TerraPower
| TerraPower, LLC | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Limited Liability Company |
| founding | 2006 ( Bill Gates ) |
| Seat | Bellevue , Washington |
| management | Chris Levesque |
| Branch | Nuclear energy |
| Website | www.terrapower.com |
TerraPower is an American technology and research company specializing in the development of rotating shaft reactors (TWR) and molten salt reactors (MSR) .
Companies
TerraPower is funded in part by the United States Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory . One of the main TerraPower investors is Bill Gates (via Cascade Investment ). Other companies include Charles River Ventures and Khosla Ventures , which reportedly invested $ 35 million in 2010. In December 2011 Reliance Industries acquired a minority stake .
In September 2015, TerraPower signed an agreement with the China National Nuclear Corporation to build a prototype of a 600 megawatt reactor unit in Xiapu in the Chinese province of Fujian from 2018 to 2025. For the late 2020s, commercial power plants with an output of about 1150 MWe planned. In January 2019, however, it was announced that the project had not been approved by Donald Trump's administration in the wake of the trade conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China .
Since 2019, the company has also been working on producing radionuclides for therapy with α-radiation .
Reduction of nuclear waste through running wave and molten salt reactors
By using depleted uranium as fuel, rotating shaft and molten salt reactors can reduce nuclear waste inventories.
According to TerraPower, the USA is home to 700,000 tons of depleted uranium, eight tons of uranium could supply 2.5 million households with electricity per year. With the stocks stored worldwide, 80 percent of the world's population could be supplied with energy for over a millennium - at the current (2012) level of the average American. Until nuclear technology from research goes into operation, i.e. H. can be used industrially, experience shows that it takes decades. Terra Power plans to have a research reactor built by 2025.
In liquid salt reactors, too, other fuels can be used instead of enriched fissile material, for example thorium or nuclear waste. In this way, up to 95 percent of the world's fuel already spent could be recycled from today's reactors. There would only be a small residue with relatively short half-lives .
Web links
- Official website
- Nucleare Initiative - TerraPower presentation from 2009, pdf
Individual evidence
- ↑ RIL buys stake in US's Terra Power , www.moneycontrol.com
- ^ Southern Company and TerraPower Prep for Testing on Molten Salt Reactor , Department of Energy .
- ^ Richard Martin: TerraPower Quietly Explores New Nuclear Reactor Strategy , Technology Review . October 21, 2015. Accessed November 30, 2015.
- ^ A b Southern Company and TerraPower Prep for Testing on Molten Salt Reactor. Retrieved September 24, 2019 .
- ↑ Vanessa Delacruz: Fiscal Year 2012 Institutional Commitments Midyear Progress Report . In: Energy Citation Database . August 2012, pp. 1–37. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
- ↑ Fast Neutron Reactors . World Nuclear Association . September 2016.
- ↑ TerraPower, CNNC team up on traveling wave reactor . In: World Nuclear News , September 25, 2015.
- ^ Nuclear Power Trial in China Will 'Not Proceed' . In: Ciaxin , January 5, 2019.
- ↑ TerraPPower About us
- ↑ Depleted Uranium as Fuel Cuts Path to Less Waste . Intellectual Ventures Management, LLC. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
- ↑ Energy generation: Bill Gates wants to revolutionize nuclear power with mini-piles . In: Spiegel Online . March 23, 2010 ( spiegel.de [accessed September 26, 2019]).
- ↑ a b c Bill Gates dreams of the future of nuclear power - is his dream realistic? Retrieved November 15, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d Stefan Laurin: Energy supply: nuclear power is the future . November 4, 2019 ( welt.de [accessed November 15, 2019]).
- ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will nuclear power save us from climate collapse? Retrieved December 15, 2019 .