Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Bill Gates has joined the growing list of Greens who think renewables alone cannot replace fossil fuels.
What I learned at work this year
By Bill Gates
December 29, 2018…
Global emissions of greenhouse gases went up in 2018. For me, that just reinforces the fact that the only way to prevent the worst climate-change scenarios is to get some breakthroughs in clean energy.
Some people think we have all the tools we need, and that driving down the cost of renewables like solar and wind solves the problem. I am glad to see solar and wind getting cheaper and we should be deploying them wherever it makes sense.
But solar and wind are intermittent sources of energy, and we are unlikely to have super-cheap batteries anytime soon that would allow us to store sufficient energy for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Besides, electricity accounts for only 25% of all emissions. We need to solve the other 75% too.
This year Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the clean-energy investment fund I’m involved with, announced the first companies we’re putting money into. You can see the list at http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/our-investment-portfolio/. We are looking at all the major drivers of climate change. The companies we chose are run by brilliant people and show a lot of promise for taking innovative clean-energy ideas out of the lab and getting them to market.
Next year I will speak out more about how the U.S. needs to regain its leading role in nuclear power research. (This is unrelated to my work with the foundation.)
Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day. The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.
The United States is uniquely suited to create these advances with its world-class scientists, entrepreneurs, and investment capital.
Unfortunately, America is no longer the global leader on nuclear energy that it was 50 years ago. To regain this position, it will need to commit new funding, update regulations, and show investors that it’s serious.
There are several promising ideas in advanced nuclear that should be explored if we get over these obstacles. TerraPower, the company I started 10 years ago, uses an approach called a traveling wave reactor that is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very little waste. We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely. We may be able to build it in the United States if the funding and regulatory changes that I mentioned earlier happen.
The world needs to be working on lots of solutions to stop climate change. Advanced nuclear is one, and I hope to persuade U.S. leaders to get into the game.
…
Read more: https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2018
Anthony, myself, many others at WUWT have repeatedly said we have no problem with policies which encourage nuclear power, though we oppose carbon pricing because it imposes unnecessary hardship.
The evidence is unequivocal that the world could rapidly decarbonise the global economy by embracing nuclear power, without reducing consumption or making radical lifestyle changes.
France switched from coal to nuclear power in the 1970s without breaking their economy. They kept costs down by mass producing standardised reactor components, reprocessing waste fuel, and by reducing bureaucratic impediments by designating nuclear power a strategic national priority. France still generates 71% of their electricity from nuclear reactors, though lately President Macron is attempting to undo this achievement.
If nuclear power is such an obviously solution, why hasn’t it happened?
The main obstacle to going full nuclear in the West is the green movement.
When leading climate scientists beg the world to consider embracing nuclear power to decarbonise the economy, greens respond by calling them names.
Greens tell us we all must have the utmost respect for the global warming concerns of their favourite climate scientists, but that respect goes out the window whenever those same climate scientists say something which contradicts green policy objectives.
Next time a green asks you to make personal lifestyle sacrifices to reduce your carbon footprint, ask them why opposing nuclear power, the only large scale zero carbon energy source likely to receive bipartisan support, is more important to the green movement than reducing CO2. If you get an answer which makes sense let me know – because green excuses that nuclear is too expensive (not in France), or too dangerous (more dangerous than the end of the world?!) simply don’t make sense.
Update (EW): h/t Duncan Smith – Congress appears to be taking advanced nuclear power seriously, they recently passed the bipartisan S.97 – Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act of 2017.
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1st Happy New Year
not all environmentalists have the same ideas and solutions to problems just like any large political affiliation – there’s so much diversity in opinions and agendas.
there are so many pros and cons for all types of energy generation – the big con for nuclear – no one – even the self proclaimed ‘I have the answer to everything’, Bill Gates – mentions is the burial of the waste – so many issues already with this – whether for reactors that generate medical isotopes and are solely used for research or those for electricity generation – THE NUCLEAR WASTE – lasts for millions of years – who wants it buried in their backyard???
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2018/09/18/south-australia-could-be-final-destination-british-nuclear-waste
https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=960bb823-b74d-427f-a277-948da4ab97ac&subId=565224.
LOTS OF BIG DECISIONS YET TO BE MADE
So lets take the CO2 out of combusted coal exhaust and turn the CO2 into money and full time jobs.
https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
This makes burning coal too expensive.
In addition the process of concentrating large amounts of CO2 is potentially extremely dangerous – a natural CO2 “burp” in Africa in 1986 killed people up to 15 miles away from the source of the CO2, by displacing breathable air.
A similar catastrophe near a populated city would cause loss of life on a scale comparable to the detonation of a large nuclear device.
Eric, that’s another example of Wikipedia being wrong. Displacing 5% of the oxygen has the same effect as climbing a small mountain (almost no effect, certainly not hypoxia). Adding that same 5% amount of CO2 to air will cause immediate distracting discomfort and 8% will cause dizziness, stupor, and unconsciousness. At 15% you will die of hypercapnia in a few minutes. There’s still plenty of oxygen, but the CO2 level in your bloodstream will rise too high.
I accidentally got a lungful of 80/20 CO2/O2 and I went into immediate uncontrollable hyperventilation (of clean air). At the time, I was working on a prototype oxygen rebreather breathing apparatus.
I see sid is still short on investors.
From the fourth paragraph of the portion of Bill Gates’a letter/article as quoted in the above article: “We are looking at all the major drivers of climate change.”
So, therefore, if Gates is true to his word, that means he’ll be funding companies that have the primary objective of managing:
1) solar insolation at TOA,
2) Earth’s relationship to/dependence on Milankovitch cycles,
3) absolute humidity (water vapor content) in Earth’s atmosphere,
4) sources of nucleation sites (i.e., sources of aerosols, dust and salt crystals) that serve to create clouds in the troposphere,
5) factors (TBD) responsible for the PDO and the AMO, and last but not least,
6) Earth’s plate tectonics (aka, continental drift).
Just brilliant, Bill . . . go for it!
Right answer. Wrong reason.
It’s not greens asking you to make personal lifestyle choices, it’s anti-greens trying to convince people it’s all THEIR fault instead of the big industries that pay lots of money to keep polluting.
It’s not the eco-nuts that are blocking nuclear power, because while plenty of them are loopy-scared of nuclear power they have no power to start or stop anything. It’s NIMBY that blocks nuclear power, NIMBY and the fact that no energy company wants to put forward an expensive investment building a NEW reactor when they can just keep fueling and burning their ugly, dirty, and half-broken coal-burner if they buy some cheap whore politicians.
Of course, chances are you already knew that, since you have a tendency to lie a lot.
Dorcus “…when they can just keep fueling and burning their ugly, dirty, and half-broken coal-burner if they buy some cheap whore politicians…” Funny. Since these days by far the biggest growth in brand spanking newly built ‘coal-burners’ is in China would those “cheap whore politicians” you are referring to perhaps be their government? Just asking.
They’re in a lot of countries, America included.
dorcus, have you ever spent any time in the real world?
The greens aren’t asking people to do anything, they are demanding that people behave as they want. They are very vocal about it. If you’ve missed it, it can only be because you don’t want to see it.
Where’s this pollution that has your panties in such a wad?
It’s the eco-nuts who have been donating to politicians based on their opposition to nuclear power.
It’s the eco-nuts who have been suing anything to do with nuclear power with the declared intent to not let anything be built.
Nice of you to let us know how you really feel. Now why don’t you wake up and live in the real world for awhile.
Your delusions are noted. Meanwhile in reality the greens have no political power, the lawsuits stop nothing, and in many cases don’t even exist. “Suing everything”? A quick skim shows various lawsuits against power companies for cheating, a few lawsuits that whose dismissals say big power companies get to keep all their secrets regardless of their practices (and how unsafe/regulation skirting they might be) and a lawsuit that says nuclear energy gets free money.
There’s more lawsuits going against the greens for their horrible crime of ‘saying mean things’.
No, if your secret dream of every Green getting murdered came true not a THING would change in terms of nuclear power deployment. They have no power, they have no clout, they DEFINITELY have no money.
It’s NIMBY and good old industrial inertia.
Better late than never, Bill. Welcome to the nuclear club. Once in, people rarely leave.
But be cautious, my friend. Otherwise you may suddenly realize that most of the other global-warming twaddle is a house built on intellectual sand. If the full magnitude dawns all at once you may feel the need to seek counseling or other medical attention.
p.s. Bill. Back in ~2001 you could see my apartment from where you lived if you looked North-West across the lake to U.Village. (Obviously my view of the Cascades was much better. 🙂 )
Traveling Wave Reactors certainly have advantages over current LWRs, however, in terms of safety, construction costs, fuel costs (Thorium is dirt cheap and abundant) and ultimate cost/kWh, LFTRs are still much safer and cheaper to run ($0.03/kWh—50% cheaper than coal and natural gas).
Traveling Wave Reactors (TWRs) also have the inherent problem of using Liquid Sodium for cooling, which is very volatile and dangerous stuff—ask the Japanese.. LFTRs also have a passive safety system which works 100% of the time; as long as gravity works, LFTRs are perfectly safe…
TWRs also require water for steam generators, while LFTRs use Brayton generators or gas generators, which require no water.
China will have commercial LFTRs by 2030. If the US doesn’t catch up quickly, a second wave of industrial production will move to China to take advantage of cheap and unlimited power.
Gates should have put his money in LFTRs rather than TWRs…
By championing nuclear power and opposing fossil fueled power Mr. Gates has proved himself to be a sucker for a pseudoscientific argument which states that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming.
Not necessarily. There are other reasons to think fossil fuels will not energize humanity indefinitely. He may believe fossil fuels cause global warming but he may also believe that fossil fuels are not the long term answer even if they don’t cause global warming.
Bill’s success is due to phenomenal punting success, not intelligence.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/11/02/bill-gates-socialism-can-save-us-climate-change/
I only agree with his push for nuclear. The rest of his sentiments are globalist talking point eugenics
https://m.sfgate.com/books/article/Microsoft-s-Dirty-Tricks-Uncovered-Bill-Gates-2985251.php
More nuclear is needed to significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels but such will have no effect on climate. The reality is that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. It is all a matter of science.
Regarding the Waste”” from nuclear power plants, Australian scientists came up with “Simrock way back in the 1960 tees, and there are plenty of holes all over the world, such as oil drillings etc. Anyway Australia is perfect for a nuclear waste site, other than the Greens to scare us. Its geologically stable, way back from shifting plates, and we could charge a reasonable fee for its use.
Anyway we can use Nuclear for the generation of electricity plus certain medical uses. We will still need petrol or diesel, their use will surly provide ample CO2 for the greening of the Earth.
Anyway just how much of human made CO2 is there in the world. What about the massive growing of rice, that’s methane which does break down into CO2.
Plus of course all wild life, the perfectly natural variety. They all “Fart” and shock horror that’s CO2 as well.
So lets kill off the nutty CO2 greens, by governments using the TV and print etc to tell us the scientific truth for a change.
True the left of politics will try to hold onto CO2 scare a bit longer, but then in those parts of the world with such h government, s sooner or later their “Lights will go out”.
MJE
Don’t dispose of it, process it and use it again.
Common core-creator Bill Gates has probably done more to hurt humanity than any other single human being on Earth by creating and instituting via his colossal fortune and clout the mass brainwashing of America’s children into believing, through the pretext of science education no less. in the unsubstantiated and agenda-driven human-caused global warming hysteria as reported on this excellent site a while back:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/24/climate-youththe-next-generation-science-standards/
Come to think of it, in a problem/reaction/solution sort of way Gates is creating the demand or problem through promoting the human-caused climate change panic and the solution with his TerraPower molten salt reactors…
Oh! and Happy New Year WUWT!
While your criticism of Bill Gates funding climate alarm may well be justified, he is hardly alone. But let’s consider that he has also funded tackling the scourge of Malaria in a way that would probably enrage most eco-loons and give credit where it is due. Reading between the lines, his statement that renewables can’t cut it suggests he has had the sense to see through the nonsense churned out by the green blob and realises, entirely correctly, that nuclear power is the way to go.
In the U.K. we we have the prospect of Jeremiah Maduro Mark II waiting to practise socialist energy poverty of the green kind. Swap for Bill Gates anytime thanks.
Happy New Year to you and all at WUWT.
Gates has proved many times over his entire life that he is just another predatorial shark in the pool.
If you can believe the sincerity of this horrible guy that has deliberately pushed back technological progress time after time with his theft of IP (anyone remember he STOLE windows NT, the very basis of his current OS from Digital and got sued for it) you are no better than the AGW guys who also hide their end game…
Windows? it was designed to destroy any other competitor and impose a tax on computer ownership – to benefit who else but GATES.
He actually succeeded in b. shting his way out of the antitrust case that was brought against his company.
Sounds like a scammer to me.
I also have very serious issues with all/any of the following:-
“France switched from coal to nuclear power in the 1970s without breaking their economy.
They kept costs down by mass producing standardised reactor components, reprocessing waste fuel, and by reducing bureaucratic impediments by designating nuclear power a strategic national priority. France still generates 71% of their electricity from nuclear reactors, though lately President Macron is attempting to undo this achievement.
If nuclear power is such an obviously solution, why hasn’t it happened?
The main obstacle to going full nuclear in the West is the green movement.
When leading climate scientists beg the world to consider embracing nuclear power to decarbonise the economy”
1/ France switched from coal to nuclear power in the 1970s without breaking their economy…
No, France switched to nuclear power by having a deliberate policy of having health and safety work practices half a century behind anyone else. They also nigh on bankrupted the north of France getting rid of coal, places which remain to this day black spots of unemployment.
They have now spread their pollution to places in Africa where they can more easily get away with it…
It is difficult to believe how such a country could mine uranium all over their own country, give away the tailings to make roads and build eco-buildings, swamp the ground water of Limoges with radioactive discharges into the water supply and then btw, allow the asbestos industry free rein to kill 1000s, then (judgment of DEC 2018!) after 30 yrs of a fight to obtain justice, let off every single one of the management of those companies from going to prison for it…
2/ “If nuclear power is such an obviously solution, why hasn’t it happened?
The main obstacle to going full nuclear in the West is the green movement.”
I don’t believe this either.
The main obstacle to making more nuclear power IN THE UK (I am not against btw), is retiring a whole generation of engineers, then the Blair and Brown government giving away their entire IP and manufacturing base away at bottom of barrel prices. You couldn’t make it up.
The UK was the FIRST country in the world to make NPP work.
Those 2 should be sitting in prison.
If you then consider that we have given our IP away to the Chinese, to build NPP in Europe, who have a totally lackadaisical approach to anything safety conscious (and to the same French who are doing what I described in France)…. you already have a situation which creates & should rightly create suspicion of malpractice & collusion.
The other elephants in the room were the decision in the USA, NOT to reprocess fuel, inc NOT to use weapons grade material in NPP. Instead they bought it from Russia.
These are decisions which pile up problems for the future, and are rapidly becoming an expensive nightmare.
3/ What to do with the low level mine tailings, the low level waste, intermediate level waste and the high level reactor waste products?
We have no answers to these.
The principal of polluter=payer does NOT work.
We had no answers to how to manage nuclear accident problems or lake Karachay, or how to clean up simple places even on the St Bernard pass or parts of Scotland, Wales, Finland, or Sweden after the huge depositions of Caesium 137 from chernobyl..
Nobody has volunteered to return the residents of Bikini atoll to their island or clean it up?
Chernobyl was paid for by guess who?
NOT Russia or Ukraine.
It all sounds like social engineering and experimentation at its worst.
Frankly Russia should only be considered a “great country” if it were capable of clearing up Semipalatinsk, the rivers & lakes adjoining Mayak, and stop lying when you let loose a whole load of Ruthenium into the environment.
Until the nuclear industry,eg. cogema and the same organisations in the USA, China, India, Russia, starts taking cleaning up seriously and find solutions to the only very large nascent problems they are creating, it’s hard to find a case for uranium,.
If Gates were sincere (sarc), he would be producing a solution out of a hat to use a different version of fission reaction from the ones which we are currently using..which produce far more controllable amounts of pollution.
I fear this guy is even more ignorant of the subject than he is of the backwardness of his own company which has cloned, copied produced fail after fail after fail, then blamed it all on other people.
Look at Skype for the perfect example of what NOT to do, and this guy wants to do nuclear??
anyone remember he STOLE windows NT, the very basis of his current OS from Digital and got sued for it
1) he didn’t “steal” it, he hired Dave Culter and a number of other former Digital employees who used their knowledge gained from working at Digital in their work at Microsoft (in other words the same people wrote the code for the two OSes). You can argue the ethics of them using concepts they previously developed at Digital, but technically it’s not stealing.
2) he did not get sued for it: “Why the Fastest Chip Didn’t Win” (Business Week, April 28, 1997) states that when Digital engineers noticed the similarities between VMS and NT, they brought their observations to senior management. Rather than suing, Digital cut a deal with Microsoft. In the summer of 1995, Digital announced Affinity for OpenVMS, a program that required Microsoft to help train Digital NT technicians, help promote NT and Open-VMS as two pieces of a three-tiered client/server networking solution, and promise to maintain NT support for the Alpha processor. Microsoft also paid Digital between 65 million and 100 million dollars.
Uh, no. Going Nuclear will not decarbonize the global economy. Not unless you plane on all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes also being Nuclear.
Transportation isn’t going electric anytime soon, regardless of how the electricity is produced. So we can only decarbonize the electrical grid. That would make a dent in CO2 production, if that’s a concern to you, possibly low enough to stabilize atmospheric levels. But we WILL still be needing Fossil Fuels for some time to come.
~¿~
Gates first discussed the Traveling Wave Reactor (TRW) at the 2010 TED talks.
Here’s the YouTube link. The most relevant parts of his talk regarding TRW are at the 10, 13 and 19 minute points of the video.
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates/transcript?language=en#t-1456034
The nuclear fission TRW reactor would use spent fuel from existing nuclear reactors (the stuff nobody wants in their back yards).
Seems like you solve several problems with this:
Safer reactor
Long term energy source (if you can solve molten sodium/chloride cooling issues)
Zero CO2 emissions (I’m not a believer in “anthropogenic global warming”, but if it gets warmists like Gates on board for long term, reliable energy, it’s a selling point )
Burns spent nuclear fuel that no one wants stored near them
The downside is using the molten sodium or molten chloride cooling system.
Here are a couple of links that discuss the TRW reactor in more detail.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/terrapowers-nuclear-reactor-could-power-the-21st-century
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-terrapower-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-2018-10
Possibly an apology for Windows 10 but otherwise “What Climate Crisis?”
The Crisis is that ‘Global Warming’ is entirely imaginary – it only exists inside folks’ heads.
And it was put there by a totally sh1t diet revolving around sugar (refined and fermented & cooked starch) and reinforced with cannabis, coffee, Ibuprofen, Prozac, Opium (prescription and otherwise), MDMA, glue solvents etc etc and further aided and abetted by the bottle-feeding of newborns.
The resultant train-wreck going on inside almost everyone’s head on a daily basis results in Governments that are permanently overspent and bankrupt.
And there-in is The Crisis. Even the brain-dead zombies that now run & control the system realise it is not sustainable.
But that very mental lethargy that created it can only see one solution:
Ever more regulation and tax – hence where Climate Crisis comes racing to their rescue.
The Chinese via massive production of Cheap Nasty Plastic Tat have enabled a brief respite but it has major hazards – if renowned Climate Scientists like Roy Spencer cannot be ar5ed to even read the instruction manuals and thus nuke their own scientific credibility- we are in some truly deep schist.
More ordinary zombie punters simply admire the tsunami of shiny junk and conclude very simply that “Things Have Never Been Better” then put it away into storage (often = landfill) thus making room room to buy ever more.
Next time you meet an (Ancient) Roman, Minoan, Inca, Greek, Phoenician or Eden Gardener: ask them and they’ll tell you about it.
I am overjoyed that Bill Gates is giving how own money rather than advocating the allocation of government (taxpayer) money.
If nuclear power is such an obviously solution, why hasn’t it happened?
The simple answer is that what is really important to those who advocate environmental policy is not so much to have a pristine environment, but to achieve a spiritually elevated humanity. The bulk of the policies demanded converge far faster on creating the mythical organic, natural, sustainable, pure secular Garden of Eden where humans will have transcended the petty and destructive aspects of their innate nature. In short, they seek a New Earth for their New Socialist Man.
Those seeking this impossible Utopia are only stopped by the practical realities of hard limits. They have fixated on generating power via technologies they view as “sustainable” up until the moment their cost or other factors of deployment overwhelm their vision. Then their energies are focused on the next source of power. A nuclear power plant has no organic appeal. It is just too “industrial” for their tastes, no matter how clean and safe it may be. No matter how many hawks and song birds are chopped up by wind turbines, wind power is “sustainable”, even on the most cold and still night in January. Such people are immune to reason.
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man
henryp in 3, 2, 1…
gelukkige Nuwe Jaar, Henry!
Be interesting to see if Gates’ TerraPower or other companies will be able to integrate the work done on the now defunct Transatomic’s project to run on spent fuel:
“A nuclear startup will fold after failing to deliver reactors that run on spent fuel…
…Transatomic will open-source all its intellectual property, making it available for other researchers to “continue the work that we’ve started and hopefully build on it.” ”
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612193/nuclear-startup-to-fold-after-failing-to-deliver-reactor-that-ran-on-spent-fuel/
CANDU reactors have been able to do this since their development post WW2, and burn Thorium too. Everyone resists the CANDU’s need for heavy water, but is willing to spend gazillions on sexy sounding molten metal cooling, or molten salt. Plus CANDU’s safety dues have been paid, areas around Chalk River having been turned into a mini-Chernobyl 70 years ago but resulted in over 30 safely operating reactors worldwide today.
DMac
Yes CANDU perhaps does deserve another serious chance, alongside the molten salt thorium and other 4th generation designs.
Ecclesiastes 11:6
Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.
If CAGW scientists “really believed” and had a lick of honesty, they’d have LOUDLY pointed out that all the current UN plans costing many 10’s of $TRILLIONS will not have a measurable effect on the “problem”…even when using their own inflated CO2 climate sensitivity numbers.
These CAGW scientists are getting lots of these $$…and lots of institutional power…so don’t expect the truth from them.
Bill Gates’ advisors can do these 4th grade “back of the envelope” calculations…so they know AGW proposals won’t actually do anything about the climate.
Why don’t they point that out as well? Why only point out the absolute folly of Solar and Wind? (Maybe they will after getting their nuclear solutions in place…as a reason to escalate the “nuclear solution”.)
For the AGW cabal it’s all about money and power, and AWG is only the latest effective tool.
There can be no doubt that advanced nuclear energy is required for civilization to continue to advance, after all, we will eventually run out of oil and wind and solar can’t replace hydrocarbons. However; there is no climate crisis except for the one invented by the media based on the faulty science embraced by the IPCC.
People rarely examine the drivers of demand, namely demographics and efficiency measures. Global population growth has slowed dramatically. The world’s population will likely peak by 2070, maybe sooner. Half of people in the world are already “middle class,” ie consuming at peak energy.
What’s more, energy efficiency measures have and will continue to reduce per capita use. It’s also likely that an aging population consumes less energy than a younger one. As we all know, most of the advanced industrial economies are aging rapidly.
Demographic and technological changes will eventually solve any energy problems (and carbon emissions issues, if you’re a believer). My message is, “Don’t worry, be happy.”
The watermelons’ dilemma- Yellow vests or yellowcake?
True – and very succinct!
For a start they could catch up with the Russian BN-800 fast breeder reactor and the VVER-1200 PWR.
In 1990 I did a postgraduate research project at the experimental fast breeder reactor at Dounreay, Scotland. Here they tried and failed where Russia have now succeeded with the BN-800. The problem at Dounreay was always liquid sodium leaks at welded joints in the pipes. I kept think to myself, why couldn’t they cast all the pipe junctions? I guess the Russians must have done this or something similar.
Gates is incapable of making anything that is either secure or doesn’t crash.
He has not the slightest clue what means 24/24/365 which is why the majority of the world’s servers avoid him like the plague.
Aircraft don’t run windows OS, have multiple redundancy built in, and are designed to fail safe.
Would you want anything less than that?
It puts Gate’s entire ethos and opportunistic “do gooder” nonsense firmly in perspective.
better keep him well away from anything “mission critical”please!
The whole idea that Gates should have anything to do with a serious industrial application is just so totally laughable.
Look what the military use?
*nix etc
https://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-3/issue-3/features/feature-article/dual-buses-empower-for-french-navy-ship.html
TED is so full of hot air, it suits Gates perfectly, like that other mega-scammer MUSK.
The bottom line for Gates has always been his SOP – Embrace and Extend. In other words, steal and hold your customers hostage. After seeing the Xerox Star, Jobs did the same thing at Apple. There is a lot of taxpayer funded BSD code in both products.
One wonders where this ideology will lead to with Nuclear Energy.
That alone is a frightening thought…