Bill Gates’ Plan For Safe Nuclear Power Blocked By China Regulations

For three years, the nuclear energy company of Bill Gates has been developing a pilot project to produce cheaper and safer nuclear power close to Beijing, the capital of China. However, as stated by the Wall Street Journal, due to new regulations set by the Department of Energy restricting nuclear partnership between China and America, those plans came to a halt.

Besides back-and-forth tariffs on American as well as Chinese products, the new rules demand that any nuclear technology deal between the two nations needs to be accompanied by strong assurances that it will not be exploited for military purposes.

It seems like TerraPower, Bill Gates’ company couldn’t keep that promise, which leads to the company looking for a new partner country to build its experimental nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the choices are slim. The fall through of the deal demonstrates how tensions between nations can damage the efforts in developing next-generation technology.

TerraPower plans to build a Traveling-Wave Reactor. This power plant would have the capacity to generate, use and regenerate its own power from depleted uranium.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, even though this process would open a new era of less dangerous, cleaner and cheaper nuclear power, it would cost around $1 million to construct. That’s way more than the amount that countries legally allowing the building of TerraPower’s power plant would be willing to make an investment.

Bill Gates wrote in a blog post that wrapped up the year 2018 that he would think about bringing all operations of TerraPower to the United States. However, at the moment, there are too many regulations for him to be able to do so.

He wrote that in order to stop climate change, the world needs to take action and works on a lot of feasible solutions. Advanced nuclear is one of the possible answers. He also expressed his hope in successfully persuading leaders of the U.S to take part in this.