Questions: Will you agree on the rehabilitation and eventually operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant?

2. Energy storage like a battery

The technology of Natrium can store heat in tanks of molten salt for future use similar to a battery.

3.Cheaper construction costs

The conventional nuclear plant costs multibillions (For example, Plant Vogtle in Georgia costing $25 billion plus). The target cost of the Natrium plant is $1 billion that includes engineering, procurement and construction costs of the plant. That’s 25x lower than the cost of Plant Vogtle.

4.Less nuclear wastes

Advanced nuclear reactors are efficient using advanced materials and supercomputing. 

Criticism of the advanced Nuclear Power 

I had seen the good points of advanced nuclear reactors addressing the popular cons of nuclear energy. But let me challenge the benefits. 

1.Is it really safe? To err is human. Humans do not have the capacity to create perfect nuclear reactors no matter how serious we are about achieving perfection and achieving integrity. There will be people who will fail to do what they are supposed to do. If not today, it may be tomorrow risking the release of radioactive materials that could kill organisms and environment. In Chernobyl Disaster of 1986, Pine Forest had dried up. 100,000 people need to be evacuated. The claim of TerraPower on nuclear reactors can be analogous to the creator of Unsinkable Titanic that sank at the end. Creating power plants risks proliferation of atomic bomb. 

“If nuclear power is to play a larger role to address climate change, it is essential for new reactor designs to be safer, more secure, and pose comparable or—better yet—lower risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism than the existing reactor fleet…Despite the hype surrounding them, none of the non-light-water reactors on the drawing board that we reviewed meet all of those requirements.” 

• Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC, in a statement released with the report. 

2. Is it really small and cheap?  

Production of small and cheap nuclear power plant still big if set in multiple locations risking accidents and the release of radioactive materials. If you will total the expenses of small power plants in various sites, it is still big at the end.The sum of many smalls is still many. 

“It doesn’t make sense to us for either government or industry to devote a lot of resources to pursuing high-risk, low-reward technologies – or technologies that could be even worse than what we have now,” 

–Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC, in a statement released with the report. 

3. Is it really less nuclear waste? 

TerraPower might lessen nuclear waste but there is still nuclear waste created. It means toxic materials for thousands of years.  

“no one has ever solved the problem with what to do with nuclear waste.” 

-Robert W. Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University 

Why did Bill Gates invest in advanced nuclear reactors? 

Bottomline. In my opinion, PROFIT 

U-235, the uranium used in nuclear plant is rare and less than one percent of the uranium in the world. Proponents of nuclear power promise of cheap electricity. It may be cheaper at the start but will become expensive as the demand goes up due to the limited availability of U-235. It means wealth for TerraPower. Why invest in non-renewable energy if renewable energy is available? 

“[Investing in nuclear energy] comes with unnecessary risks when better alternatives (i.e. wind, solar, geothermal) are available…And “investment in nuclear likely crowds out investment in the safer alternative (renewable energy),” 

–Michael E. Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Penn State and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC) 

4. Is it humane? 

Bill gates argues that nuclear energy is safer than other source of power generation. Better than coal, natural gas and biomass. He was using the death rates of 0.07 from nuclear energy.