The Natrium reactor is one of a gaggle of new designs as engineers try to come up with cheaper, simpler nuclear power plants
But Mr Gates has not abandoned the business world entirely. On June 2nd TerraPower, a company he founded in 2008, announced that it would build a demonstration of an exotic, high-tech nuclear-power station in Wyoming.
Start with the reactor itself. Most nuclear power plants are light-water reactors , a technology developed in America in the 1950s. They use ordinary water both to cool the reactor core and to increase the intensity of the chain-reaction by moderating the speed of the neutrons that are emitted when uranium atoms split. Thus slowed, these neutrons are more likely to go on to split more atoms in turn.
The firm's second big idea is its molten-salt energy-storage system. Inspiration for this came from the solar-power industry, says Mr Levesque. Solar-thermal systems have, for several years, used similar tanks to store excess solar energy harvested during the day. In Natrium's case, the sodium coolant transfers heat from the reactor into the molten-salt tanks. A separate set of pipes then removes heat from the tanks and uses it to produce electricity.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, an American not-for-profit organisation, argues in a report published in March that sodium’s advantages as a coolant are counterbalanced by drawbacks. One is that a reactor which ran too hot might see its power output rise as a consequence. Unlike water, the loss of which shuts a reactor down for lack of moderation, sodium slightly damps the chain-reaction.
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