The TerraPower company, founded by the American billionaire in 2006, will install its Natrium reactor in Wyoming. The technology used is supposed to compensate for the shortcomings of renewable energy while reducing nuclear waste. But some scientists are worried.
The energy of tomorrow will undoubtedly be electricity. It remains to be seen how to produce it in sufficient quantity for the entire planet. While renewable energy production systems (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.) are on the increase, they still have serious limitations: how to produce electricity at night, when the sky is overcast or if the wind is lacking? For the billionaire and American philanthropist Bill Gates, it is towards nuclear power that we must turn.
But if it makes it possible to produce zero carbon energy, the various major accidents and the headache of nuclear waste nevertheless crystallize the criticisms of part of the population, especially in France. In 2011, after the Fukushima accident, the confidence rating for nuclear power fell from 52 to 34% among the French. If the latest studies show a renewed interest, the nuclear issue remains epidermal in France.
Does an alternative to current reactors exist? In the Bouches-du-Rhône, work on a fusion reactor, called ITER (which would produce no waste) continues to divide on the feasibility of the project.
Mini-plants
For his part, Bill Gates has opted for another device. In 2006, he founded TerraPower, the goal of which is to accelerate nuclear research to enable the exit of fossil fuels which Americans so adore.
15 years later, the small startup announced the implementation of a first project, which will be located in the State of Wyoming, in the western United States. Main difference with the reactors that we know, those developed by TerraPower, called Natrium, are of a much smaller scale. They will deliver 350 MWe (electric megawatts) against a minimum of 900 MWe for a conventional French power station.
The advantage of Natrium is therefore a less complex architecture and a lower cost. TerraPower has also received the support of the American state. “We have to keep open a fallback position in case we don’t make a breakthrough in battery storage, if we don’t succeed in creating a hydrogen economy, etc.” explained last March to Le Monde, US Special Climate Envoy John Kerry. “But I don’t think it will take the old form of these huge plants that are on the market right now that are too expensive to be really viable.”
“Bill Gates […] may be able, if it succeeds, to solve the problems of fusion, security, proliferation of waste and we must absolutely explore this way to cover ourselves in the face of what we would not succeed in producing elsewhere “insists besides. the former US presidential candidate.
Really effective?
TerraPower, which has partnered with GE Hitachi in this project, wants to manufacture a molten salt reactor, an old technology that has come back to the fore. On paper, the operation looks like a conventional power plant with the use of uranium as the main fuel. But while it is water that usually cools the uranium and turns the turbines, Natrium uses a molten salt that stabilizes the reaction and reduces the risk of incidents. The other advantage is also that it produces less waste and even allows it to be reused.
According to TerraPower, these small nuclear power stations would thus be points of support for renewables. The group is not alone in the niche, in the United States, with several players and sometimes different technologies that will emerge by the end of the decade.
However, these small plants are not unanimous. Last March, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a harsh report on these projects which, according to this group of independent scientists, do not really bring benefits or have too significant technological limits. TerraPower hopes to deny them with this first project.
In France, the development of this type of power plant, which has been on the table for several years, was put under the rug last year. The colossal budgetary slippages of the EPR are for many … Will the future of nuclear power pass through the huge EPR or the small power plant? The United States and France made their own choice.
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