The billionaire philanthropist tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep his new TerraPower nuclear plant is safer than traditional builds. He’s putting his own money behind the project.
Audio will be available later today.Ben de la Cruz/NPRArtificial intelligence may come for our jobs one day, but before that happens, the data centers it relies on are going to need a lot of electricity.
Gates has invested $1 billion into a nuclear power plant that broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyo., this week. The new facility, designed by the Gates-founded TerraPower, will be smaller than traditional fission nuclear power plants and, in theory, safer because it will use sodium instead of water to cool the reactor’s core.
There's no high pressure on the reactor. Nothing that's pushing to get out. Water, as it's heated up, creates high pressure. And we have no high pressure and no complex systems needed to guarantee the safety. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the best in the world, and they'll question us and challenge us. And, you know, that's fantastic. That's a lot of what the next six years are all about.
The U.S. Department of Energy is funding half the costs of TerraPower’s project, which includes the cost of designing and licensing the reactor,I wonder if you can approach an ordinary investor and say, “This is a good risk. It's going to pay off in a reasonable time frame?” Whenever I get, like, a medical bill or a medical diagnosis, I put it in the AI and get it to explain it to me. You know, it's incredible at that. And if we look at countries like in Africa where the shortage of doctors is even more dramatic than in the United States, the idea that we can get more medical advice to pregnant women or anybody suffering from malaria, I'm very excited. And so driving it forward appropriately in those two domains I see as completely beneficial.Absolutely.
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