Bill Gates wants to solve America's Energy Crisis

[Uraniun235]

On the other hand "LIMITLESS ENERGY" is something that can excite the average nuclear skeptic. You will never win an argument convincing nuclear power is safe to someone who already made up their minds. They will just go Chernobyl, Hiroshima, radiation bla bla bla. To them one single stray alpha particle is unacceptable...

Why not then just re-brand nuclear energy as some proverbial source of "LIMITLESS ENERGY" ?

Ah, the younger ones might not know how to respond, but the older anti-nuclear people will roll their eyes and say "Oh yeah just like how nuclear power was going to give us electricity 'too cheap to meter', right?"

[Broomstick]

Make it really hugely obvious that the smoke coming out of the stacks at an oil, gas, and coal plant is black and disgusting,

[nitpick] With modern "scrubbing" technology the smoke coming of the stacks these days is typically white, not black. I say that based on observation of the coal powered plants in my region. I'm all for propaganda, but stay away from outright falsehoods.

As an aside, I do wonder: is it possible to use solar-reflected heating of gigantic boilers to drive turbines to extract significantly useful amounts of electricity? It would be a way of harnessing solar power without the toxic rare earth elements in solar panel power gatherers. Obviously it would really only work somewhere like nevada, and still suffers the usual problems of solar power plants in that it's dependant upon the sun, only works at daytime, and the reflective surfaces would need to be cleaned frequently, but I know you can heat water to boiling with reflective surfaces aiming lots and lots of sunlight at something - heck, you can set ships on fire with enough mirrors, why not superheat water in a boiler?

I'm sure you could do this - parabolic solar reflectors are used as ovens and, for timely item, the Olympic flame is still ignited in Greece at the site of the temple to Hera using a parabolic reflector. The technology is pretty effing simple - I built a crude such device as a child using standard kitchen tinfoil. Aside from cleaning the reflectors and being dependent on clear skies and similar concerns, there is also the problem that relative to each other the sun and Earth move. You have to constantly adjust the reflector(s) to keep the heat focused on your target. Again, not rocket science, but that means moving parts of some sort and a means to keep things properly lined up. It's one thing to do is on a small scale, quite another with the intention of providing something like reliable power on a commercial scale.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Make it really hugely obvious that the smoke coming out of the stacks at an oil, gas, and coal plant is black and disgusting,

[nitpick] With modern "scrubbing" technology the smoke coming of the stacks these days is typically white, not black. I say that based on observation of the coal powered plants in my region. I'm all for propaganda, but stay away from outright falsehoods.

Can in the USA be found at least one creaky ancient plant whose smoke is at least a dingy shade of gray? If so, then black is called for.

What? If it would pass muster for the RNC, it's clearly good enough to work it's magic on the American public.

More seriously, people instinctively associate the color white with purity and unharmfulness, whilst also instinctively associating black with corruptedness and balefulness. If you can pull that link off, it won't matter if you're telling (puns fully intended) little white lies or gigantic black falsehoods. People think that nothing contained in something which is white (and non-powdery) can harm them. Facts won't really matter, in propaganda wars what matters is how you sell it.

Sometimes, I think, you just have to bite the bullet and do something that makes your skin crawl.

As an aside, I do wonder: is it possible to use solar-reflected heating of gigantic boilers to drive turbines to extract significantly useful amounts of electricity? It would be a way of harnessing solar power without the toxic rare earth elements in solar panel power gatherers. Obviously it would really only work somewhere like nevada, and still suffers the usual problems of solar power plants in that it's dependant upon the sun, only works at daytime, and the reflective surfaces would need to be cleaned frequently, but I know you can heat water to boiling with reflective surfaces aiming lots and lots of sunlight at something - heck, you can set ships on fire with enough mirrors, why not superheat water in a boiler?

I'm sure you could do this - parabolic solar reflectors are used as ovens and, for timely item, the Olympic flame is still ignited in Greece at the site of the temple to Hera using a parabolic reflector. The technology is pretty effing simple - I built a crude such device as a child using standard kitchen tinfoil. Aside from cleaning the reflectors and being dependent on clear skies and similar concerns, there is also the problem that relative to each other the sun and Earth move. You have to constantly adjust the reflector(s) to keep the heat focused on your target. Again, not rocket science, but that means moving parts of some sort and a means to keep things properly lined up. It's one thing to do is on a small scale, quite another with the intention of providing something like reliable power on a commercial scale.

Therein lies the devil which lay in the details. You'd have to engineer a system that constantly monitored for optimum angle and focus, to keep the optimum heat on the boiler at all times. The reflectors would need to be on motorized stalks.

It wouldn't be impossible, but it would be a tremendous headache. It does, however, have the advantage of pretty much being the safest form of imaginable high-capacity electrical generation. There's literally nothing in the loop more volatile or toxic in this loop than is found in the average basement water heater. The same sort of plumbing, in fact, would be your safeties in this system - if the pressure gets too great owing to too much heat and the reflectors mismanage the heat by failing to direct some of it away from the boiler, then your standard issue safety valve pops and you get an apocalyptic whistling sound as if the four horsemen had traded up to Baldwin Iron Horses, but nothing worse than that. Even in the worst-case, unimaginable scenario in which the Mythbusters have sabotaged the reactor in order to test whether it can explode, the worst that'll happen is you'll wipe out the reflector field and need to rebuild. There won't be any release of anything more toxic than a bunch of stainless steel shrapnel.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I thinking convincing people that nuclear power is safe is a losing battle. Their mind has been set and it is difficult to undo a negative impression once made. So it would be better to just drop the issue and start anew focusing on benifits of nuclear power.

I disagree with this strongly. There have been MANY technological revolutions which people thought were dangerous. When trains were first invented, people were afraid to ride them because they thought going over 20 mph would cause your heart to fail, and now the world runs on trains.

[UnderAGreySky]

Let me go one step further and add: The most vocal opponents to nuclear power seem to be in the US and the UK. France, Russia, Japan, India... none of these countries seem to be overly worried about the risks. In fact, all four countries (except maybe Japan) are operating Fast Breeder Reactors. I'm sure if the US could throw its financial weight behind research, they may end up doing exceptionally well.

Also, my sister worked in the nuke construction industry in the US. She swears by their quality and safety procedures, she saw nothing before or since that matches up (she hasn't seen aerospace... D0-178B Class A software, anyone?). The best part, she said, was that information flows freely even between competitors - no one wants an accident to happen, and so if there is an incident, the news is shared so that none of the companies that do similar work makes the same mistake again.

[PainRack]

The 40-year timeframe, especially attached to a sponsored corporation that presumably has to show results and make a profit at some point, smacks of pie-in-the-sky, Apple-like enthusiasm more than it does realistic expectations. Mr. Gates would do better, for more people, if he used his foundation's money to push for the reintroduction of DDT instead of ineffective mosquito nets in Africa to eradicate malaria.

You know, this DDT will save malaria is getting old. The WHO never did stop using DDT because of its environmental effects, DDT was first banned for agricultural use, not health use. DDT was stopped in India because of DDT resistance, with the advent of other insecticides, and of course, effective insecticide impregnated mosquito nets, wide-spraying of the older DDT has been laid aside for other methods. One could argue that DDT still has a vital, cheap role to play, but to argue that its effective and mosquito nets aren't is sheer nonsense.

[Sarevok]

I disagree with this strongly. There have been MANY technological revolutions which people thought were dangerous. When trains were first invented, people were afraid to ride them because they thought going over 20 mph would cause your heart to fail, and now the world runs on trains.

Did trains became popular because they were proven to be safe or because their vast utlity outweighed all the spectacular train wrecks and accidents that took place ?

[Simon_Jester]

I disagree with this strongly. There have been MANY technological revolutions which people thought were dangerous. When trains were first invented, people were afraid to ride them because they thought going over 20 mph would cause your heart to fail, and now the world runs on trains.

Did trains became popular because they were proven to be safe or because their vast utlity outweighed all the spectacular train wrecks and accidents that took place ?

Probably both. People rode on them and didn't die of heart attacks, which killed some of the more blatantly superstitious fears. At the same time, people realized that they really wanted to be able to travel distances of fifty miles or more in less than a day, now that the option existed.

The problem the nuclear industry has is that most of the things its enemies are afraid of aren't quite as contrived as the "you'll have a heart attack if you go that fast!" thing. Nuclear reactors have failed in a wide variety of ways, after all; the anti-nuke movement is more like the people who didn't want to get on trains because of the example of the Best Friend of Charleston, which had the honor of setting two historical records: the first locomotive built in the US, and the first locomotive boiler explosion in the US.

Since the Best Friend of Charleston blew up because some dumbass on the crew decided to tie down the safety valve because he got sick of the whistling, this isn't quite a reasonable fear: that problem has been solved.*, but the haunting sense that other problems of similar size could pop up at any moment is hard to suppress.

*Memo to all railroad engineers: if you find the whistling of the safety valve annoying, get off the train and report to your boss. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and above all else do not tie the valve shut!

There. Problem solved.

[The Kernel]

Bill Gates bought DOS from a programmer in Seattle and sold the POS to IBM because Gary Kildall at DEC was out flying his aeroplane and couldn't be bothered to meet with IBM and sell them the superior CP/M.

Like many urban legends, this one only has a few grains of truth to it. Kildall WAS out flying when the IBM team showed up, but that's not why he didn't get the IBM contract and the negotiations continued long after he returned. The sticking point was that Kildall and his wife refused to sign an NDA and then subsequently stood firm that they weren't interested in a one-time payment for CP/M 86 but instead wanted a licensing model. This was actually the right move, but Kildall and his wife weren't the negotiators Bill Gates and team are.

Also, the idea that CP/M was superior to DOS is absurd. Functionally they were nearly identical but DOS had the better file system (FAT) and quickly surpassed CP/M after its first release. And, so what if Microsoft bought the original pieces of DOS to get a head start? What they bought was essentially a CP/M clone--the real innovations in DOS came later and were done by the staff at Microsoft.

He "borrowed" the GUI and mouse form Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center (as did Steven Jobs) to create, after much effort, Windows.

Jobs didn't "borrow" anything, they paid for the ability to have the GUI and mouse in an exchange that included pre-IPO stock in Apple.

Additionally you are devaluing that fact that the Alto was a research project, not actual shipping hardware. Have you ever USED an Alto? I have. It's not even remotely up to shipping standards and has huge holes in the OS and software (as it should as it is just a tech demonstrator). A LOT of innovation from both Microsoft and Apple was necessary to create shipping versions of Mac OS and Windows respectively.

He copied VisiCalc (to be fair, so did others) to create Excel.

Oh please, creating a competitor is hardly copying. By that logic Apple "copied" Internet Explorer when they developed Safari.

He copied Palo Alto Research Center's Bravo to create MS Word.

See above. Creating a competing software package based on similar principles is not copying.

He copied FileMaker to create MS Access.

See above.

[Count Chocula]

^ Kernel: I listed the DOS story, Excel, Word, PARC etc. off the top of my head. I don't hate MS products, in fact after 20 years of development MS products work pretty damn well. His programming teams (and I'm guessing Paul Allen) have done wonders provide mass-market OSs and software packages. And my XBox hasn't given me a screen of death so I like it just fine! (knocking on wood). Likewise I don't condemn Apple or MS for running with PARC's ideas; Xerox was the loser there for sitting on a revolution.

Microsoft, as an organization from the very early days, has struck me as a company that has largely copied other peoples' ideas and concepts to make workable programs, but has really stood out as a marketing and sales organization par excellence. This article, about Gates lending his support for what seems to be a multi-generational timeline to popularize breeder reactor technology, would also be a triumph of MS' marketing organization.

I used DDT as an example of a short-term tangible good the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation could do in preference. DDT and other anti-mosquito measures is still used for mosquito control in South Africa (I guess they didn't read Silent Spring in Pretoria ). If resistance becomes an issue, then rotating its use with Malathion or other mosquito killer could work. My point wasn't to discuss the merits of DDT per se.

[Lord Insanity]

Maybe Bill Gates has read this.

A few select excerpts from an interview with George Stanford in National Policy Analysis, Dec. 2001.

"IFR stands for Integral Fast Reactor. It was a power-reactor-development program, built around a revolutionary concept for generating nuclear power - not only a new type of reactor, but an entire new nuclear fuel cycle. The reactor part of that fuel cycle was called the ALMR - Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor. In what many see as an ill-conceived move, proof-of-concept research on the IFR/ALMR was discontinued by the U.S. government in 1994, only three years before completion."

"Waste disposal has been approached as "someone else's problem." The IFR concept is directed strictly to meeting the needs of civilian power generation. It is an integrated, weapons-incompatible, proliferation-resistant cycle that is "closed" - it encompasses the entire fuel cycle, including fuel production and fabrication, power generation, reprocessing and waste management."

"Almost exclusively, current reactors are of the thermal variety: their chain reaction relies on thermal (slow) neutrons. In most of the thermal-spectrum reactors, the neutrons are moderated (slowed) by light water. Such reactors are called LWRs."

"Inherently, thermal reactors are copious producers of plutonium, while IFRs can consume plutonium. In fact, two IFRs could consume the plutonium output of five LWRs of the same size, while generating electricity and bringing in revenue."

"Their fast spectrum permits IFRs to burn any and all actinides - elements with atomic number 89 (actinium) and greater. This is because, in a fast neutron spectrum, all the actinide isotopes have roughly comparable fission probability ("fission cross section"). The most important actinide elements are uranium (atomic number 92), plutonium (94) and, to a lesser extent, thorium (90). Since currently there is a growing glut of plutonium, continuing to pile up from nuclear weapons and from thermal-reactor operations worldwide, the first IFRs will undoubtedly be fueled primarily with some of that plutonium."

"In a thermal neutron spectrum, many of the fission products and actinide isotopes absorb neutrons readily without undergoing fission (they have a high "capture cross section"), and the chain reaction is "poisoned" if too much of such material is present."

"ALMRs use liquid sodium for cooling and heat transfer, which makes the system intrinsically safer than one that uses water. That is because the molten sodium runs at atmospheric pressure, which means that there is no internal pressure to cause the type of accident that has to be carefully designed against in an LWR: a massive pipe rupture followed by "blowdown" of the coolant. Also, sodium is not corrosive like water is."

"The ALMR core sits in a pool of liquid sodium. In combination with the low heat content of the metal fuel rods, this means that, if there were to be loss of control power, the core would be cooled passively by convection."

Wasn't passive cooling tested in a prototype ALMR?
"Yes, it was. All control power for the operating reactor was cut off. Coolant pumps stopped, control rods did not move, and the operators did nothing. The core temperature rose slightly, causing the reactor to go subcritical and shut itself down without incident. Unassisted convective cooling then prevented overheating."

"it can be argued that the major environmental problems with nuclear power are the consequences of the mining and milling operations. Because IFRs can use, not only the surplus plutonium, but also the uranium (including U-238) that has already been mined and milled, they can eliminate for centuries any further need for mining or milling. And of course, in common with all nuclear reactors, IFRs emit no carbon dioxide."

"In coal there are trace amounts of radium and uranium, for instance, that come out of the smokestacks. It's far below natural background levels. But nuclear plants put out even less."

"Thermal reactors are incredibly profligate with the earth's endowment of potential nuclear fuel. The once-through, "throw-away" cycle in favor in the U.S. uses less than a hundredth of the energy potential of the mined uranium. Even with recycle, less than 2% can be extracted. IFRs can use over 99%."

"[In a conventional reactor with recycle] after two or three passes through a reactor, the fuel has gotten so contaminated with isotopes heavier than Pu-239 that reactor performance is seriously degraded. The only way to consume all of it is in a flux of fast neutrons."

"The current world-wide glut of reactor fuel is strictly temporary. Particularly with the U.S. throw-away cycle, the economically available U-235 is not predicted to last much longer than the petroleum reserves - a few decades."

"The way the fuel cycle is done now is: you mine uranium; you purify the metal; you convert it to oxide; you put it in a reactor in the form of pellets; it stays in there for about three years; you take it out, and you try to find someplace to put it. The way the IFR fuel cycle would work would be: you could start with mined uranium, or you could start with fuel for present day reactors. Either one would do perfectly well. It's left in the metal form because metal is a particularly easy thing to fabricate. And so you cast it into uranium. They're put in steel jackets and loaded into the reactor. They stay in there about three to four years, and when they come out, they're put through a very simple process. One step separates out the useful materials. And then cast the metal again back into fuel that go right back into the reactor. The material that's left behind is the true, the natural waste. Fission products. But none of the long-lived toxic elements like plutonium and americium or curium, the so-called manmade elements. They're the long-lived toxic ones. And they're recycled back into the reactor ... and work every bit as well as plutonium. Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive. And those are put in either metallic [matrix], a metallic container, or in a ceramic, very much like the ceramic in a sink so that the form of the waste, then, is something very impermeable to any kind of dissolution or anything like that, that will certainly last long enough to take care of the radioactive lives of materials that it's asked to contain."

I am sure someone here more qualified than I can pick this apart for accuracy. It sounds good to me but I recognize that I know just enough to know I know very little on the subject.

[The Kernel]

^ Kernel: I listed the DOS story, Excel, Word, PARC etc. off the top of my head. I don't hate MS products, in fact after 20 years of development MS products work pretty damn well. His programming teams (and I'm guessing Paul Allen) have done wonders provide mass-market OSs and software packages. And my XBox hasn't given me a screen of death so I like it just fine! (knocking on wood). Likewise I don't condemn Apple or MS for running with PARC's ideas; Xerox was the loser there for sitting on a revolution.

Fair enough, but having grown up in Silicon Valley and having parents who worked on some of these projects (my dad worked for Kildall back in the day) I like clearing up a lot of the tech urban legends about the early days of the PC. That particular urban legend about Kildall was based on an offhand comment that Bill Gates once made, not any actual fact. When it came down to it, Gates won the IBM contract because Kildall was a brilliant technologist but a shitty CEO.

Microsoft, as an organization from the very early days, has struck me as a company that has largely copied other peoples' ideas and concepts to make workable programs, but has really stood out as a marketing and sales organization par excellence. This article, about Gates lending his support for what seems to be a multi-generational timeline to popularize breeder reactor technology, would also be a triumph of MS' marketing organization.

Don't kid yourself, Gates is a revolutionary technologist even if many of his greatest successes were derivative rather than original ideas. As a product manager myself I know that there is a huge difference between having an idea and making it a reality and people often forget that what defines success is the execution of a brilliant idea, not just the dreaming it up.

That being said, Microsoft has made plenty of brilliant original products over the years (hard not to when you are that size) even in their two giants Windows and Office. Take a look at the Exchange platform for example--many of the ideas that Exchange has implemented are light years beyond what anyone else has done and to this day their competitors are still playing catch up.

I think what you are more referring to is that Microsoft is an organization that very much is about "design by committee" and there are a lot of disadvantages to that approach which often leads to products that seem to be designed to appeal to everyone but are optimized for no one.