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0 pointsbluquark7y ago0 comments

The whole section is kind of strange. First he says that he believes only technology breakthroughs can solve the climate crisis, despite the expert consensus that the technology is mostly there if the political will can be found to disruptively deploy it.

So, presumably, he thinks that mustering the political will is intractable. Then, a few paragraphs later, he admits that his preferred fix of nuclear energy is also blocked by... political constraints. Why he thinks he'll make more progress touting nuclear energy, which is wildly unpopular, instead of "green jobs", which polls well, he doesn't say.

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credit_guy7y ago

This note was quite short, so Bill Gates didn't go into much details.

The details are:

* Bill believes in a new nuclear fission technology that addresses the concern of nuclear waste, traveling wave reactor [1].

* He financed a startup called TerraPower [2] to demonstrate and then to put in use this technology

* Being aware of the strong anti-nuclear sentiment in the US and of the more friendly attitude in China, he signed an agreement with China National Nuclear Corporation to build a 600MW reactor in China

* With the new US administration more hawkish approach towards China, some new restrictions on nuclear deals were announced by the Department of Energy in October [3]

* Gates' TerraPower venture found itself in the crosshairs of these restrictions, so the deal with the CNNC became for all practical purposes void [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower

[3] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-measures-preve...

[4] https://www.rt.com/business/447910-bill-gates-nuclear-china/

pjc507y ago

Hmm. No working examples, "maintenance free" (in reality this translates to "maintenance impossible"), and uses liquid sodium as a coolant.

rypskar7y ago

I think it is a bit of both. We have the technology, but it isn't good enough to work without political changes. What really would help is new technology that is so good that it don't need any political changes to work. So it isn't good enough to be as good, but more expensive, than current technology, it have to be better without costing more.

Political changes to put the cost of pollution on the consumer would help but is only part of the solution

will42747y ago

> the expert consensus that the technology is mostly there if the political will can be found to disruptively deploy it.

Citation needed. This may be the case for a few rich Western countries but if we expect China, India, and Africa to gain a modern quality of life (which seems likely), global energy consumption will continue to increase. My understanding was we didn't even have enough raw materials to scale solar that far with current technology.

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