Harder Line
Amy Harder 14 hours ago
Column / Harder Line
Bill Gates faces "daunting" nuclear energy future
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The optimism usually radiating from billionaire Bill Gates when it comes to climate change is starting to fade on one of his biggest technology bets: nuclear power.
Driving the news: The Microsoft co-founder has focused much of his time lately on climate change and energy innovation. In an exclusive interview with Axios, Gates said that setbacks he is facing with TerraPower, a nuclear technology firm he co-founded in 2006, has got him questioning the future of that entire energy source.
The big picture: At 10% of global power supply, nuclear power is the second-largest electricity source (after hydropower) that emits no carbon dioxide. It's declining in most places around the world, including the U.S., due to aging reactors, cheaper energy alternatives and public unease about radioactive risk — despite its benefits to addressing climate change.
The industry's future is riding on largely unproven technologies like that of TerraPower because they're smaller and deemed safer than today's huge reactors.
"Without this next generation of nuclear, nuclear will go to zero," Gates said during an interview in Washington last month. Germany is shutting 22 nuclear plants, France — a leader in clean-burning nuclear power — has plans to shut down some of its reactors and a similar trend is underway in the U.S. due to economic conditions, said Gates, before adding with a sigh: "So yes, it is daunting."
Flashback: Gates announced in December that TerraPower was scrapping plans to build a demonstration reactor in China, largely due to the Trump administration deciding that fall to crack down on technological agreements between the two nations.
"There are times like when TerraPower gets told not to work in China, you're thinking, 'Boy, is this thing going to come together or not?' " Gates said in what are his first public comments on the matter since it happened. "That was a real blow."
Where it stands: Gates is now trying to build TerraPower's demonstration reactor in the U.S., calling on the Energy Department and Congress to more aggressively support advanced nuclear power through more funding and new legislation. Such a plant could cost anywhere between $3-$6 billion, say experts and Gates' energy advisers.
Bellevue, WA-based TerraPower is opening a new 65,000-square foot facility in the same region later this year to expand its research and testing, which is currently done in a lab 1/6th that size.
Gates, whose net worth is roughly $100 billion, hasn't disclosed how much money he has put toward the company, but experts think it's at least $500 million.
"If at the end of the day we don't find a country that wants to build an advanced nuclear power plant, then TerraPower will fail. I'm going to keep funding it for a period of years. And working with the U.S. is our strategy right now."
What they're saying: While Gates believes TerraPower has the most viable technology with the best chance of succeeding right now, numerous companies, led by NuScale, are pursuing other kinds that experts say could succeed where TerraPower isn't.
On strategy:
TerraPower made a big bet in 2015 working in China and with a government-owned entity. The thinking was that China has two things America doesn't — growing electricity demand and a long-term strategic energy plan. But…
"TerraPower made a specific decision to focus on China for their first product and it hurt them when the current administration drew hard lines on U.S.-China collaboration," said Todd Allen, a nuclear energy expert at the centrist think tank Third Way. "Companies like NuScale that have a U.S. focus for their first deployment do not have the same issue."
On technology:
TerraPower's technology, called the traveling wave reactor, would produce far less waste than current ones because it converts depleted uranium already considered a waste into fuel instead of creating new waste like today's tech.
Producing less waste is a big plus because big disagreement persists on how best to store radioactive waste.
But its technology is more unproven and more complex than its counterparts, experts say, and it's ran into specific technical challenges, The Washington Post reported earlier this year.
By contrast, the Oregon-based NuScale uses technology more rooted in today's type, which means it doesn't need to build a demonstration plant, its chief commercial officer, Tom Mundy, said in an interview Friday.
"TerraPower's traveling wave may prove to be an example of a very ambitious attempt to solve a very challenging problem that has turned out to be too expensive and too difficult," said Chris Gadomski, head of nuclear research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "There are other simpler, easier ways to introduce advanced technology with less technology risk and financial burden."
What I'm watching: NuScale, the first company to work with federal regulators in this area, is expecting a key review to be done by year's end, final design approval by the second half of next year and — if all goes as planned — a reactor operating by 2026.
Amy Harder Jul 8, 2019
Fact-checking my energy crystal ball in 2019
Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
In early January I laid out 9 energy and climate issues to watch this year. Here's my modified crystal ball — and a fact check for how my predictions are playing out in the halfway mark of 2019.
1. Climate politics
This issue is raging — about as much as I thought it would. Democrats have held more than a dozen climate change hearings and most Democratic presidential candidates have made it a focus in their campaigns.
Yes, but: The topic is still not paramount compared to other pressing topics, such as immigration and health care. I expect this to continue.
2. Regulatory lawsuits
President Trump's regulatory rollback wears on, albeit unevenly and slowly.
Columbia Law School issued a report recently documenting progress on this. It concludes the administration has "achieved far less than meets the eye, due to the statutory safeguards for federal agency rule-making and judicial intervention to enforce those safeguards."
Driving the news: The Environmental Protection Agency just issued a final rule replacing President Obama's signature carbon rule for power plants, facing immediate litigation from both detractors and backers of big climate action.
What I'm watching: The EPA is set to issue another final rule rolling back and likely freezing Obama-era fuel efficiency standards. This will set up a legal showdown with California, which as part of the rule-making may see its waiver to issue tougher standards revoked.
3. Ailing coal and nuclear
Trump has struck out trying to support economically struggling coal and nuclear power plants, though the president may push the issue more as his re-election campaign progresses, one person close to the administration told me recently.
Driving the news: A lot is happening on the state front in the wake of inaction at the federal level. Two big developments:
I had written in January that states were pursuing legislative solutions to save nuclear plants but not coal plants. I was proven wrong with Ohio pursuing just that — but its final outcome is uncertain.
The iconic Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the site of America's worst nuclear-energy accident 40 years ago, is shutting down this fall after the state legislature in May opted not to pass measures helping it.
4. Protectionist spillover
Trump's on-again-off-again Chinese trade war continues to hit the energy sector, particularly natural gas.
Trump is trying to have it both ways. He's touting America's exports of liquefied natural gas while doubling down on his trade war with China, a major potential market for U.S. LNG. Government data shows a clear drop in LNG exports to China.
5. Carbon taxes
There's mixed movement, both in the U.S. and Canada.
Two Canadian courts have dismissed provincial challenges to Canada's national carbon tax, which went into effect in January. The politics of the controversial policy remain an open question ahead of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's re-election bid this fall.
Corporations of all stripes are ramping up lobbying campaigns calling for some kind of price on carbon dioxide emissions, including a straight carbon tax. But this pressure is not yet leading to changed public positions among congressional Republicans, most of whom remain publicly opposed to the policy.
6. Oil-demand levers
I wrote in January that I was watching how the increase in electric car mandates and the growing public worry over plastics could impact oil demand. I've covered movement on the latter.
More than two dozen companies across the plastic supply chain, including ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble, formed a coalition earlier this year seeking to pour more than $1 billion into improving the world's abysmal recycling record.
The aim is to protect profits from plastic while responding to the growing pressure to clean up the world's oceans and lands that are littered with the stuff.
7. Oil prices' wild ride
Oil prices are facing immense, countervailing pressure from two sides. The end result: prices not too high or too low.
On the one hand, you have significant geopolitical uncertainty around critical oil chokepoints, namely the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly one-fifth of total oil demand flows daily. In theory, this should be a catalyst for skyrocketing oil prices.
But on the other hand, you have Trump's Chinese trade war and expectations for a slowing global economy, both of which are putting downward pressure on economic growth and thus oil prices.
8. Growing climate disconnect
I wrote in January about the upcoming high-profile United Nations summit on Sept. 23 that's calling on nations to ramp up commitments to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement despite slow progress on current goals.
Against that disconnect, I'm noticing another one: People are growing more concerned about climate change, but that's not translating into supporting aggressive policies addressing the problem, as we've seen recently in France, Washington state and ...
9. Election consequences, globally
Recent elections around the world are having big repercussions.
Australia's conservative government in May won re-election where aggressively acting on climate change featured prominently. The results suggest voters there either don't care as much about the issue compared to others or they prefer less aggressive measures like what the current leadership is pursuing.
Reuters recently reported that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest sped up in May to the fastest rate in a decade "as experts pointed to activity by illegal loggers encouraged by the easing of environmental protections under [newly elected] President Jair Bolsonaro." Forests suck up CO2 and are critical to mitigating climate change.