LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #575, Wednesday, (03/20/2024)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity.”
Bill Gates’ Terra Power . . .
LLAW’s CONCERNS & COMMENTS, Wednesday, (03/20/2024)
Come June, 2024, with or without a permit from regulators, the startup nuclear power company, Terra Power, wants to start work near a Pacific Corp. coal facility, which is in its waning days. The site is located just south of Kemmerer, Wyoming.
The whole concept of these SMR (Small Modular Reactor) has been fraught with questionable details and problems. For instance, the company has been waiting to begin its Demo Plant for two years because the uranium fuel to operate the plant is only available from Russia, and Russia is not making it available to Terra Power, and given the two nations’ relationships, perhaps never will. SMR’s are thus far of inadequate quality in both safety and durability (there are only two, both state-owned and controlled, operating world-wide thus far. One is in Russia and one is in China and the American largest company producing these start-up unproven power plants, NuScale Power, recently abandoned a project in Utah due to cost overruns and other financial difficulties.
Terra Power, which has already spent 8 years going nowhere beyond their dream, has raised about $1 Billion for a plant that will cost (unless it has the same fate as Nuscale, which is probable) about $4+ billion to engineer and construct. They expect half of that cost to come from the Department of Energy. They also expect the plant to be built and operational in just 6 years, including the NRC’s approval of the plant as safe, secure, functional, and operational, which would of course be an approval time record, but of course that will never happen. How they raised the $1 billion thus far is a mystery to me. Perhaps it all came out of Bill Gates’ pocket, or maybe a handout from General Electric.
If I were a betting man, I would never bet a plug nickel on the success on such an “out of this world” nuclear power plant, its planned reactors, and its ‘very cheap’ Natrium cooling system (a fancy name for liquid (molten) salt that allows a nuclear reactor to operate at much higher temperatures than conventional water cooling). Could anything possibly go wrong with a nuclear reactor operating at hundreds of degrees higher temperatures than conventional water-cooled nuclear reactors, which can and do melt down? That is still to be determined . . . ~llaw
A Bill Gates company is about to start building a nuclear power plant in Wyoming
Mar 19, 2024, 6:05 AM PDT
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TerraPower, which Bill Gates founded, plans to build its first nuclear power plant in the US.
CEO Chris Levesque told the Financial Times it wants to start work on a site in Wyoming in June.
TerraPower says its reactor design is cheaper because they're cooled by liquid sodium, not water.
A company cofounded by Bill Gates is about to start building next-generation nuclear power plants in the US.
Chris Levesque, CEO of TerraPower, told the Financial Times that his firm will start building at a site near a coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming in June, even if it hasn't received a construction permit from regulators by then.
The company plans to bring the nuclear plant online in 2030, he added.
TerraPower, which has raised $1 billion from backers, will use liquid sodium rather than water to cool its Natrium reactors, making them cheaper to run.
Most of the initial work at the Kemmerer site won't be related to nuclear activity, Levesque said.
"When you use liquid sodium as a coolant instead of water it's a game changer," he told the FT.
"Natrium plants will cost half of what light water reactor plants cost … and we are moving our project along pretty aggressively."
Gates helped found TerraPower in 2006 and has been its chairman since then. The company has said its aim is to provide the world with a more affordable, secure, and environmentally friendly form of nuclear energy.
Its Natrium reactor is expected to cost $4 billion, with about half the cost being met by the Department of Energy. CRV and Khosla Ventures are among the company's VC backers, Reuters reported.
While Russian and Chinese state-controlled companies have already managed to launch smaller nuclear reactors, progress in developing similar tech in the US has stalled in recent years.
High interest rates have made it tougher for startups to draw in funding, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine and subsequent exclusion from financial markets has made it tougher for companies to get the uranium needed for their reactors.
In December 2022, TerraPower pushed back the launch of its flagship project by at least two years, which Levesque attributed to the war in Ukraine hitting supplies of high-assay, low-enriched uranium.
In October last year TerraPower missed out on making the shortlisted for the next round of the UK government's competition for small nuclear plants. Rolls-Royce is one of the leading contenders with its small modular reactor (SMR) designs and has already secured more than £200m of government funding in Britain.
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