographically distributed, and by coupling them with peak-load plants such as gas turbines fueled by biofuels or natural gas which can quickly be switched on to fill in gaps of low wind or solar production." So we can burn the fossil fuel natural gas or a similar gas generated by decomposing bio material. That seems a bit of an odd proof. It seems pretty obvious that burning fuels that releases carbon into the air solves the issue of providing a baseload for renewables, but it has the general problem of releasing carbon into the air. Biofuels are also pretty controversial since they take up a lot of land and fertilizers are not themselves carbon neutral, and current methods for both creating the fuel and the fertilizers has shown to be a major contributor of methane leaking into the air. As I like to say in this kind of threads, lets ban the act of burning fossil fuels for power. If the market can manage the energy grid without fossil fuels then let the market do that. Which ever technology comes out on top is less important than the fact that we can purge fossil fuels from being used when there is a cleaner alternative.