Gate’s small-scale nuclear reactor could power local community for decades
Bill Gates has announced that his company, TerraPower LLC, is ready to build and test a small-scale nuclear reactor that theoretically could power a local community for decades without having to be refueled.
The TerraPower traveling-wave reactor is designed to be buried in the ground, where it would run for 100 years.
According to reports on the project, enriched uranium would shoot neutrons into the depleted uranium making up approximately 90 percent of the fuel in the reactor. That process would produce plutonium, designed to burn slowly in a controlled reaction that would continue over many years without the need of human intervention.
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