Bill Gates’s TerraPower is set to enter the UK’s government’s competition to build the next generation of nuclear power stations.
TerraPower has won $2 billion (over £1.5 billion) in US government money to develop a Natrium demonstration plant in Wyoming, which it hopes to have online by the end of the decade.
But speaking with The Times, TerraPower chief executive Chris Levesque said the nuclear startup can build dozens of reactors in the UK next decade.
“I’ve met with quite a few industrial partners in the UK, and we really see partnerships here that we can leverage as we scale up,” he said.
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Gates started TerraPower in 2006 to explore clean energy and began developing a type of advanced “sodium fast” nuclear reactor technology called Natrium, which can store energy and release it to the grid at times when demand is high.
The natrium reactor has an output of 345 Mwe but can rise to 500Mwe for bursts up to five and a half houses due to its molten salt storage system. The output of Somerset’s Hinkley Point C will be at 3.2 gigawatts, or nearly 10 times as much.
Levesque is urging ministers not to overlook the potential of advanced modular reactors such as Natrium.
“If we don’t develop advanced reactors, we will have Chinese AMRs in Asia and Africa — we will be locked out of that future market. These reactors are not a tomorrow thing, they are happening now,” he said.
“Developed economies like ours are going to double or triple electricity demand between now and 2050 as we electrify transportation and the industrial sector,” Levesque added. “That means we need to grow nuclear by many gigawatts.”