Bill Gates on Nuclear Energy and TerraPower

January 10, 2013, 2:59PMANS Nuclear Cafe

Microsoft founder and extraordinary philanthropist Bill Gates is also a nuclear energy enthusiast.

In this excellent TeD presentation, Bill Gates talks about energy and climate, and the need for "miracles" to... well, save the world. He is a prominent investor in the nuclear reactor development firm TerraPower (for more details on the "traveling wave" reactor concept the company is developing, see this post at ANS Nuclear Cafe, and this interview with TerraPower CEO John Gilleland in ANS Nuclear News magazine).

Note that in the talk, Gates focuses on the need for nuclear technology to ameliorate climate issues in the 21st century-but an equally compelling case can be made for nuclear technology as essential to combat premature mortality due to fossil fuel combustion (estimated in the tens of thousands each year), or potentially devastating ocean acidification... clean and abundant baseload energy solves a long list of problems.

Bill Gates talks with The Wall Street Journal about nuclear technology and TerraPower.

 


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