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Terrapower in China

Source: Forbes
Credits: Jeff McMahon
Dated: 2011-10-12

Last week in China, Bill Gates revealed his nuclear power startup, Terrapower, is in talks with the Chinese government to build its next-generation reactors, which can run on waste uranium for centuries without refueling.

“The idea is to be very low cost, very safe and generate very little waste,” Gates said during a talk at China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In response to the buzz, Terrapower has revealed it’s being courted by more than just the Chinese.

France, India, Japan, Korea, and Russia have all been in discussions with Terrapower executives, the company revealed, “but there are no deals to speak to at this time.”

The small Traveling Wave Reactors, which Terrapower expects to be ready for implementation in less than 15 years, use a small amount of enriched uranium to start up, but then use depleted uranium—currently a waste product of the enrichment process. They generate their own fuel as they operate, and can run potentially for centuries without refueling or waste removal.

An established fleet of TWRs could operate without enrichment or reprocessing for millennia. TerraPower has explored the advanced physics of this concept in detail with 21st-century computational tools and is moving forward with the overall plant design.

Huge amounts of depleted uranium, useless to today’s reactors, already exist in stockpiles around the world. Stocks of this material grow as uranium is enriched for the refueling of conventional reactors. The TWR directly converts depleted uranium to usable fuel as it operates. As a result, this inexpensive but energy-rich fuel source could provide a global electricity supply that is, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible.

via Traveling Wave Reactor.

Terrapower also explains how the reactor operates in a video at the blog of Intellectual Ventures, the incubator that spun off the company.

With Gates as its primary investor, Terrapower also let potential investors know it doesn’t need money.

“Investors have also taken note of the progress TerraPower is making,” the company said in its statement. “However, TerraPower is privately held and not seeking individual investors.”

Terrapower is based in Bellevue, Washington.