Atomic Goal: 800 Years of Power From Waste

[Marlin]

I'm encouraged that Mr. Gates is still pursuing this technology not so much that China may be the country that builds the demo plant.
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Atomic Goal: 800 Years of Power From Waste


BELLEVUE, Wash. — In a drab one-story building here, set between an indoor tennis club and a home appliance showroom, dozens of engineers, physicists and nuclear experts are chasing a radical dream of Bill Gates.

The quest is for a new kind of nuclear reactor that would be fueled by today’s nuclear waste, supply all the electricity in the United States for the next 800 years and, possibly, cut the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation around the world.

The people developing the reactor work for a start-up, TerraPower, led by Mr. Gates and a fellow Microsoft billionaire, Nathan Myhrvold. So far, it has raised tens of millions of dollars for the project, but building a prototype reactor could cost $5 billion — a reason Mr. Gates is looking for a home for the demonstration plant in rich and energy-hungry China.

(Mr. Gates, of course, has plenty of money of his own. This year Forbes listed him as the world’s second-richest person, with a net worth of $67 billion.)

“The hope is that we’ll find a country, with China being the most likely, that would be able to build the demo plant,” Mr. Gates said last year in a conversation with the energy expert Daniel Yergin. “If that happens, then the economics of this are quite a bit better than the plants we have today.”

More at link below
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/business/energy-environment/atomic-goal-800-years-of-power-from-waste.html?ref=science&_r=1&

[HydroDave63]

More at link below
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/business/energy-environment/atomic-goal-800-years-of-power-from-waste.html?ref=science&_r=1&

but it's just a fancy name for a hard-spectrum fast breeder reactor, and Bill Gates wants to build them for the ChiComs? 

[Kismet]

What is the advantage of consuming u-238/plutonium in this kind of reactor versus other reactors that already exist that consume these fuels? CANDU reactors, and others can already do this no?

[cheme09]

What is the advantage of consuming u-238/plutonium in this kind of reactor versus other reactors that already exist that consume these fuels? CANDU reactors, and others can already do this no?

LWRs also consume U238 to an extent, although CANDUs do so more efficiently.  The bottom line is that LWRs and CANDUs, both generally have a conversion ratio less than 1.  Fast breeder reactors are designed such that they have a conversion ratio of at least 1 (aka breeding ratio).