Wow! I hope his fusion push works out. I think he was working with that tokamak design from MIT last I checked. The design used a magnetic tape that was a new breakthrough, there is a youtube video explaining the details.
It's called ybco tape
And the reason for that is because the funding for fusion is below the "fusion never" stage.
If Gates were really interested, he'd commit a billion dollars every single year to fusion. That would roughly speaking quadruple the amount of funding driving fusion forward.
And, to top it off, even if you didn't get fusion you'd start getting real engineering spinoff technologies that you could use in other facets of power generation, transmission, storage, etc.
Add in leverage and say 2 billion in research could represent 10-20+ billion worth of clean energy investments before the fruits of this research could come online. And even then you would need to spend even more money actually building something useful.
This could be my own bias talking but fission has seen 100+ Billion in R&D. I have my doubts this is going to move the needle much.
PS: I am more than open to any counter arguments you have...
Even storage of waste is a solved problem: bury it in dry old mines in seismically dead locations, or start moving to the known novel reactor types.
Politically, the issue is much different though...
Really, I would have no problem with Nuclear if it was cheap, but nobody can get it to be cheap (not even China) even without the need to load follow. We need cheap power and supplemental load following / storage. But, Nuclear is simply well behind the curve on both sides of the equation. Safe, stead production at 4c/kWh without subsidies would be a game changer or load following at much higher prices.
Now, if the economics looked great then sure, but this stuff is all about minor improvements that don’t really change the game.
However, I do not have good enough background to vet the source well. Are they missing something obvious?
Also, I was not talking about worker safety, rater about everyone's health, from the miner to the person living near the power plant.
Another issue is that the page is from 2012 and its numbers for renewables, solar PV in particular, overestimated costs for 2017. Solar PV costs declined much faster than the EIA estimated.
the era of supersonic travel?
I mean, sure, supersonic flight is /technically possible/ but it is exceedingly rare that the sound barrier is broken by traveling civilians.
My understanding is that the problem mostly has to do with air resistance increasing with the cube of speed; this could be overcome by going higher, above the atmosphere, but nobody has figured out how to do that at subsonic flight costs, either.
I mean, it is kind of sad; one of those technologies that we created, but that then turned out to not be as practical as the older stuff for everyday use.
Which is why countries and companies that don’t give a fuck about the environment are all over it. It took a long time to beat coal, but games over it won now it’s just a question of time.
However, replacing natural gas as peaking power that’s still in the works.