For someone who's big into Linux, this is difficult to admit. For years, Bill Gates has been to me the Borg leader, Death Star commander, and so on. But the truth is that Bill Gates is a hero, and quite possibly the wisest public environmentalist on the planet.
I was already aware of his foundation's excellent work in Africa and always agreed that universal vaccination is the best quality-of-life bang for the buck that's available. Every move by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is clearly the result of deep research, and shows they are prepared question common preconceptions when deciding on how their funding could do the most lasting good.
But this week there has been a gamechanger: The single most sane and insightful talk on our environmental future. The link to it is here.
http://www.ted.com/...
What's so game-changing about the talk is not only the admission that the industrialized world has to be aiming our CO2 emissions at zero by 2050, but also a plan for how we will get there. This plan involves wind power, solar, and a buildout of traveling wave reactors.
It's a huge deal that the Gates Foundation is now putting its weight (and some money) behind what I think is the single most promising clean energy source.
So if you watched the talk, you'll have a rough idea of how traveling wave reactors work. They don't run on standard nuclear fuel - they run on nuclear fuel waste. Of this, we have plenty in this country. There is a shot of a giant Kentucky parking lot in Gates' talk, and if the crap in this parking lot were used as fuel in a traveling wave reactor, it would provide a century's worth of electricity for all North American homes, businesses and industry.
I learned a lot about traveling wave reactors from the video of this talk:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/...
It's a very candid talk about all aspects of the technology by John Gilleland, hosted by the U.C. Berkeley department of nuclear engineering. I won't add redundant information to this diary, because all is explained better in the videos.
But for environmentalists who want to better understand the scale and context of our energy challenge, you might want to look at these two further videos for some genuine perspective:
Long Now Foundation, 02009-01-16: Saul Griffith: Climate Change Recalculated
Long Now Foundation, 02009-10-09: Stewart Brand: Rethinking Green