Bill Gates said he’s willing to take a position billions of dollars in a next-generation nuclear power plant project in Wyoming to fulfill the United States’ growing electricity needs.
TerraPower LLC, a startup founded by Gates, broke ground last week in Wyoming, where a coal-fired power plant is being shut down, the billionaire and co-founder of Microsoft Corp. said on the CBS show Face the nationTerraPower has been researching simpler, cheaper reactors since 2008 and expects to finish the brand new reactor in 2030.
“I have invested over a billion and will invest billions more,” said Gates, who’s the sixth richest person on the earth in line with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
TerraPower’s plant, funded by the US Department of Energy, was originally scheduled to start operations in 2028. But that may have meant counting on fuel from Russia, which is “unacceptable at this time,” Gates said on the CNN show Fareed Zakaria GPS.
The reactor design uses liquid sodium as a coolant as a substitute of water and includes molten salt that may store heat to spice up power. TerraPower plans to source the reactor fuel from the U.S. and its allies, Gates said.
“Coal is being displaced by natural gas,” Gates told CNN. “So we need to compete effectively with natural gas.”
Carbon-free nuclear power is increasingly seen as a key element within the fight against climate change, and more firms are promoting smaller reactors. Last 12 months, on the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, 25 countries said they desired to triple their nuclear power capability, in line with BloombergNEF.
