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盖茨先生回复《中国核工业》杂志的书面采访函（原稿） Q(Question)：As the world’s top IT expert, you succeeded in the software industry of Windows platform. Now you are busy in charity work. You always said that you have three wishes during your lifetime. The third is to make clean, economic electric energy available to the human race. To realize it, you lay your hope in nuclear energy. When did you have interest in nuclear energy, and why? A(Answer): As part of a speech I gave at Ted threeyears ago, I said I had a very deep-seated wish that would allow the world to produce carbon-free energy cheaper than coal. I’m interested in energy for two reasons. First, because as China has seen, access to energy is crucial for lifting people out of poverty. It improves education, health care, transportation, and many other aspects of development.? And second, because subsistence farmers in the poorest parts of the world will face potentially devastating consequences from climate change though they did essentially nothing to contribute to the problem. The world faces an inescapable imperative to reduce carbon emissions. We need new sources of sustainable, scalable, low-carbon energy. Inventing such a source and making it available to the world will help us stop warming our planet and, at the same time will be a powerful force to eradicate poverty and improve global living standards. Throughout my whole career, I’ve been a believer in the power of innovation, so I’ve invested in a number of new energy companies that are pursuing this dream. One that I am particularly excited about is TerraPower, a nuclear power company that I’m quite involved with and where I serve as Chairman. It has an innovative design and vastly improved safety features that make it a very exciting approach to providing safe, clean power at scale. Q: How do you think the role of nuclear energy played in contemporary energy development? What’s your view on further development of nuclear power? A: Nuclear power has played an important role in energy development and can play an even more decisive role moving forward in a carbon-constrained world. Compared to other sources like coal, its overall safety record is notable. But concerns about the safety of nuclear energy and the waste it creates must be addressed, particularly after Fukushima. Over the past 30 years, there has been surprisingly little improvement in the available nuclear technologies despite the rapid economic development that results from access to safe, clean and cheap electricity. When you spend time in the developing world, the benefits of access to electricity are abundantly clear. Access to electricity means lights to study by, refrigeration for vaccines, sterile water and clean cooking facilities. If provided in a cheap (and clean) way, electricity has transformative power to improve the well-being of the poor. Nuclear energy, when harnessed properly, responsibly and safely, can provide the immense levels of base load electricity needed for a high quality of life. Even better, it does so without negative impacts on the environment. I’m excited about TerraPower’s approach because it addresses many of the barriers to the use of nuclear energy and provides a safer, scalable, more secure technology. Q: You have been engaged in promotion of traveling wave reactor for a long time. How do you think of the expected effect that the traveling wave reactor will on the nuclear technology and the world’s energy economic in the future? A: We founded TerraPower back in 2006 because we recognized the need for a safe, scalable, secure nuclear energy technology. Even though today’s nuclear plant designs have proven to be extremely safe, we wanted to make them even safer. In order for all countries to be able to have access to nuclear energy, we also wanted to address the long-term cost and availability of uranium fuel, as well as weapons proliferation concerns. We also wanted to address the issue of what to do with spent fuel. To accomplish all of our objectives, we evaluated all the types of nuclear reactors that have been studied or discussed in theory. Then we selected the traveling wave reactor and founded TerraPower to develop it. |
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