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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As someone who worked with computers when Bill “inventor of the computer” Gates was in kindergarten and who watched his rise to riches and stardom, I say that he is not the technical genius he is made out to be. However, he is a ruthless businessman. All his riches came from using the work of others as if it were his own.
My point is that he’s not an expert on anything and his opinions are best ignored.
Gates should look to his own backyard as a place where he could do some real good with his charitable work. Seattle has a rampant and worsening homeless problem. The homeless have created unsanitary conditions with feces and urine on the streets, unhygienic living situations, diseases, drug use, alcoholism and the greater societal impacts created by a large homeless population. Homeless people are now camping everywhere in the city including the supposedly “nice” downtown areas. This is a tangible problem that Gates could help solve in the very state where he became the world’s richest man. And maybe he should look into Soylent Green as an energy source – there are A LOT of homeless people after all 😉
“The main obstacle to going full nuclear in the West is the green movement”?
Sorry, its because nuclear is too expensive.
In 2018, in most of the United States, the average price of wholesale power was less than 3-1/2 cents a kilowatt hour, thanks to natural gas, a fuel so clean most people burn it in their kitchen, and so plentiful it will be coming out our ears for hundreds of years..
You cant even pay the operating costs at a nuclear plant for that 3-1/2 cents, which is why dozens of existing nuclear plants are scheduled for abandonment. And building a new one? Fat chance. The cost is 1200 percent of building a a gas fired power plant.
The US government recently approved a bill facilitating development and licensing of advanced nuclear power technology. Bill Gates is now supporting nuclear technology development They all seem to know something that you don’t.
Russia, China and India and other countries as well are forging ahead with nuclear generation programs. When you strip out the artificial added political costs and green sabotage costs, nuclear is not that expensive.
The initiatives of the US government and Bill Gates are in acknowledgment that the USA has lost its leadership in nuclear technology. Russia and China now lead this field. The USA, UK, France and Germany all worked for several decades on fast breeder sodium cooled reactors, and all terminated their programs concluding that it couldn’t be done. But the Russians have cracked it. The Beloyarsk BN-600 and BN-800 fast breeder reactors are providing baseline electricity in a rather uneventful manner (which is what you want if you’re a grid manager).
The US has lost nuclear leadership due primarily to you and your colleagues in the multi/million dollar anti nuclear green establishment. You have sabotaged the economy of the democratic western countries. You have had everything your way for years, but now increasingly people are on to you and your Luddite wrecking game.
Bill Gates should be congratulated for this nuclear initiative.
It is intelligent, forward looking and much needed.
He is making an incomparably better contribution to our future than the cynical and misguided donations from the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio and the deviously self-interested “oil-trains-R-us” Warren Buffet. Not to mention the irresponsible buffoon Thomas Steyer.
Found this on an industry website…
MS Reactor Home & Business 2.0 only needs to be rebooted after a meltdown once every week or so. That’s a 60% improvement over version 1.0! In version 2.5 it is rumored that Microsoft will finally be adding the much-anticipated feature of outputting useful power. Sources familiar with the product roadmap tell us that it will be available through a proprietary interface that you can only use if you re-wire your entire home with pluggable modules, available in late 2023, pricing not yet announced. (However, other analysts expect that this may not be delivered until the new Fusion product is released in 30 years).
Now available: For 40% of the original purchase price paid annually, you can convert to the (mushroom) cloud subscription Meltdown 365 and always run the latest version. You will have the benefit of performing the quality assurance testing for Microsoft, so that you can be sure to experience all the bugs. Plus you will be connected directly to Russian and Chinese hackers at no extra charge. (A $199.95 value).
What can explain the alarmists reluctance to embrace nuclear power? It’s blindingly obvious that it’s the only large scale, low-carbon energy source that accomplishes what the alarmists claim to be necessary.
Could it be sheer embarrassment at having actively opposed nuclear power for their entire lives? They should be happy for how easy and convenient it can be to switch sides. Just pull out their old protest signs, change the word “No” to “Now” and they’re ready for the next protest!
You asked: “What can explain the alarmists reluctance to embrace nuclear power?”
One cannot logically put carbon-use taxes on an energy source that does not use a carbon-based fuel.
Next question.
Indeed, the “carbon-tax” money won’t roll in if people aren’t using carbon-based fuels (such as nuclear).
Besides which eliminating fossil-fuels isn’t really their goal, it’s just a means to an end – that end being power and the transformation of the world into their socialist utopia. Never mind that it’s failed everywhere it’s been tried (see Venezuela for the most recent example).
All those $ billions and he still can’t get himself a decent haircut.
This another example of the arrogance of the rich and famous. They assume that they are smarter, more innovative, and are better leaders.
Every one else is stupid because they are not rich and famous. They will show us how to fix the problem. They alone will get it done.
Of course they never get it done.
If every problem is a crisis then the word loses its meaning.
The power industry does a very good job of delivering the finite amount of electricity. About 20% comes from nuclear power. The US is the world leader in producing electricity with nuclear power. There is not a close second.
Bill Gates can not do a better job. Someone told him there were problems but he did not check to see if a paper reactor would do a better job.
The amount of nuclear power a country needs depend on the supply chain of coal or natural gas. This why China is building nukes. Nothing to do with climate.
With a few exceptions, all new reactors are derivatives of LWR specified by Rickover for US subs.
The reason is simple. If you can fit a reactor into a sub, you can fit it into a containment building. That ensure 100% safety. Following our design rules not one person has been hurt by radiation from LWRs.
My first reactor was the Seawolf prototype and the last was the 1600+ MWe EPR that is now commercial in China.
As far as leadership goes there is more competition than before. Russia, France, and South Korea for example. While the reactor vessel remains the same, the design of fuel assemblies is new fore each reload.
The bottom line is Bill Gates is blowing smoke.
Posted here:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2018
Environmental harm from green energy schemes includes accelerated draining of the vital Ogalalla Aquifer for corn ethanol production in the USA and clear-cutting of the rainforests in South America and Southeast Asia to grow biofuels. These actions continue to cause huge environmental damage.
Due to grid-connected intermittent wind and solar power, energy costs have sharply increased, vital electrical grids have been destabilized, and Excess Winter Deaths have increased.
Based on the evidence, including the Mann hockey stick and the Climategate emails, global warming and green energy are the greatest scams, in dollar terms, in the history of humanity. Many trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on global warming/green energy falsehoods.
A fraction of these wasted trillions could have put safe water and sanitation systems into every village on Earth, and run them forever. About two million kids below the age of five die from contaminated water every year – over sixty million dead kids from bad water alone since the advent of global warming alarmism.
The remaining squandered funds, properly deployed, could have gone a long way to ending malaria and world hunger.
Told you so, years ago.
Regards, Allan