Bill Gates' nuclear firm plans hot, salty push into power

@ Jon Smyth 9teen

I was referring to a previous El Reg article that was linked in the article itself:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/07/bill_gates_terrapower_china/

I don't know why building something related to this would be out of the realm of plausibility from an intellectual property or export control perspective when the Chinese already operate nuclear plants based on Western technology and are partners in fusion research (though I have a feeling that is not going anywhere).

N.B. the o's are knuckles, and the r a thumb, I am sure you can figure out the rest. Not sure if you are insinuating a genetic defect or trying to frenchify my handle ;)

Re: @xperroni

Established energy companies invest in new technologies, if there is a return on the investment. Same thing with IT technologies. If there is a return, there is investment. If there is greater return on running older technologies, there is no investment.

Government regulation determines the speed to return on investment. Reduce the regulation, this decreases the speed to implementation, which decreases the cost, the solution shows a return on investment, the investment starts, jobs are created. Government is the problem, in the energy sector.

The smear tactics are used against "carbon" based energy, today. This is against everyone's interest. Carbon carries hydrogen atoms efficiently and breaking those bonds creates energy (as well as H2O and CO2 - both of which allow plants to make sugar & grow, so human food can have something to eat!) ;-)

As an example: we have natural gas buses and cars - well established technologies... yet politicians are killing coal plants to re-direct portable [clean natural gas] fuel to fixed power stations [located far from human populations.] This is dumb since dependence upon portable petrol could be reduced with clean natural gas [in heavily human populated areas] increasingly introduced for portable transportation.

I know how everyone loves electric & hybrid cars, but those are really dirty... the byproducts from batteries. I love batteries, don't get me wrong, but they are far more dangerous than byproducts from carbon based fuel.

Nuclear is a far better solution to Natural Gas for base-power. Coal based plants should remain on-line until they can be replaced with nuclear plants which can run on nuclear waste - which solves many more long term issues. (Keeps the rail line profitable, to subsidise mass transportation costs!)

(nuclear explosion icon, for effect)

@Wzrd1

"Actually, the US DoD had developed those originally, as well as molten sodium reactors."

Yes.

That was my point.

Westinghouse developed the PWR under contract to the USN because they knew about steam turbine systems and that's basically what this is.

Oak Ridge designed molten salt to meet the NPB nuclear plane programme. Their priorities were totally different.

Re: Yes and no

"Nuclear warheads taught us that lesson quite effectively, if you ever look at the size of the first models, then modern equivalents."

True.

Problem is it's been close to 70 years and no one seems able to get the big one working yet.

But man has it produced a really healthy crop of fusion and plasma PhD's,

TB and how not to control it

Apologies for derailing the topic, but current practice with TB in Britain at least could be likened to a lesson in how not to do things. The first problem with TB is to realise that to get rid of it, you need to get rid of any and all carriers of the disease. The second problem is to convince politicians that no, this is not an optional policy and that no, this problem is not going to go away if they ignore it. The final problem is that most environmental campaigners are quite startlingly stupid, extremely noisy and not a bit shy about parading blithering ignorance to the world in general; politicians mistake noisy morons for valuable votes.

Bovine tuberculosis is a zoonotic; it will infect almost any mammal species. It also has a trick of secreting a waxy coating, which makes it very resistant to normal immune system antibodies; the only thing that does stop it is an inflammatory response but only animal species that have co-evolved with it do this response. Cows do it, humans do it, badgers do NOT do it. So, once TB gets into the badger population it spreads like crazy and turns badgers into mobile TB factories. Vaccines do not work on badgers; they get TB just as easily as before, but live a little bit longer due to being a bit more resistant; vaccinating badgers is an expensive way to annoy brocks and possibly make the problem worse (heavily infected badgers die relatively quickly, less infected but still infectious ones get to do a Typhoid Mary impression for much longer).

So now we have a perfect storm: daft politicians listening to clueless lusers and dithering gormlessly whilst a bad situation gets worse.

There's a direct parallel here with the situation with UK electrical generation capacity; we're in a mess because our politicians are a bunch of weak-willed vapid arses without any moral fibre, sense of urgency or ability to do their jobs. The bovine TB crisis will be solved only when most of the badger setts of southern England get a short, toxic visit from some nice DEFRA chappies and their portable carbon monoxide generator; the power crisis will similarly be solved only when someone tells the EU to go do one, and invests in lots of small LFTR molten thorium salt reactors.

And the one key thing to remember is this: DO NOT LISTEN TO THE GREAT UNCLUED! We don't do it with complex technical stuff, we don't do it with engineering, computers or anything except public policy that the public are equally clueless about.