Billionaire Bill Gates said during an interview over the weekend that he believes that support for nuclear power is high in both of Americ...
Billionaire Bill Gates said during an interview over the weekend that he believes that support for nuclear power is high in both of America’s major political parties.
Gates made the remarks during a Sunday CBS News interview with Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” when asked about a a new nuclear power plant that is now being built in Wyoming.
He said that he wants the U.S. to build dozens of new nuclear power plants and that it should try to get more than 100 built.
Addressing the possibility of nuclear power plant melting down, Gates said: “A problem when you shut a rector down it still has heat. That’s why Chernobyl was a problem and Fukushima. Our design, that goes away because since we use this sodium to cool everything, it can absorb all that heat. And so those accidents were both first in generation, second generation reactors. The third generation reactors dealt with that with a lot of complexity. So, those reactors are quite safe, but the cost overruns meant that the electricity will be very, very expensive. We solved the safety problem with a much simpler approach, but we have to start from scratch.”
He said that he was “quite confident” that there will be support for continuing to expand America’s arsenal of nuclear power plants regardless of who wins the election this fall.
“I meet with lots of Republicans. I meet with lots of Democrats,” he said. “I’d say that the support for nuclear power is very impressive in both parties. The reasons they support nuclear power may not be identical. The Republicans may emphasize the security issues, you know, energy security, exporting these power things to the entire world. The Democrats value those things but they also value that it’s a clean source of energy.”
“You really don’t want the nuclear reactors around the world made by your adversaries because it’s economically a huge job creator and because the materials involved in these reactors possibly could be diverted,” he later added. “You want your eye on, you know, making sure that it’s not feeding into some military-related activity. And so the U.S. leadership in this space has a lot of strategic benefits.”
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