Gates funded Terrapower inks deal with China’s CNNC to build fast reactor | Hacker News Reader

Gates funded Terrapower inks deal with China’s CNNC to build fast reactor

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94 pointsblondie9x33 comments

I really enjoyed this announcement. There is so much going on here that it is hard to track all the threads some times. Here we have China who will, with practice, become better at building nuclear power reactors than the US or Russia. That will lead to energy independence for China and that will cut some drag on their economy and mitigate deaths from the whole coal fuel cycle. Given the TWR burns "leftover" fuel, they can import nuclear waste from other countries which have been unable to deal with it, and power their infrastructure for "free".

And that puts folks like the Department of Energy in a real bind. And it makes for an interesting challenge to the notion that the 'western' style of governance leads to a better outcome for its people. What happens if China's economy rides a wave of free nuclear power and their skies become clear every day of the year with better air quality than any other country?

I don't know, but I do know that not pursuing nuclear power solutions has put the US at a disadvantage on the world stage and sometimes, like now, wonder if it will be the thing that knocks us off the #1 economy pedestal.

If China is successful with this nuclear power technology other countries can start adapting it. It is not like we just sit on the sidelines and wait. Let them take the initial risks and costs.

Much like with solar. China handles all the toxic pollution from cheap manufacturing, we buy up the panels for pennies and get clean energy.

We'd better not sign TPP, that way we can steal the new nuclear power tech back from them.

We can just say it is for national security reasons.

China isn't involved in the TPP.

It was meant to be taken in a kind of tongue in cheek way, but I'm also aware that one of the "P" is for Pacific; but I also feel that if it did come up that China would be calling out the hypocrisy even if they weren't a part of the treaty.

Yes, this is terrific news.

The easiest way to change the law is to get on a plane. It's an important reminder for every entrepreneur that worries about regulatory barriers. A workaround may be more accessible than you expect.

Nationalistic competition is actually the solution to regulatory problems.

Look how quickly countries are approving self-driving cars. UK, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Singapore, I can't keep track. Two years ago we worried that regulatory concerns might prevent adoption. But now that the train is leaving the station, countries don't want to be left behind, .

The lesson is to keep pressing ahead with progress.

EDIT: Sweden is moving step by step, they are planning tests on public roads: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/volvo-will-test-self-driving-ca...

I tried to find some data on Sweden approving self-driving cars but couldn't. Only some Volvo trial on controlled roads.

Well, self-driving cars have the advantage that the most powerful lobbying group in the US is excited about them: AARP[1]. Their membership votes far more than other demographics and is afraid to lose their independence once they can no longer drive.

1 http://member.aarp.org/home-family/personal-technology/info-...

By the time they build the first reactor in 15 years, the U.S. will probably have 30-40% energy production from solar panels (along with the necessary batteries for storage).

We should explore other clean sources of power or further improve the ones we have, but I don't think nuclear will represent anywhere close to the majority of the world's energy production in 30 years. Yes, even with fusion power becoming real.

You're right, but people still argue for nuclear. It's silly really, and will be somewhat humorous to watch new nuclear plants come online in 10-15 years that are immediately unprofitable because wind and solar (backed by battery) are already cheaper.

Emphasis on 'probably'- energy is a vital problem, solutions to which are subject to unguessable physical constraints. It would be foolish to rely on one particular technology which may somehow turn out to be impractical or undesirable in scale.

Does that 'energy' mean electricity alone, or does it also include transport and heating? In the UK (the only place I can get numbers), transport and heating account for three quarters of all energy use.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.berr.g...

Meeting just the electricity demand with solar would be great, but I have yet to see a plausible plan for meeting heating and transport demands with solar.

This is utter nonsense. Please explain the following:

1) Where are you getting the land use rights to set up "solar panels" on ~5-10% of all of the human-usable land on the planet? (if you had said solar thermal, that would have "only" (lol) been about half as much land)

2) What are these magic batteries that can store several days of base-load power? Given what goes into most battery technologies, this would probably be an even larger ecological disaster.

3) What do you think solar panels are made of? PV cells are very energy-expensive to manufacture, and they don't last forever.

4) Why are you pushing a technology that kills more people per kWh than nuclear?

You might want to research who is backing the push for solar/wind. Hint: their primary business would be hurt if nuclar started to become popular.

> become better at building nuclear power reactors than the US or Russia

Perhaps you meant "better than the US and France"? France has a much bigger nuclear power industry than Russia.

I actually meant Russia, typically France's nuclear research and the US research is, as far as I can tell pretty much joined at the hip. That also goes for English, and German research as well.

Both China and Russia began nuclear research programs against the interests of that western block, and because of that history, sharing was (and as I understand it from folks I've talked to about collaborating, still is) not freely, or as freely, shared. [would love to hear from current researchers though to know if this would agree with that impression]

Thus independently seeded programs tend to have different approaches and limitations, and that gives them the opportunity to progress differently.

From that perspective I see France and the US as the same body of research. (although I agree, the French have an extensive program).

AFAIK, France developed their own nuclear program - both civil and military - in a completely independent way from the US.

I don't know how much cooperation there is nowadays, but I wouldn't expect a lot of it in a market where there is a very strong competition between Areva and Westinghouse (which, incidentally, is a company based in the US, but is owned by Japan's Toshiba).

Anyway, regarding the technology, Terrapower is a US company and I'm pretty sure they'll also get all the know-how that will come out of the developments in China.

The French are fairly well regarded in current-gen nuclear power tech. I wouldn't call them joined at the hip with the US. They compete with US firms worldwide for plant construction business. They built the Daya Bay plant in China, and I assume, a number of others.

The US is the world's largest nuclear energy producer, and arguably still possesses the most know-how.

Our nuclear energy capacity is five times that of China. We have four times the reactors. And the share of energy we get from nuclear is eight times higher.

Your premise is completely off-base. If the US does nothing for 20 years, China might catch up to where we're already at with nuclear. It's questionable at this point whether China can afford to make those investments to even catch up, given their extreme debt condition, faltering economy, bleeding capital position, and the upkeep costs on the trillions of dollars worth of unnecessary construction they've done the last decade. Simultaneously they have 800+ million very poor to take care of in a rapidly aging society that is already overwhelmed with debt, but has practically no social safety net.

Where is the evidence that China has had a good outcome, compared to even mid-tier Western nations? They have upwards of 500 million 'farmers' earning $1 to $3 per day, because China knows there is nothing else for them to do. Inflation adjusting those incomes, those half a billion people have seen zero economic progress in five decades - and that's starting from practically the lowest base possible.

China hasn't come even remotely close to challenging the notion that Western style governance produces drastically better outcomes for the people. It's not a contest and there's no great reason to think it's going to be one.

The worst managed economies of Europe, have median incomes higher than the bottom billion plus Chinese possess.

China's upward surge was caused by filling out the slack in their vast labor pool. When that surge ended with the great recession, China had nothing else to turn to, and started using extreme amounts of debt to try to keep the good times rolling. The Communist Party hasn't accomplished anything meaningful, rather I'd argue quite the opposite: I think they've doomed China to decades of stagnation via debt, incompetence in leadership, and misallocated resources - the outcome to all command-heavy economies historically.

Realistically the US merely needs to grow at about ~2% to match China's current rate of real economic growth (and that rate is clearly going to slow even more going forward). What advantage does China possess exactly? What is the evidence their leadership system has worked better than if they had had a Western style system?

Their easy growth is long over. Now they have to pay for all that debt, while placating the social unrest that comes from the lack of progress economically, and try to figure out what to do with their bottom 800 or 900 million people that are still considered among the poorest on earth.

>The US is the world's largest nuclear energy producer, and arguably still possesses the most know-how.

We are a one-trick pony. Well, maybe a few tricks, but the tricks are all nearly the identical; and we haven't invented a new trick in a long time. Nor are we even working very hard on that front.

>Our nuclear energy capacity is five times that of China. We have four times the reactors. And the share of energy we get from nuclear is eight times higher.

We have practically frozen nuclear power development. We're bigger in nuclear power because we were first movers. Being a first mover in this space is now turning into a disadvantage though since we can't summon the will to abandon these older, more primitive reactor designs. China currently has ~24 plants approx 24MW/h slated for construction or under construction; many of which are completely new. The US has 4 plants under construction, all of which are simply expansions of existing facilities. Further, most of our US reactors are nearing or past the end of their designed-lifespan. Instead of replacing these aging facilities, we've just been extending the operating permits. We will never hold on to our lead in power generation like that. We'll wind up with a lead in nuclear accidents though, if we aren't careful.

I'm not going to get into the fray about political ideologies, any more than to say that China's nuclear energy policy is definitely better than what we have in the US, and probably better than we ever had in the US (since we only ever built (at scale) nuclear plants which support weapons production); as opposed to the Chinese who are exploring just about any promising lead WRT nuclear power generation.

Ok, lets unpack that ok?

   > Our nuclear energy capacity is five times that of 
   > China. We have four times the reactors. And the share 
   > of energy we get from nuclear is eight times higher.

We need to be careful not to conflate "capacity" with "know how". The average age of nuclear reactors is 34 years[1], the newest one built was in 1996 [ibid]. So assuming your lead engineer with say 10 - 15 years experience, lead the design an implementation of that newest reactor, he (and it was probably a male since they would have graduated in '86 or so) is probably retired now. What that means in practical policy terms is that the US has a lot of expertise in running reactors safely, but has pretty much lost a lot of actual hands on knowledge of building and designing reactors. It is very similar to the difference between keeping a database running that was designed and implemented years ago, and designing a new one. Those are different (both important!) skill sets. There is a tremendous amount of practical knowledge that is only achieved by building a new instance of something. That is the knowledge that China is developing, and the US has "lost".

   > China hasn't come even remotely close to challenging
   > the notion that Western style governance produces
   > drastically better outcomes for the people.

You might come to a different conclusion if you ask the question differently, like "How many people have the Chinese pulled out of poverty into the middle class, compared to western style governance?" If you ask it in absolute numbers that way, China wins handily by pulling 680M people out of poverty [2]. That is more than 50% bigger than the entire population of the US.

   > The worst managed economies of Europe, have median
   > incomes higher than the bottom billion plus Chinese
   > possess.

But what does the median income buy? It is easy to feel badly for someone who makes $100 a month when compared to a western environment, but if that $100 a month pays rent, food, utilities, and leaves them enough to save a bit and speculate on the stock market? It is a fallacy to try to compare poverty rates using currency exchange rates, rather you have to consider what is the cost of living in terms of labor offered. How many hours a month are needed to cover the cost of housing? food? transportation? If you're banking excess labor in the form of saving money then you're doing ok. So many people have moved up into the middle class that it is becoming a problem for China's leadership [3].

So bashing aside, this is my reasoning for why I think this announcement is good for China and challenging for the US.

China's growth has been pulling millions of people out of poverty into their middle class. Once coming out of poverty these people raise their children to be middle/upper class and give them better educations than they had. This creates a pool of much more highly skilled engineers who are start solving systemic problems. As they train this labor pool on building and deploying infrastructure that supports a more nuanced and complex economy, the Chinese economy will gain more domestic demand as part of its growth equation. The ability to bypass regulation and public comment allows the government to fund technologies as they see fit.

Nuclear energy is capable of providing 100% of the energy needs for the Chinese state if deployed in quantity, which removes any dependence on Coal or Oil for power generation, leaving available, and the labor available for other applications (plastics, chemistry, etc). Their economy moves to a service economy both on earth and in orbit, and they end up with the base resources for exploiting resources off planet that nobody else can. Unlike the US they flip on a basic income system which instantly lifts all remaining citizens out of poverty into the new state of the world, and now everyone on the planet wants to live there in their non-polluting cities, in self driven electric vehicles, working on things they care about.

Ok, so it probably won't go like that, basic freedoms are going to be a problem for them. But still, I think the moves they are making will push their economy ahead of the US. Whether or not they can keep it there will be interesting to watch given their recent "misunderstanding" about stock markets.

[1] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=228&t=21

[2] "China (which has never shown any interest in MDGs) is responsible for three-quarters of the achievement. Its economy has been growing so fast that, even though inequality is rising fast, extreme poverty is disappearing. China pulled 680m people out of misery in 1981-2010, and reduced its extreme-poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to 10% now." -- http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill...

[3] http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/... (Summer 2007)

Since you kept referring to China's debt situation: China, while not as rich as Japan, is a large net creditor to the rest of the world. When one is told that China has too much debt, it is about debt Chinese owe to each other. Someone's debt is another person's asset. These internal debt/asset neither makes China poorer nor richer on the whole as they all cancel out at the natinal level.

Surely that's only on the assumption that the debt can actually be serviced, let alone paid back.

The U.S. is doing very little, as far as developing advanced reactors is concerned. We have a regulatory system that requires all reactors to meet specific requirements that in many cases are only appropriate for large light water reactors. Any company hoping to build a new type of reactor runs into a brick wall. And even the conventional reactors, we're not building much anymore.

Meanwhile, China is currently building 27 conventional reactors and, aside from Terrapower, is building prototypes for molten salt reactors with both liquid and solid fuels, another sodium-cooled fast reactor design, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, and supercritical water-cooled reactors.

http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/2014/11/25/chinas-nex...

I don't mean to suggest that the U.S. economic system is worse than China's in general, but our regulatory system for nuclear power is a problem for us.

France gets a large percentage of their electricity production from nuclear, they are not better than germany (very antinuke) for it. Japan with very limited energy resources hasn't really made nuclear energy central to the energy production portfolio.

That's to say, it's hard to say this will benefit their economy. Maybe it does and perhaps best of all it has the potential to leas to breakthroughs which benefit economies beyond the borders.

Title was difficult to parse on the first try. "Gates-funded" should be hyphenated.

China, because no democracy would tolerate this level of risk.

liquid sodium designs require elaborate safety controls to separate the coolant from air and water, to avoid catastrophic explosion. Kinda a problem when you're really just boiling water to create steam to turn a turbine to make electricity.

As a result of numerous fires from leaking systems, operating sodium-cooled fast reactors to date have been shut down more than they have run. Maintenance is ...challenging.

Gates touted thorium molten salt reactors previously. Does anyone know if this is now a preferred technology staying with Uranium or a compromise from his POV?

Old Thorium article if you missed this from a couple years back: http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/2013/07/23/bill-gates...

That article says the traveling-wave fast reactor was still their main effort.

Other companies are working on molten salt designs, including Flibe, Terrestrial Energy, ThorCon, Transatomic, Seaborg, and Moltex. These aren't necessarily thorium; molten salt reactors running uranium don't get the huge extension of fuel supply but they're simpler and more proliferation-resistant, and still have all the safety advantages.