Bill Gates has said he is willing to invest billions of dollars in a next-generation nuclear power plant in Wyoming to meet growing US electricity needs.
TerraPower LLC, a company founded by Gates, broke ground on its first commercial reactor last week in Wyoming, where a coal plant is shutting down, the billionaire founder of Microsoft Corp. said. Face the Nation. TerraPower has been testing simple, cheap reactors since 2008 and expects to complete a new reactor by 2030.
“I have invested more than a billion, and I will invest billions more,” said Gates, who is ranked sixth in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The TerraPower plant, supported by the US Department of Energy, was expected to start operating in 2028. But that would mean relying on fuel from Russia, which is “unacceptable now,” Gates told CNN. Available from Zakaria GPS.
The reactor design uses liquid sodium as a buffer instead of water and includes molten salt that can store heat to increase output. TerraPower plans to source reactor fuel from the US and its partners, Gates said.
“Coal is being eclipsed by natural gas,” Gates told CNN. “And what we have to do is compete effectively with natural gas.”
Carbon-free nuclear power is increasingly seen as an important part of the fight against climate change, and many companies are developing smaller reactors. Last year, 25 countries at the COP28 climate change conference in Dubai announced the desire to acquire nuclear power three times, according to BloombergNEF.
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