A panoramic view of TerraPower’s laboratory shows a full-scale fuel assembly test stand at the center of the frame – with lab facility manager Brian Morris pointing out details toward the left of the frame. The circle that’s painted on the floor indicates how big the nuclear containment vessel would be. Click on the picture for a larger version. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
BELLEVUE, Wash. – Just a stone’s throw away from Interstate 90’s crush of traffic, a decade-old startup founded by Bill Gates is running tests aimed at building the next generation of nuclear reactors.
You’ll find no more than a smidgen of radioactive material at the privately funded venture, known as TerraPower. But if Microsoft’s co-founder and TerraPower’s other leaders have their way, the technologies being pioneered at the 10,000-square-foot lab could boost electrical grids around the world.
We got a rare look inside the lab, which is housed alongside facilities for Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue’s Eastgate neighborhood, and we heard from TerraPower’s executives about the connection between Gates’ past as a co-founder of Microsoft and his vision for future energy innovation.
“If you think about Bill Gates’ accomplishments in computing, we’re really trying to repeat that for nuclear energy,” said Chris Levesque, TerraPower’s president and CEO. “We think nuclear is overdue for technology demonstrations.”
A technician places a full-size test fuel pin bundle in TerraPower’s pin duct interaction test apparatus. TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, is working on traveling-wave reactor technology. (TerraPower Photo)
If dollars were votes, newly reintroduced legislation aimed at boosting nuclear energy innovation and advanced reactors would be a winner, thanks to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ strong endorsement today.
The world’s second-richest person is the founder and chairman of Bellevue, Wash.-based TerraPower, a startup that’s working on next-generation nuclear fission reactors. Back in December, Gates listed nuclear energy research as one of his top policy priorities, and he reportedly followed up by promising lawmakers he’d invest $1 billion of his own money and line up another $1 billion in private capital if federal funds were approved for a TerraPower pilot project in the United States.
TerraPower had planned a pilot in China, but trade tensions upset the plan.
During the waning days of the previous congressional session, a bipartisan group in the Senate introduced a measure called the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act, which would promote next-generation nuclear power by boosting research and setting up long-term agreements for federal power purchases from newly licensed reactors.
The bill would require the Department of Energy to demonstrate two advanced reactor concepts by 2025, followed by another two to five concepts by 2035.
That would brighten the outlook for TerraPower as well as other next-gen nuclear power companies such as Oregon-based NuScale Power, which is planning to build a small-scale modular reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory by 2026.
There wasn’t enough time to move the bill out of committee last year — but on Wednesday, the legislation was reintroduced by 15 senators, including Republicans such as Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham as well as Democrats such as New Jersey’s Cory Booker and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.
That came as music to Gates’ ears, and today he let the world know on Twitter.
TerraPower, a venture co-founded by Bill Gates, conducts nuclear energy research at a 10,000-square-foot laboratory in Bellevue, Wash. (TerraPower Photo)
In his year-end letter, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says his to-do list for 2019 includes persuading U.S. leaders to regain America’s leading role in nuclear energy research and embrace advanced nuclear technologies such as the concept being advanced by his own TerraPower venture.
“The world needs to be working on lots of solutions to stop climate change,” Gates wrote in the wide-ranging letter, released tonight. “Advanced nuclear is one, and I hope to persuade U.S. leaders to get into the game.”
Gates acknowledged that tighter U.S. export restrictions, put in place by the Trump administration, have virtually ruled out TerraPower’s grand plan to test its traveling-wave nuclear technology in China.
Crews inspected the area around a tunnel at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that contains nuclear waste. (Department of Energy Photo)
Workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington state were told to take cover for several hours today when steam was seen escaping from a tunnel where radioactive waste is being stored.
The take-cover order was lifted at about 12:15 p.m. PT when inspectors confirmed that there was no radiological release from Tunnel 2 at Hanford’s Plutonium Uranium Extraction facility, or PUREX, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office reported in an update.
For the past few weeks, Hanford workers have been filling the 1,688-foot-long tunnel with thousands of cubic yards of grout to guard against the tunnel’s collapse. The tunnel, which dates back to 1964, houses a set of 28 rail cars that contain contaminated equipment. The last rail car was placed inside in 1996.
Artwork shows NuScale’s concept for a small modular nuclear reactor. (NuScale Illustration)
Oregon-based NuScale Power is the big winner in today’s round of grants from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy for innovations in nuclear reactor technology.
NuScale is receiving $7 million from the Energy Department and $7.1 million from other sources to advance the company’s plans to build its first small-scale modular reactor by 2026. NuScale was granted $40 million in federal funds nearly three months ago under the same program.
Kilopower lead engineer Marc Gibson and Vantage Partner’s Jim Sanzi install hardware on the Kilopower assembly at the Nevada National Security Site during testing in March. (NNSS Photo)
That’s one small step for nuclear reactors on the moon and Mars, and several giant leaps to go.
Eventually, the technology pioneered by NASA’s Kilopower project could provide the electricity required to keep the lights on at off-Earth outposts, and to turn space resources into the breathable air, water and rocket fuel required for those outposts.
“When we go to the moon, and eventually on to Mars, we are likely going to need large power sources and not rely on the sun,” Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for space technology, explained today during a news briefing at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
The first step is to confirm that the technology works, reliably and safely. And officials from NASA and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, say they did that during a series of tests conducted between last November and March at NNSA’s Nevada National Security Site.
Tri Alpha Energy’s plasma generator has been nicknamed “Norman” in honor of the company’s late co-founder, physicist Norman Rostoker. (Tri Alpha Energy Photo)
Tri Alpha Energy, the fusion energy venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, says it has achieved first plasma in its latest generator.
The $100 million device at Tri Alpha’s lab in Foothill Ranch, Calif., had been known as C-2W, but it’s been renamed “Norman” in honor of company co-founder Norman Rostoker, a fusion physicist who died in 2014 at the age of 89.
“We believe this machine will continue to prove the approach to plasma physics he first envisioned and to which he dedicated his life,” Michl Binderbauer, Tri Alpha’s president and chief technology officer, said today in a news release.
This picture shows the 20-by-20-foot area where soil has caved in over a storage tunnel at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. (Hanford via Twitter)
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation says a 20-foot section of a tunnel system where it stores contaminated material and equipment collapsed today, sparking an emergency alert and restrictions on workers’ movements. No injuries were reported.
A remotely operated TALON robot surveyed the scene and detected no release of contamination, Hanford said in its online update on the emergency.
Hanford said workers conducting routine surveillance this morning discovered the 20-by-20-foot hole in the roof of one of the two storage tunnels at the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant, or PUREX Plant, in the site’s central 200 East Area.
The tunnels were constructed of wood and concrete during the Cold War, and covered with about 8 feet of soil. They’ve been used for decades to store contaminated equipment from plutonium production operations at the site in southeastern Washington state.
The cave-in occurred in the 200 East Area, around a spot where the two tunnels join together, Hanford said.
The workers on the surveillance team were evacuated, and thousands of employees sheltered in place for hours. As of this afternoon, all non-essential employees at the Hanford site have been released, officials said in a tweet.
Replicas of the first atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man, are on display in the “Why War” exhibit at the Flying Heritage Collection in Everett, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
EVERETT, Wash. – The idea behind the Flying Heritage Collection’s groundbreaking new exhibit about the causes and effects of conflict, “Why War,” was born five years ago – and the man behind the idea is none other than Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who owns the collection.
“He’s the ‘Idea Man,’ as you know,” said Adrian Hunt, the collection’s executive director, referring to Allen’s memoir.
The Flying Heritage Collection shows off scores of historic aircraft and other military artifacts in a 57,000-square-foot hangar complex next to Everett’s Paine Field, including a German V-2 rocket, a Soviet Scud missile system and a couple of tanks.
Hunt recalled that Allen raised a big-picture question during a conversation about the collection and its future: “At some level, don’t we just have a lot of weapons on display? … We should do something to provide some context.”
That set off years of thinking and designing, aimed at putting together an interactive exhibit to explain why conflicts arise, how warfare has changed, and how war affects societies. Hunt says the resulting 2,500-square-foot exhibit, which opens to the public on March 4, is the only one of its kind in the U.S.
If renewable energy is on the rise in America, why should we even bother with nuclear power? Seattle tech maverick Nathan Myhrvold, who’s backing a next-generation nuclear venture called TerraPower, explains the rationale in terms of toasters.
Myhrvold lays out his toaster analogy in an extended video clip from “Nova: The Nuclear Option,” a PBS documentary that premieres tonight.
The program looks at the prospects for nuclear power five years after an earthquake and tsunami dealt a crippling blow to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant. Fukushima’s foul-up dealt a blow to nuclear power’s image as well, but tonight’s show focuses on next-generation technologies aimed at making fission-generated power safer and easier to manage.
