Bill Gates’ nuclear company explores molten salt reactors, thorium
the-weinberg-foundation.org
the-weinberg-foundation.org
He did this cool TED talk about shooting mosquitos out of the air with lasers salvaged from commodity electronics. Since that was years ago, it appears that it is doesn't work in the real world. Par for the course with TED.
A prominent malaria expert tore into him for exploiting a real crisis that kills millions to make his company actually does something good for the world. Going all hi-tech hero when what is really needed in low-tech nets.
So I'll go with evil for $500. Nice cuddly evil but evil nonetheless.
Also one LOL of having Bill Gates fund your nuclear company is you end up with the biggest Windows cluster for simulations.
Source: I'm a PhD student in nuclear engineering with friends working at TerraPower.
:-)
...maybe
So far nobody has developed a reactor design which is really better or cleaner than what it is currently available. No "new" design could deliver what it has promised. Not even nuclear power was able to deliver what it has promised to begin with.
Well, I guess, we both don't get the other side.
Nuclear power is millions of times more energy dense than solar, wind, and fossil fuels. Though the current generation of nuclear reactors have some significant drawbacks, not the least of which is the inefficient use of fuels leading to nuclear wastes, they still generate much cleaner power than the alternatives.
Liquid Salt reactor designs based on Thorium take aim specifically at the nuclear fuel and waste problems. Rather than using 1% of the solid fuel like today's reactors, it's possible for liquid salt reactors to use up nearly 99% of the fuel, reducing the waste problem by many orders of magnitude, and would not contain the transuranics that take 10s of thousands of years to decay.
It's a good thing that serious people are looking into radically different forms of nuclear power. The current conventional reactors were based off of designs for producing materials for weapons, and it's high time we set that garbage aside and consider other options.
I accept that these aren't 'solutions' for those who control the old energy industries and related power structures that are still dominant, but the logic on display here is fundamentally broken.
Various forms of Solar, and bi-gas, are already deployed where I live. Tidal, geothermal and Wind are all well underway. These renewable energies already emerging around us are our inevitable future.
I'm pretty familiar with hearing the nuclear industry over-promise, then watching them under-deliver, so feel free to bump that 99 to 99.9%. Continue fantasizing about radically different forms of nuclear power: I'm gonna remain focussed on the real detriments of the reactors being built (and up for license renewal) right now.
Diffuse energy is economically unviable, it is only being deployed at great cost and things like solar will never solve baseline load. People also don't think about the pollution caused by manufacturing things like solar panels. There are vast areas in China that are full of industrial waste that will not degrade for a very very long time due to solar panel manufacturing. Way nastier stuff the radioactive elements, because anything that is really dangerous has a short half life (iodine is completely gone in weeks), and will clean up rather quickly or it is usable as a fuel (though we in the United States are daft for not reprocessing our fuel like sane countries like France.) Even existing nuclear is way better than anything else, and advanced nuclear is even better still. Nuclear has a marketing problem, not a technical one.
If your worried about waste, well you have to realize that the really nasty stuff will all decay in 300-400 years, and anything radioactive left over is something I would be happy to have under my bed as I sleep. Anything radioactive at that point is also really fuel, and advanced nuclear reactors (like a molten salt reactor) will happily burn it up. The whole Yucca mountain crap is just caused by the United States having a silly ban on reprocessing. Another thing people don't mention is that the plutonium extracted from a long running reaction like those used for power is completely unsuitable for making bombs, its really just a bugaboo.
Energy density is not a good measurement I think. In theory the sun sends more energy per day than we might ever need but we can only make use of parts of that. This is improving but still, just a tiny part of it. The same with Thorium or Uranium or even fossil fuels. Usually the efficiency of those power plants is well below 50%, nuclear power below 40%, coal even less, especially those "clean coal" CSS plants.
The problem with molten salt reactor will be the same with fast breeders, where the liquid sodium was/is causing corrosion and problem when mixing with water. IIRC most accidents in FBRs were sodium related. And even if MSRs are cheaper in one way than current designs, it doesn't say they are not more expensive in other ways.
But currently none of those reactor designs is ready for commercial use. None! With the time you need to get such a design up and running, you can also deploy renewable energy. Much more reliable and stable.
In 2012 about 7.5 GW of renewable energy were deployed in Germany. Even if you calculate that not all of that is available around the clock, you would have build more than 2 EPRs with 1.6 GW electrical power to get the same amount of energy, which you just can't do within one year.
Maybe MSR solve a lot of problems with nuclear energy but it won't come free, it won't come w/o other problems. All forms of energy have drawbacks. Photovoltaik uses rare earth, wind has huge towers which are not really popular with locals, water has a huge impact on rivers and the environment. Biomass has the problem with using food for energy, and usage of land. I could continue the entire night.
The important question is a different one, do you want to solve the energy problem or just ask the next generation to solve it for you?
What kind of electricity storage? As I understand it, this is the hard part. We don't really have giant batteries that can efficiently and affordably store the power generated from wind or solar. You can either store it as some form of gravitational potential energy (think like a river dam), or as heat or cold, or as a fuel that you later have to burn. These are all pretty difficult and inefficient in the case of solar and wind power.
But if we are talking about advanced science and technology, we need ever-increasing power density. You're not going to power the Large Hadron Collider with wind and solar--and certainly not its successor. You're not going to power fusion research with wind and solar. You're not going to power advanced transportation or manufacturing with wind and solar.
No battery technology in the world can compete with the power density that is possible with nuclear energy. And if it could, it would be just as dangerous as nuclear.
Also, it's not just one reactor type. There's the full-fledged breeder, which has some complex chemical processing, but you can start out with a simple burner design like the DMSR. An outfit in Canada is going that route.
However all thorium based reactor designs tried here were seriously flawed (for example the AVR reactor went almost the way of Chernobyl when water leaked into the primary cooling cycle.. but luckily the reactor was running at an lower temperature at that point in time, so they only had to run the reactor for a year in reduced capacity to get the water out again).
As for liability here.. it seems like it's unlimited liability here and at least one reactor operator company is owned by another state (Vattenfall iirc)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Cold_War_use_and_was...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_site#Cold_War_expansio...
What you describe seems like a pretty awful strategic decision (we have plenty enough fissile material to end civilization, add a couple more government sites and you have all the production I could possibly imagine needing).
Moreover, aside from overcoming those issues building a suitable commercial power reactor will take a lot of time and investment. We're on the cusp of the 4th generation of Uranium/Plutonium fueled fission power reactors which represents many decades of improvement in safety, reliability, and efficiency. Whereas LFTR designs are in their infancy.
The design deserves research, probably even in the $1 bil/yr range or higher, but we're not going to be switching the base load power plants to LFTR technology in the next decade or even in the next three decades. At this point, from a practical standpoint it's only slightly farther along than fusion technology, if that helps put it in perspective.
If it works as hoped, other countries will lead in it (rather than the US, although the US will supply some technology); countries like China or Norway for example. China in particular has been very happy to build out large scale nuclear power, and they're not as likely to be beholden to shielding old nuclear plants and tech from new competition.
The main problem in the U.S. is getting the NRC to let you try anything new. Kirk Sorenson is going after military funding, to bypass the NRC. There's a company in Canada working on a small, simple molten salt reactor, with the initial goal of extracting oil from tar sands with less carbon emissions. Last I heard, the Ontario government was being pretty cooperative.
There's also a major effort in China, with about a billion dollars in funding and several hundred researchers. They're working on both a molten salt cooled pebble bed reactor, and a liquid-fueled thorium reactor.
There are also smaller projects in various other countries. This is a long way from being just an internet fad.
Edit: This page at the Gen IV International Forum has a good rundown of recent MSR research: http://www.gen-4.org/Technology/systems/msr.htm
Maybe it's not true that "all publicity is good publicity". At least not for Intellectual Ventures.
This is a spinoff of Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures - which is a patent trolling company. They may talk about plans to produce actual nuclear power, but I'll believe it when I see it. However it is guaranteed to create a lot of patents.
Personally, even if it does succeed, I would have a bad taste in my mouth for anything and everything involved because I do not like Nathan Myhrvold.
Honesty I don't have a huge amount of information about his other dealings, but I think there is a genuine case for what he is trying to do with IV, even if you disagree with with methods.
With me and my company, he has been a man of tremendous character and generosity. I daresay you and most others are prejudging the situation. In error.
Keep in mind, I am no fan of the patent system either.
http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-busine...
I didn't know Adolf Hitler, but I know enough of him to know that he wasn't a nice person.
Patent trolling is a legal form of extortion. It is evil. Myhrvold is an evil man.
1) I have not met Hitler but I know him to have been not a nice man
2) I believe Patent Trolling to be evil and therefore those that perpetrate it to also be evil.
Personally I cannot disagree with either statement. Excusing any evil practice as 'a businessman whose tactics you disapprove of and consider to be unethical' is also wrong in my opinion.
The world of business hides too many organisations (and therefore people) guilty of profound immorality. It has become an unfortunate part of our culture that we so often forgive them as 'just business'. Capitalism, as a whole, rarely scrapes above amoral.
The word 'evil' has an ancient meaning that doesn't only include mass murder and it certainly includes extortion.
What? That's exactly what he did.
Also, "One is a businessman whose tactics you disapprove of and consider to be unethical," the other was a politician whose tactics I disapprove of and consider to be unethical. Gotta love euphemisms that turn everything into nothing, and applying them selectively.
Word on the street is that the IV funds are not profitable yet. Also, inventors, who they purchase patents from, are in fact getting checks in the mail. So at least one of the following are true:
- They are paying inventors (patent holders) too much - Nobody should pay inventors at all - They should be more aggressive in acquiring settlements / awards in court. - They should shut down completely. - They should cut overhead.
Of the above, cutting overhead seems most reasonable. But there are significant activities in their invention lab. They have the world's most advanced malaria modeling system. They are developing a cold chain for vaccines with an incredibly clever thermo-mechanically activated cold finger for control. They are pushing metamaterials. They have an incredibly cool mosquito calming project. They run invention dinners where amazingly brilliant, cool people attack novel problems in novel ways. And TerraPower could, if they are successful, crack the energy problem.
Cutting overhead would hurt most of the incredibly commendable activities that they are doing. It takes big bucks to run an invention lab. This isn't the only way, of course.
But I'm calling it when I see it: IV is making honest efforts to invent and commercialize a series of amazing inventions, including those in the physical world. Almost nobody else is doing this today. They are funding inventors -- their own and outside inventors, through what many believe are questionable methods exploiting legal loopholes, but are in fact often direclty in keeping with the intent of an admittedly archaic and outdated system. And they're being scapegoated not because they might be a patent troll, but because they are a publicly identifiable organization with public inventions and activities, and public advocacy.
And it's a damned shame that we are so clannish that the are ready to, without thinking, without the requisite knowledge, damn one of the only truly ambitious efforts in physical invention, and great hacker, simply because we do not understand, do not approve of, or are uncomfortable with, the systems that are being used to support invention.
And they're being scapegoated not because they might be a patent troll, but because they are a publicly identifiable organization with public inventions and activities, and public advocacy
From everything I've seen, they're being scapegoated precisely because they are a patent troll. And rightly so, because the end doesn't justify the means.
What I meant to say was that if they are a patent troll, they are not the trolliest of the trolls. They are merely the most public.
I want to find a way to rationalize what IV does (for different, dumber reasons; I just happen to like their book _Modernist Cuisine_), but the evidence we have from reporters looks very bad.
(e.g. for that matter, we are allied with Saudi Arabia, and rely on them for our oil. The world is full of nasty compromises...)
But the stuff that they are actually developing, the inventors they're supporting, the work they're doing in nuclear shouldn't be painted with the same brush. This is supposed to be hacker news, and the top comment about a new nuclear startup isn't about technology at all; it's about how someone doesn't like one of the principals.
"The patent system exists to give economic incentive to create inventions -- not products. After all, profit is the incentive to create and sell products. In order to have a level playing field, inventors must have a full set of rights, regardless of whether they are big or little, or whether they make products or just invent. Those rights are what give them the incentive to work long and hard on new ideas that may not work. A lot of big innovative companies agree with this -- companies like DuPont, GE, Qualcomm and 3M, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, have filed amicus briefs in support of MercExchange and equal rights for all inventors."
"Perhaps the biggest myth is the danger "patent trolls" -- people who supposedly manipulate the patent system in a shady way. It does happen, but apart from some anecdotes, no evidence has been offered that patent trolls are a major problem. Court records show that only 2% of all patent lawsuits are due to plaintiffs that have no ongoing product business. Of that 2%, the vast majority are perfectly legitimate companies or universities. A tiny minority of patent suits are due to bad actors, but it's hardly a crisis. While I was at Microsoft, we encountered a couple of patent manipulators, but frankly we won those cases; at worst they were a nuisance."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114368437650611883.html
I think that on the balance IV in actual operation strives to create a good working environment for inventors and invention. I think that the invention session s that they holds and the work they do to commercialize is in fact a significant, genuine positive.
I think they are actually trying to do good, and are a net plus within the existing system.
That said, I think the existing system has long outlived its usefulness. I think, today, it is a net negative. The biggest problems: overhead, unclear rights, patents that should never have been granted, the assumption of validity, thickets, and injunction as the primary right. That, and the fact that it is difficult to willingly give one's inventions to the public.
But I have come around on much. In previous eras, I gave the honor to those who could create products and companies around their inventions. Ideas were cheap, I would say.
In fact, it takes immense determination to legitimately reduce an idea to practice -- the intended goal of a disclosure in the patent system. Through immense effort I have learned the ropes, learning to found companies and manage them, raise money, find markets, plan, recruit and manage commercialization and manufacturing. I might only get 10 - 20% of my time to invent. It is absurd that we ask all of our inventors to do this simply to make a buck. For every one of me there would be dozens who either couldn't, or shouldn't have to.
In private discussions with Nathan, he is well aware -- more than I -- of the limitations in the patent system. Nonetheless, within that system, he is trying to do a good thing. I do not call this evil.
My own company has essentially had its strategy forced upon us. We have applied for nearly 80 patents, at great expense of time and money, to defend ourselves from other companies. We had a great many ideas. Eventually, several multi-billion dollar organizations became interested in a few ideas we had patented. Each would be worth a huge amount to their organization if the product was successful. Should we not license the patent because the patent system is "evil?" Occasionally the system actually fulfills its stated purpose.
Intellectual ventures buys intellectual property, often directly from inventors. It sells particular chunks to interested buyers. In one, highly controversial "peacekeeping" tactic, IV buys and assembles bundles of packets, to destory packet thickets and get "live ammo" out of the play. They then license the bundles to large organizations, like Microsoft, Cisco, Apple. The big guys; selling them the closest form of freedom to operate that exists in todays world.
Is this evil? I think not. At the end of the day, through IV's actions, inventors get checks in the mail, large corporations get more freedom to operate, lawsuits that might have existed are defused, and some of the ideas that make the giant tech megacorps so profitable are actually paid for, to some extent, to their originators and appraisers. That is how the system is supposed to work.
It might be that the system has so much collateral damage that all these activities are a net negative. But let us not begrudge IV their intent. If actors are legally trying to do good within a flawed system, and in the process doing more harm than good, it is a flaw of the system more than the actor.
I basically think they've taken the flak for being a "patent troll" simply because they were a prominent target. They are scapegoating, without good judgement.
In fact, I believe IV is, at worst, misguided and large enough that missteps cause devastation out of line snd proportion to their intent, and at best, genuinely working to usher in a new age of private invention.
The simple fact is that IV is a patent troll. They are the very definition of what that term means and that makes them a force for evil in the world. They are a parasite on the technology world. They exploit a broken system for profit.
Just like anyone doing evil they can lie to themselves about it and tell you the story they tell themselves about their motivations. Just ask any Wall Street jagoff if he thinks he's doing bad things and he'll explain that he's actually helping the world, by "providing liquidity" and "ensuring a fair market value" -- in reality he spends most of his day looking for exploits in our financial system to make himself rich.
How does that matter? Maybe the issue the commenter is raising is not personal. Maybe it has nothing to do with personalities or generosity. Maybe he is raising the issue of IV's business model: further exploiting a broken system.
Some might opine that such exploitation is not a good thing, and we should not condone it let alone support it.
We can all make solid returns from patent trolling with very little risk. Seriously. The money is great. The USPTO is not going to fix the problems any time soon.
Does that mean we should all be working on patent troll "businesses"? Should we be doing all our business through shell corporations with PO Boxes in Eastern Texas? What if I could guarantee you a reasonable return? Would you invest in my patent trolling business? Why did Myrvold have to use his own money to start IV? Did he not want to take outside investment? Or maybe there was some other reason?
I'm not sure what you think he and Detmer are trying to do with IV. I think they're trying to make money as a tax collector on innovation. More power to them. The system allows this. It's all legal.
However, I can't quite see how the taxes innovators must pay to IV are adding any value. At best, they are paying for protection (nevermind why they should need such protection in the first place).
Educate me. What am I missing?
TerraPower is one of the most courageous and exciting approaches in technology today. It is absurd to think it is being done for PR purposes.
---
See my reply to Staunch as how I see it. One response to your phrase:
"Tax collector on innovation."
I think the concept at issue here is whether or not invention -- the creation of an idea and how to actual execute it -- is worth anything versus innovation -- brining a new concept to market.
Having been involved in both, it does seem invention is massively short changed versus innovation.
I disagree somewhat with the methods.
But the complete view of it would be that IV is trying to collect taxes from rulers, innovators, and all out copiers, and pay the inventors.
---
They actually do pay inventors.
Possibly too much. Word on the street is that they are not profitable. Or possibly the overhead is too high. Or perhaps they are simply not as aggressive as people might imagine.
If on the other hand you mean all patent trolls, including IV, are effectively a scapegoat for the systemic problems inside the PTO, then you might have a point.
With regard to tax collecting, invention is worth something for sure. Too many patents are used for defensive purposes only, but let's leave that aside. Having rights to an invention is commonly a necessary precursor for successful innovation. With invention, usually mutliple parties can lay claim to the same "invention". There is no shortage of "inventors". Rights to inventions that are never commercialized are always difficult to value. What are they worth?
Innovators are another matter. Innovators have to take on the risk. Successful innovators are relatively rare vis a vis inventors. IV is not an innovator. They do not bring products to market. That could change in the future, but as yet we have not yet seen anything more than PR stunts (e.g. donations of vaccine refridgerators). There's no reason to think IV will ever engage in manufacturing for the benefit of any inventor outside IV. IV's business is licensing. HN commenters are rightfully skeptical of any announcement that IV is anything other than a troll.
"They actually pay inventors."
Yes, IV pays inventors... if their implicit or explicit threats of litigation are successful... and then only after IV takes a cut. Law firms can do the same thing for inventors. But I never noticed anyone stating, "They actually do pay inventors." What's your point? Of course they pay inventors. If I ask a lawyer to find a licensee for my invention (or at least get someone to agree to a cash settlement out of fear of being sued), then yes, I expect to get paid.
He may be a nice person, but IV is doing very bad things. Sometimes it does matter how you make your money.
I dislike what Nathan Myhrvold has done with IV, the business model is despicable, and essential hacks major errors/bugs in the legal system to extrapolate money from productive members of society, and creators. The entire approach is a scam.
But, it's important to separate the bad that people do, from the good. Bill Gates and Microsoft (criminally) leveraged a monopoly to drive a good portion of a company (Netscape) I worked for out of the browser business.
But, that doesn't mean I can't respect and be amazed by the good that Bill Gates now does.
And I, for one, do not excuse Bill Gates for all the bad he's done to the world of software, among others, just because of his charity. But that's my personal opinion.
Gates' originally mission was a personal computer in every home and on every desk. I don't mean to detract from Apple, or IBM or any other company, but Microsoft accomplished that goal, in a remarkably short period of time.
And even if you believe that Microsoft did somehow damage the world of software (which I dispute), his charitable work has saved millions of lives, and will continue to do so. I understand that the ends don't justify the means, but whatever ill will you feel towards him for not being a champion of free software can't possibly overwhelm his positive contributions to humanity, even if they don't live in this country.
* It's not a nuclear reactor, it doesn't produce fission.
* It says that the thorium has a lot of potential energy, but it's not clear how to extract it. (A similar weight of potatoes has the same energy and at least it's easy to extract a part of it.)
* It mixes lasers and radioactive material. A lot of buzzwords but the explanation of the details is unintelligible.
I gave more details and direct quotes for the project in a previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879955