In Wyoming, Bill Gates moves ahead with nuclear project aimed at revolutionizing power generation

[BootinUp]

Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated.

Gates was in the tiny community of Kemmerer Monday to break ground on the project. The co-founder of Microsoft is chairman of TerraPower. The company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March for a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. If approved, it would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant.

The site is adjacent to PacifiCorp’s Naughton Power Plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the utility said. Nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. PacifiCorp plans to get carbon-free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much nuclear to include in its long-range planning.

The work begun Monday is aimed at having the site ready so TerraPower can build the reactor as quickly as possible if its permit is approved. Russia is at the forefront for developing sodium-cooled reactors.

https://apnews.com/article/bill-gates-nuclear-terrapower-wyoming-climate-change-electricity-23176f33200b22b9ede7f4ccf4f2ec3b

[SarahD]

1. Sodium has a problem, reacts with water.

The US Navy tried a sodium cooled reactor, but pinhole leaks in the hear exchanger allowed sodium to come in contact with water and create tiny explosions. I'm not sure why they abandoned the concept. Modern chemistry control should be ae to overcome the difficulties. The big advantage is that the sodium coolant doesn't need to be highly pressurized. A water cooled reactor needs to be kept around two thousand pounds pressure, and that leads to problems, and loss of coolant pressure could cause catastrophic damage and meltdown, as we saw at Fukishima. Sodium would help avoid that, but I'm sure it presents its own problems.

[BootinUp]

2. Thanks, I have not researched it.

Relatively confident Gates has done his research.

[hunter]

3. I went to the Natrium website where they say it can power 250,000 to 400,000 homes.

How many homes is the Natrium technology capable of powering?

The Natrium™ technology features a 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor with a molten salt-based energy storage system. The storage technology can boost the system’s output to 500 MWe for more than five and a half hours when needed. Because the Natrium plant’s storage technology can boost the system’s output from 345 MWe to 500 MWe when needed, the technology will be able to power approximately 250,000 to 400,000 homes depending on need.

https://natriumpower.com/frequently-asked-questions/#technology

I've said previously that "homes" is a misleading and even childish unit for measuring energy, but I also know that the average relatively innumerate "layperson" isn't going to be wrapping their heads around exajoules anytime soon.

Residential use accounts for close to 20% of the energy used in the U.S.A..

From that, we can conclude from TerraPower's own figures that one of these plants could support the entirely carbon-free middle class lifestyles of 50,000 to 80,000 U.S. Americans.

If we want to make the math easy, which I do, we might say that one of these reactors could support the basic necessities of clean water, healthy food, and comfortable basic housing for 500,000 to 800,000 people.

The Natrium website gives the obligatory nod to wind and solar power, which is always amusing. If you build enough nuclear power plants you don't need wind or solar power. The converse is not true.

Unfortunately it seems that any new energy resources are going to be used on Artificial Intelligence (or Idiocy, depending how you look at it) and new energy-intensive tools for spying on people.

[BootinUp]

4. As Altman himself recently said

the continued development of AI is going to require new power innovations.

(Approximate paraphrase.)


I hope this Wyoming project is a success.

[Warpy]

5. The molten salt reactors solve half the problem in the west

by having the reaction moderated by molten salt instead of scarce to unavailable water. In addition, when you cut power to a molten salt reactor, it just slowly starts to cool and becomes nearly inert.

Unfortunately, there's another part to the problem, the need for water to run steam turbines to generate the actual electricity. While high temperature ceramic thermoelectric generation might be the solution, it's decades away, if ever.

[hunter]

6. The water that spins the turbines is condensed and recycled.

One potential advantage of high temperature reactors compared to the lower temperature pressurized and boiling water reactors is that the condensers could be air cooled.

Conventional pressurized water and boiling water reactors require copious amounts of cool water for their condensers. Usually this water is drawn from rivers, lakes, or oceans.

The Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona uses treated sewage water cooled by evaporation. An air cooled high temperature reactor would use much less water.

[Warpy]

7. Some of it is. Some has to be vented

Were it not for the necessity of using steam turbines, I'd be liIn fact, the whole southwest all the way to California is littered with volcanic systems. What we lack is water. The little we have is needed to support wildlife, people, our animals and our crops.

That's why I'm following research into high temperature thermoelectric ceramics. Unfortunately, researchers in areas with a lot of water are stuck on steam turbines, so research into ceramics is proceeding at a glacial pace.