Bill Gates and China partner on world-first nuclear technology

• 6 years ago (2017-11-07)
• David Flin

Asia 846 North America 995 Nuclear 639

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Bill Gates’ nuclear firm TerraPower and the China National Nuclear Corporation have signed an agreement to develop a world-first nuclear reactor, one that uses the waste of other nuclear reactors as fuel.

Bill Gates, Chairman of TerraPower, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed a joint venture agreement to create the Global Innovation Nuclear Energy Technology company, which will build a Travelling Wave Reactor and commercialise the technology. This joint venture aims to design and construct multiple nuclear power plants generating around 1150 MW over the next two decades. It expands on a joint technology agreement between the two businesses signed in 2015.

Travelling Wave Reactors would not require enriched uranium to generate energy, and could instead use waste uranium. TWRs will have a higher fuel burn, energy density, and thermal efficiency than LWRs. Depleted uranium from other reactor types could be recycled without separating out plutonium, and could operate without refuelling for up to 40 years. TWRs could also recycle its own fuel, with only 20-35 per cent of the fuel rendered unusable by the fission process.

Professor Lyndon Edwards, National Director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANTSO), said: “The Travelling Wave Reactor concept is for a novel, fast neutron spectrum reactor that would use in-situ breeding of its nuclear fuel to substantially reduce the need for both uranium enrichment and subsequent fuel reprocessing. The reactor could be fuelled with natural uranium, depleted uranium, or spent nuclear fuel, but the reactor must be started with enriched uranium. The TWR would have the potential to use less nuclear fuel and produce less nuclear waste than light water reactors.”