Bill Gates invests in nuclear power plant with sodium technology
© REUTERS / Charles Plates
For Microsoft founders Bill Gates is Nuclear energy a cornerstone in the fight against climate change. Specifically, he sees in mini nuclear power plants an important future technology. In this context, he invested in the company Terrapowerwhich wants to build such power plants.
One is being built in the US state Wyoming in the town Kemmerer. Like Gates in his blog reported, he was on site at the end of last week, “for the next nuclear breakthrough” to celebrate, as he writes. “I am confident that the facility will be an asset to the local economy, America’s energy independence and the fight against climate change,” Gates said.
Start 2030
According to Gates, the power plant should 2030 be ready to go. At that point, it will be the “most advanced nuclear facility in the world,” Gates says. A new type is used sodium technology. According to Gates, fall in the process less nuclear waste at. It is also clear safer. With the help of supercomputers the design has been tested countless times, Gates said. It was “every conceivable disaster scenario” played through and the power plant would have withstood everything.
The concept envisages that the power plant with liquid sodium is cooled instead of water. Whose boiling point is higher, and it does not have to be pumped. This also means that the cooling also in the event of a power outage functions. In conventional power plants, emergency power generators (e.g. with the help of diesel) must be available to prevent overheating or overheating. meltdown to prevent.
345 megawatts of power
The power plant should have an output of 345 Megawatt feature. At peak times, the performance should be up to 500 MW said it can be increased. According to earlier information from TerraPower, the power plant should cost around a billion dollars.
Westinghouse mini nuclear power plant
Recently, the US company also Westinghouse presented a new mini nuclear power plant. At the AP300 is a small modular reactor (SMR), with 300 megawatts of power. That should be enough to supply up to 500,000 households with electricity. In contrast to the Terrapower design, the AP300 touches down conventional technologybut on a smaller scale.
The reactor building is small enough to take up only a quarter of the area of a soccer field. So should a nuclear power plant with an AP300 clearly faster and less complicated can be erected than a conventional nuclear power plant. The idea is to build directly on the sites of former coal-fired power plants, since the network infrastructure can already be found there.
