Bill Gates: Nuclear power will ‘absolutely’ be politically acceptable again
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
I'd rather see arguments against his arguments than against him. They probably require a lot more time to research, but that's sort of the point.
I'd agree, although I'd also note that he's _often_ the smartest guy in the room about most subjects he's voicing opinions on.
Attacking people, affixing labels to them, and othering them into adversarial tribes is unfortunately the most dominant form of discourse in modern society. I feel like social media made it worse but it’s always been an issue to some extent. I wish it weren’t so.
From the Acknowledgements of his latest book :
"Jabe Blumenthal and Karen Fries are the two former Microsoft colleagues who organized my first learning session on climate change in 2006. In that session, they introduced me to two climate scientists, Ken Caldeira—then at the Carnegie Institution for Science—and David Keith of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Since then, I’ve had countless conversations with Ken and David that have shaped my thinking.
Ken and a team of his postdoctoral fellows—Candise Henry, Rebecca Peer, and Tyler Ruggles—pored over the manuscript line by line to check for factual mistakes. I’m thankful for their meticulous work. Any remaining errors are my responsibility.
The late David MacKay of Cambridge University inspired me with his wit and insights. I recommend his phenomenal book Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air to anyone who wants to dig deeper into the subject of energy and climate change.
Jabe Blumenthal and Karen Fries are the two former Microsoft colleagues who organized my first learning session on climate change in 2006. In that session, they introduced me to two climate scientists, Ken Caldeira—then at the Carnegie Institution for Science—and David Keith of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Since then, I’ve had countless conversations with Ken and David that have shaped my thinking.
Ken and a team of his postdoctoral fellows—Candise Henry, Rebecca Peer, and Tyler Ruggles—pored over the manuscript line by line to check for factual mistakes. I’m thankful for their meticulous work. Any remaining errors are my responsibility.
The late David MacKay of Cambridge University inspired me with his wit and insights. I recommend his phenomenal book Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air to anyone who wants to dig deeper into the subject of energy and climate change."
So what about academia? Because I don't see it in particular agreement with him on nuclear fission, either.
And yet, most of his wealth is now being used to try to solve important problems for the world. You know what? I'll take this deal.
I'd also pay greatly to have a full day with him, on his little chalet on the island, to talk about everything and be able to ask him anything. I'd even pitch him my own crazy idea of "the city of the future", a small obsession of mine since I was a kid.
Second, this debt is enormous, and is getting larger. When you buy a PC, most often you still pay the "Microsoft tax". This is the result of Bill's actions from the past, the famous FUD campaigns, calling another operating system cancer, sponoring a long lawsuit against Linux and so on. He will still have to do a lot if he wants to repay all that.
While he was referring to the GPL, he actually uttered these words [0]. Gates was a chairman then, it's difficult to believe they had different opinions on this issue and many others. Especially when you consider the Halloween Documents were from Gates' era.
More importantly, it was Gates himself who would routinely visit various heads of states lobbying for MS contracts, especially when Linux was considered. The consequences of that will live with us for many decades. Fortynately the web revolution changed many things and there is some hope the future would be more Microsoft-free, but for many years to come all goverments and most businesses and individuals have to pay Microsoft tax, for one reason or another.
https://www.theregister.com/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_ca...
Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.
So, he was talking about the license (it would also make little sense to say that an OS kernel is cancer).
> Gates himself who would routinely visit various heads of states lobbying for MS contracts
Gates was trying to sell his software to potential clients? What a terrible human being! :) Much worse were the anti-competitive agreements with OEMs, performing super strict license checks on business dealing with Linux and so on.
Well, it depends on how you see it. We're talking not just about Europe, but mainly South Africa and many other developing countries that have to pay Microsoft to this day because of of their previous politician gave in to Gates and agreed to prolong a government contract. Many of these countries are the same he is helping now.
It's similarly irritating when known tax-avoiders become philanthropists - that was societies money anyway, you don't get kudos for being the one who decides where it's spent regardless of where you decide.
What I mean is that it’s not helpful to bash billionaires for sincere altruism and for investing in societally useful activities.
It can be helpful to bash government for shitty policies that don’t tax wealth properly or something like that.
It can also be helpful to bash billionaires that don’t carry their weight.
If you’re angry at the students that don’t show up to class, don’t yell at the ones that do.
Would you rather eat vegetables and meat/fish that grew downstream a nuclear plant/uranium mine or those that grew downstream a cadmium mine? Because I'm sure I would rather live near an old uranium mine (well, I do.)
Personally yes, I would live next to a nuclear reactor in preference to any other form of electricity generation. Living near a coal plant is an ugly death sentence. Living in the shadow of a big damn is vastly more risky. Windmills are noisy, and tend to be in very exposed environments.
Nuclear is quiet and clean. The very few accidents still leave it as clearly the lowest-risk method of generating energy.
Loss of blade accidents and tower failures have been known to occur, also.
I haven't grown any extra heads yet. :-)
"Yes, but what does Bill Gates think about it?"
He's been working on global health for a decade.
That's about it. Until recently the public at large didn't really care about either so his massive (billions of $$$) investments in both didn't get regular press attention.
But this isn't anything new for him, it is all stuff he's been focused on for over a decade.
I think nuclear would be a great path forward, but it's unlikely to carry the day.
I wish we could generate energy with anti-intellectualism. We'd have all the environmental issues figured out by now.
Everywhere where democracy is in decline or never was: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261...
Building new reactors in the 90s? I would have agreed with this but it's too late now from multiple perspectives.
This is the killer argument. There is frankly no storage or recycling solution for nuclear waste anywhere in the world, which IMHO entirely dismisses nuclear energy as a viable option.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/hh6mm6/but_wh...
If Greenpeace had not killed nuclear, I suggest we might be in a considerably better situation vis-a-vis climate change. Possibly a couple of Fukishimas worse off, but that's not hugely bad either, given the upside.
Ironic, isn't it.
The Japanese are very smart and organized people, and their nuclear tech is top notch. If they couldn't contain it, we shoudl at least take into consideration other nations won't be able, too. And, sadly, we can't predict everything.
It was quite eye-opening to know that 1GW nuclear plant, working for decades, can keep _all_ of it's waste on site.
As for no recycling in the world - I believe France begs to differ. They do recycle their and even other's nuclear waste into nuclear fuel. And what minimal part that can't be recycled further can be melted into glass [2].
Given that no soul was ever harmed by industrial nuclear waste (it is mostly on site), existing baseload capabilities and _history_ of decarbonizing whole industrialized economies (France/Korea again), I feel it is harmful to completely discount this method of poower generation.
[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html#howmuch
[2] https://www.livescience.com/62623-radioactive-waste-trapped-...
Absolutely no other energy source comes even close to such low numbers, certainly not solar power, oil and especially not everyone's de-facto alternative: coal, which has actually killed millions, and shortened lifespans of certainly a billion people ...
How does this compare?
Where to store in space is a different question although. You can't just leave them in orbit around Earth, because of Kesler syndrome, any ideas?
EDIT: someone else did the math and it turns out this is impractical, plus there are risks of rocket failures https://www.universetoday.com/133317/can-we-launch-nuclear-w...
In fact, at the risk levels that we are accustomed to dealing with on a day-to-day basis, there are plenty of adequate solutions to disposal and storage of nuclear waste.
Also this is why it's important to invest into development of breeder reactors. Not only they improve uranium utilization and may allow for thorium to be used as a nuclear fuel, but also they can "burn" the nastiest parts of nuclear waste [1]. Unfortunately, AFAIK only Russia currently seriously invests into this branch of nuclear reactors (see BN [2] and BREST [3]).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...
Remember - nuclear waste is dangerous for centuries, but chemical waste is dangerous forever.
My lord, is that, legal?
I will make it legal.
It seems that when you're very wealthy, pundits and talking heads always want to quote you.
Given he's spent the last decade studying both, and he can afford to fly the top experts in both fields to teach him 1 on 1, I have no doubts that he has had the means to learn a lot about both fields.
Also the east problem is still not solved and getting enough and cool enough water becomes more and more a problem for reactors.
You are right though, that intermittent renewables are a new sort of problem. But there are also solutions like a super grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_renewable_energy