Bill Gates on bipartisan support for nuclear power

As Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is moving ahead with a nuclear power plant in Wyoming, he tells "Face the Nation" that "support for nuclear power is very impressive in both parties" in Congress. "Of all the climate-related work I'm doing, I'd say the one that has the most bipartisan energy behind it is actually this nuclear work," Gates said.

#power #news #billgates

"Face the Nation" is America's premier Sunday morning public affairs program. The broadcast is one of the longest-running news programs in the history of television, having debuted Nov. 7, 1954, on CBS. Every Sunday, "Face the Nation" moderator and CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan welcomes leaders, newsmakers, and experts to a lively round table discussion of current events and the latest news.

[zapfanzapfan]

"I don't want this in my back yard", really, you'd prefer a coal fired plant in your back yard?

[felipemurillo]

We should have invested heavily in Nuclear for decades now instead of other unreliable sources. We need to move faster. Nuclear is the future.

[theVoid]

Every city in the US could have had nuclear power by now if not for oil and coal lobbying

[ahsin.shabbir]

I specialized in nuclear engineering for my undergrad degree. Modern molten salt reactors implement passive safety features that are impervious to failure. Small modular nuclear reactors can use just a few hundred pounds of uranium fuel per month and power hundreds of homes. There are new secondary reactors being explored that can use the waste product of the original uranium reactor to produce additional power. The storage of the nuclear waste might be a huge treasure trove in the next century when methods to use it for additional reactions are discovered. Nuclear energy is a gift from God to mankind, we should use it more.

[MrTeff]

I wish they would post the date of the actual interview rather than the date it is posted. I already watched the full interview a couple weeks ago.

[jguebert]

Who is she talking for when she says “the public” because no one I know is worried.

[ClassyMonkey]

Apparently everyone in the comments is a nuclear physicist

[MattZaycYT]

Finally people are seeing how great nuclear energy is. Nothing can match the cleanliness and power of nuclear and hydro. Specially nuclear.

[chaddwamboldt]

I'm not only a certified STEM Teacher, I am also a former Nuclear trained Electrician on Submarines of the US Navy, so while I'm not really up on new technology, I understand 3-Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl very well. The facts are that while 3-Mile Island was a real accident and they did have to release some contaminnated steam outside of the containment structure, not one person was even remotely harmed, injured, or radiated because of it. Fukushima didn't meltdown because of a bad reactor design or because safety features weren't designed into it, but the real damage was caused by the title wave, and it did far MORE damage to Japan than anything the reactor accident did. By the ways, that explosion that happened at Fukushima wasn't a "nuclear" explosion, like a nuclear bomb or whatever, but was a gas explosion of Hydrogen gas, and the title wave caused everything to be in such disarray that they operators simply couldn't release it like what was done at 3 Mile Island.

And as far as Chernobyl goes, well, the reactor was a sh!tty design from the start but the only reason why it exploded, again, due to pressure and heat of the accellerated reactivity, but really just from plain old incompetence, and that was not a function of nuclear energy, it's a function of their sh!tty system of Government, which is obviously STILL a problem today, if the war in Ukraine is any symbol of.

[eljefeog]

We need sodium cooled reactors. Any green solution that fails to include nuclear is just a tasteless joke.

[carvalhoribeiro]

Great conversation on a very important topic globally. I would like CBS to extend this dialogue to other areas besides generation, such as transmission, distribution and consumption. Theses topics are vital when we think about increasing electricity consumption by more than 500 terawatts per year. Thanks for sharing this.

[fastdollar]

Oh my god stop interrupting him every sentence 🤦‍♂️

[peterpehlivan]

I'm glad to see Bill and others work hard to deal with climate change. :3

[chriscatherwood]

I think nuclear for the last 30 years was ignored foolishly. Nuclear and Hydro base load and natural gas to supply extra during peak hours just makes sense.

[michaelperry]

He should not be the spokesperson for this. It’s crazy we could have done this over the last 40 years but now we “need “it for AI. I’m all for progress but it’s ridiculous that the reason it’s being done is his own self interest.

How about go make a faster update on windows so I’m not waiting for 2 hours for my laptop to boot up on a Monday morning

[Drewnamiii]

Interesting how the interviewer never really asked the hard questions: 1) How long does it take to build a reactor? 2) How price competitive is this power compared to any other energy? 3) What do we do with the nuclear waste?

[letstrythat]

It's about time we get back on this.

[dexterplameras]

1) Molten Salt reactors can not suffer a catastrophic runaway meltdown. The chemistry means that when the reactor is shutoff the chain reaction stops.
2) There is no water that can convert to hydrogen which can cause a massive explosion, when a meltdown occurs, like the ones with a light water reactor.
3) The half life of the radio active waste is around 300 years not 20K years.
4) The fuel is plentiful unlike Uranium.
5) The fuel can not be used to make nuclear weapons.

Why the world waited over 60 years to introduce working molten salt reactors is beyond me.

[rickypickles]

Time is against nuclear. It drowns in regulation. A $10B in solar would yield more electricity in a shorter time.

[lovemyalaskaful]

Salt reactors sound like a smart power option.