Gates Backs Nuclear Startup TerraPower to Eliminate Carbon Emissions

TED

Global warming will continue until net emissions reach zero, requiring breakthrough energy technologies that undercut fossil fuel prices rather than subsidies that hurt the poor.

AI-assisted summary of Innovating to zero! | Bill Gates — original source. Check the original for full context.

Source published: 2010-02-20

Key ideas

Stopping planetary warming requires driving global carbon emissions completely to zero, as atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulates cumulatively rather than stabilizing under partial reductions. (2:06)
Using the framework CO2 = P × S × E × C, Bill Gates demonstrates that population, services, and efficiency cannot drop to zero, leaving clean energy innovation (reducing carbon intensity to zero) as the only viable path to avoid catastrophic climate change. (3:57)
Current worldwide battery manufacturing capacity can store less than 10 minutes of total global energy demand, creating a critical storage bottleneck for intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. (12:01)
Gates is backing TerraPower to build a traveling wave reactor capable of burning depleted uranium (U-238) and existing nuclear waste, unlocking fuel reserves capable of powering the United States for hundreds of years. (13:20)
Gates advocates prioritizing fundamental energy R&D—recommending an additional $10 billion per year in the U.S.—over heavy premature deployment subsidies, warning that artificially inflating energy prices severely harms the world's poorest two billion people. (26:02)

Detailed notes

## Background Published by TED on YouTube on February 20, 2010, this presentation features Bill Gates at TED2010 outlining his vision for the future of global energy. The talk details the urgent necessity of technological "miracles" to avert climate catastrophe, explains his backing of a novel traveling wave nuclear reactor, and sets a target of reaching zero global carbon emissions by 2050.

## TL;DR Bill Gates presents the foundational climate identity (CO2 = P × S × E × C), demonstrating that because population, economic services, and basic energy efficiency cannot drop to zero without exacerbating global poverty, the carbon intensity of energy itself must fall to near zero. He evaluates the limitations of existing clean energy solutions—including land footprint and battery storage constraints for intermittent renewables—and calls for hundreds of radical, high-risk innovation efforts. Gates specifically highlights TerraPower's traveling wave reactor, which utilizes depleted uranium waste to generate centuries of clean power without continuous refueling. Ultimately, he argues that the world must drastically increase fundamental energy R&D so that zero-emission power becomes significantly cheaper than incumbent fossil fuels, rendering decarbonization an undeniable economic choice.

## Atmosphere & style The presentation is marked by Gates' signature analytical pragmatism and technocratic optimism, breaking an existential planetary crisis down into simple, dispassionate algebra and engineering realities. He balances serious warnings about the vulnerability of the global poor with deadpan humor, playfully releasing live fireflies into the audience as a clean energy counterpart to his earlier malaria mosquito demonstration. The subsequent Q&A with TED curator Chris Anderson feels candid, intellectually rigorous, and focused on hard trade-offs, delivering an earnest plea for human ingenuity backed by immense venture and government research capital.

## Bulletin - [02:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=126s) Stopping planetary warming requires driving global carbon emissions completely to zero, as atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulates cumulatively rather than stabilizing under partial reductions. - [03:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=237s) Using the framework CO2 = P × S × E × C, Bill Gates demonstrates that population, services, and efficiency cannot drop to zero, leaving clean energy innovation (reducing carbon intensity to zero) as the only viable path to avoid catastrophic climate change. - [12:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=721s) Current worldwide battery manufacturing capacity can store less than 10 minutes of total global energy demand, creating a critical storage bottleneck for intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. - [13:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=800s) Gates is backing TerraPower to build a traveling wave reactor capable of burning depleted uranium (U-238) and existing nuclear waste, unlocking fuel reserves capable of powering the United States for hundreds of years. - [26:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1562s) Gates advocates prioritizing fundamental energy R&D—recommending an additional $10 billion per year in the U.S.—over heavy premature deployment subsidies, warning that artificially inflating energy prices severely harms the world's poorest two billion people.

## Key takeaways - [00:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=16s) Energy access and affordability are directly tied to poverty reduction, as modern living standards historically stem from precipitous drops in electricity costs. - [02:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=126s) The atmosphere responds to the cumulative accumulation of carbon dioxide, which means reducing emissions by 50% or 75% will fail to stop ongoing temperature increases. - [03:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=237s) The climate equation (CO2 = P × S × E × C) mandates that to reach net-zero emissions, carbon output per unit of energy (C) must reach zero, as population and basic services must expand to lift billions out of poverty. - [03:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=237s) Aggressive energy efficiency improvements can yield three- to six-fold reductions across sectors, but fundamental thermodynamic limits in industrial processes prevent efficiency alone from solving climate change. - [07:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=429s) Transforming the energy landscape requires 'energy miracles'—transformative technological breakthroughs comparable to the microprocessor or the Internet—developed on a strict, rapid timeline. - [08:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=517s) Only five primary clean energy avenues can operate at global scale: fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear fission, and renewable power across wind, solar, and hydro/other sources. - [12:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=721s) Global battery production holds under 10 minutes of worldwide energy consumption, necessitating roughly a 100-fold leap in battery technology to support a fully renewable grid beyond a 20% to 30% share. - [13:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=800s) TerraPower's traveling wave reactor utilizes supercomputer simulations to burn uranium-238 (depleted uranium) instead of standard uranium-235, utilizing existing stockpiles and legacy waste without refueling for up to 60 years. - [15:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=918s) Achieving an 80% global emissions reduction by 2050 requires advanced economies and major emitters to reach 100% zero-carbon electricity, preserving remaining emissions capacity for basic agriculture in developing nations. - [18:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1132s) Commercializing breakthrough reactor technology requires navigating capital-intensive phases, scaling from tens of millions for simulation to several billion dollars for a first demonstration plant. - [23:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1393s) Uranium carries roughly one million times the energy density of coal per unit, offering uniquely compact land use if issues of cost, radiation safety, and waste are engineered effectively. - [23:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1393s) Geoengineering should remain an active area of research as an emergency Plan B to buy 20 to 30 years of buffer time if clean energy innovation lags or climate tipping points accelerate. - [24:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1480s) Climate change mirrors the delayed crisis dynamic of HIV/AIDS, making societal response difficult because actions taken today carry consequences only recognized decades later. - [24:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1480s) The most effective counter to climate skepticism is economic parity, engineering zero-carbon power that is simply cheaper than coal and natural gas. - [26:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1562s) Prematurely subsidizing non-competitive clean technologies is inefficient compared to funding fundamental R&D, and policies that arbitrarily inflate energy costs disproportionately harm vulnerable populations.

## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=16s) Energy, Climate, and Poverty

Bill Gates acknowledges that addressing energy and climate might seem unexpected given his full-time philanthropy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where his daily focus is centered on inventing and delivering vaccines and seeds for the poorest two billion people on Earth. Yet, as he explains, energy and climate matter more to these impoverished communities than to anyone else. A destabilized climate directly threatens their fragile environments; shifting rainfall patterns—either overwhelming floods or severe droughts—ruin crops, catalyzing starvation, uncertainty, and social unrest.

Simultaneously, economic progress is fundamentally tethered to the cost of energy. Historically, the coal-powered Industrial Revolution and the dramatic twentieth-century decline in electricity costs made modern civilization possible, unlocking refrigeration, air conditioning, and advanced materials for the wealthy world. To uplift the global poor, making energy drastically cheaper is imperative, but any new expansion must respect an existential ecological boundary. As Gates emphasizes when weighing levers for global development: “In fact, if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy.”

- The foundation's primary mission targets the poorest two billion people through agricultural tools and healthcare innovations. - Modern living standards in industrialized nations are direct products of sustained declines in the price of electricity. - A future energy strategy must aim to make power twice as cheap while operating under an absolute carbon constraint.

---

[02:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=126s) The Road to Zero: Why Reductions Aren't Enough

The relationship between carbon emissions and global warming follows a direct, cumulative logic: aggregate carbon dioxide emissions produce rising global temperatures, triggering extreme weather and collapsing ecosystems that cannot adapt fast enough to rapid environmental shifts. While minor scientific uncertainties remain regarding exact feedback loops and localized impacts, the broader outcomes will be catastrophic. Gates notes that he repeatedly pressed climate scientists on whether global society could merely curb emissions by 50% or 75%, but the physics of atmospheric accumulation dictate that warming continues until net additions halt entirely.

To illustrate the nature of the challenge, Gates contrasts climate targets with normal engineering compromises, noting that this is not like a twelve-foot truck trying to scrape beneath a ten-foot bridge. The world generates more than 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. That footprint is distributed unevenly, averaging roughly 20 tons per American, less than one ton per citizen in poor nations, and an overall global average of five tons per person. Because emissions continue an upward trajectory punctuated only by economic downturns, the global energy apparatus must shift from steep increases directly down to zero. Gates summarizes the scientific consensus on the emissions threshold: “And the answer is, until we get near to zero, the temperature will continue to rise.”

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: The Cumulative Climate Mechanism accDescr: Flowchart tracking how annual carbon emissions accumulate into rising temperatures, ecosystem collapse, and human disruption.

subgraph Emissions["Global Activity"] A["Annual CO2 Emissions (26+ Billion Tons/Year)"] end

subgraph Atmosphere["Atmospheric Impact"] B["Atmospheric CO2 Accumulation"] C["Global Temperature Rise"] end

subgraph Impacts["Consequences"] D["Weather Extremes & Droughts"] E["Natural Ecosystem Collapses"] F["Starvation, Unrest & Instability"] end

A --> B B --> C C --> D C --> E D --> F E --> F ```

- Annual global carbon dioxide output exceeds 26 billion metric tons. - Per capita emissions: roughly 20 tons per American, under 1 ton per person in developing countries, and approximately 5 tons globally. - Partial reductions fail to stop planetary warming because emissions accumulate in the atmosphere over time.

---

[03:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=237s) The Four-Factor Equation: CO2 = P × S × E × C

To understand how global net emissions can reach zero, Gates breaks the problem down into a mathematical identity containing four multiplying factors: population ($P$), services consumed per person ($S$), the energy required per service ($E$), and the carbon emitted per unit of energy ($C$). Basic arithmetic dictates that for the final product to equal zero, at least one of the multiplying terms must fall to near zero.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Gates Climate Equation accDescr: The four multiplying components that determine total global CO2 emissions.

P["P (Population)"] --> Mult["×"] S["S (Services / Person)"] --> Mult E["E (Energy / Service)"] --> Mult C["C (CO2 / Energy Unit)"] --> Mult Mult --> Zero["CO2 Emissions Target: ZERO"] ```

Examining each factor reveals structural limits to reduction: 1. **Population ($P$):** The global population sits at 6.8 billion and is tracking toward 9 billion. Improvements in reproductive healthcare, basic healthcare, and vaccines could bend this growth curve downward by 10% to 15%, leaving an overall factor increase of approximately 1.3. 2. **Services ($S$):** Basic amenities—food, clothing, heating, and lighting—must dramatically expand if global poverty is to be eradicated. Gates displays a photograph of children reading their school assignments under outdoor municipal streetlights because their homes lack electricity. As living standards improve globally, services per person will more than double. 3. **Efficiency ($E$):** Energy efficiency per service provides genuine opportunities for reduction. Innovations in lighting, building insulation, and automobile design can lower energy demands substantially—in some cases by up to 90%. However, core industrial activities such as air transit and fertilizer production have far tighter thermodynamic limits. Even under optimistic assumptions, efficiency gains will at best reduce demand by a factor of three to six. 4. **Carbon Intensity ($C$):** Multiplying optimistic projections for population, expanded services, and aggressive efficiency gains only scales total annual emissions from 26 billion down to roughly 13 billion tons. Consequently, the only term capable of forcing the equation to zero is the carbon intensity of energy itself. Gates highlights the algebraic reality confronting policymakers: “Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.”

---

[07:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=429s) The Urgency of "Energy Miracles"

Because fossil fuels like coal and natural gas produce carbon dioxide when burned, eliminating carbon intensity ($C$) requires building an entirely clean global energy infrastructure. Gates asserts that this transformation demands genuine "energy miracles." By "miracle," Gates clarifies that he does not mean an impossible event, but rather transformative technical achievements like the microprocessor, the personal computer, and the Internet—technologies that transformed global society from scratch. The critical difference with climate change is that the world cannot passively wait for breakthroughs to happen serendipitously; research and deployment must be driven at full speed against a rigid deadline.

Injecting humor into the presentation, Gates recalls his appearance from the previous year, when he opened a jar of mosquitoes on stage to visceral audience engagement regarding malaria. Seeking an analogous visual metaphor for clean energy, he unscrews a jar and releases live fireflies onto the stage, deadpanning that they do not bite and may not even leave their container. He warns that flashy, gimmicky notions cannot replace the serious work ahead; solving the carbon equation demands technologies that deliver unbelievable scale and absolute reliability. Gates frames the temporal challenge: “This is a case where we actually have to drive at full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline.”

- Past technological miracles—such as computing hardware and internet networks—developed without an absolute planetary deadline. - Gimmick solutions cannot substitute for primary power generation that satisfies planetary scale and reliability requirements.

---

[08:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=517s) Evaluating the Five Big Energy Paths

Looking across the technological landscape, Gates isolates five primary avenues capable of operating at the massive scale required to displace carbon emissions: fossil fuels paired with carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power, and three distinct renewable sources (wind, solar, and hydro/other renewables). While he notes that niche solutions such as geothermal, tidal, biofuels, and nuclear fusion may contribute on the margins, only the five primary options can move the core metrics. None can be abandoned prematurely, despite the steep engineering and operational barriers each one presents.

For coal and natural gas, achieving zero emissions requires capturing the flue gas, liquefying it under pressure, and sequestering it underground permanently. While experimental facilities achieve 60% to 80% capture rates, scaling to 100% is exceptionally complex. Furthermore, long-term geological integrity presents a serious challenge: society must guarantee the containment of waste volumes billions of times larger than those produced by nuclear power.

Nuclear fission avoids carbon emissions, but faces three formidable headwinds: high capital costs within heavily regulated environments, safety and anti-proliferation concerns regarding human error and fissile materials, and lingering public anxiety regarding long-term radioactive waste storage.

Finally, Gates evaluates the renewable options, pointing out their shared physical liabilities: - **Low Energy Density:** Unlike centralized power plants, renewables require massive footprints—a dynamic Gates characterizes as "energy farming," consuming thousands of times more land area per unit of output. - **Intermittency:** Neither sunlight nor wind is continuous or fully predictable, meaning power must be supplied during extended generation lulls. - **Transmission and Geopolitical Risk:** High-resource harvesting areas are often situated far from population centers or across sovereign borders, creating infrastructure dependencies and energy security risks. - **Electrical Storage Limits:** To illustrate the magnitude of the storage gap, Gates notes that he inventoried the collective manufacturing capacity of all existing batteries worldwide—spanning automobiles, laptops, mobile phones, and flashlights—to compare it directly against the baseline daily electrical appetite of human civilization.

Gates emphasizes the absolute scale demanded of any serious energy contender: “And although there's many directions that people are seeking, I really only see five that can achieve the big numbers.”

[12:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=721s) The Intermittency Hurdle and the Need for Hundreds of Breakthroughs

Reflecting on the limits of energy storage, Bill Gates notes that current global battery manufacturing capacity is woefully inadequate, being capable of storing less than 10 minutes of the world's total energy demand. Moving intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar past a 20 to 30 percent threshold of overall energy usage demands dramatic technological advances, and relying on them for 100 percent would require what he calls an “incredible miracle battery.” Instead of relying solely on existing tools, the world needs a massive breakthrough—something a factor of 100 better than present options.

Rather than looking for a singular centralized effort like the Manhattan Project, Gates urges a strategy characterized by immense breadth, where hundreds of companies pursue radical solutions across all five zero-carbon paths. He welcomes bold, high-risk approaches, noting that many will seem eccentric or unfeasible at first glance. Pointing to fellow entrepreneurs, Gates highlights Bill Gross's work with concentrated solar thermal at eSolar and Vinod Khosla’s investments across dozens of clean-energy startups as models of the innovation ecosystem needed to bring about these critical discoveries.

- Current worldwide battery manufacturing capacity stores under 10 minutes of total energy. - Intermittent sources can operate without enormous storage up to about 20% to 30% penetration, but 100% reliance requires a 100x leap in battery technology. - Gates urges that each of the five clean energy paths should have at least 100 separate teams or companies exploring solutions. - Gates summarizes the need for high-risk ventures bluntly: “A lot of them, you'll look at and say, 'They're crazy.' That's good.”

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Battery Storage Limits vs Breakthrough Requirements accDescr: Diagram illustrating current battery capacity limitations compared to the breakthrough needed for deep clean grid penetration. subgraph Current["Current State"] A["Current Global Battery Fleet"] -->|"Stores < 10 minutes"| B["Total Worldwide Energy Demand"] C["Intermittent Renewables (Wind/Solar)"] -->|"Viable up to"| D["20% - 30% Grid Share"] end subgraph Need["Innovation Requirement"] E["100% Intermittent Grid"] -->|"Demands"| F["100x Battery Breakthrough / 'Miracle Battery'"] G["Hundreds of Companies"] -->|"Explore parallel paths"| H["Radical Breakthroughs"] end ```

---

[13:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=800s) TerraPower and the Traveling Wave Reactor

Turning to nuclear energy, Gates explains that innovation within the sector had effectively stalled decades ago, leaving promising concepts unexplored. Alongside Nathan Myhrvold, Gates is backing TerraPower, a nuclear venture pursuing a traveling wave reactor. Conventional nuclear reactors burn only the rare uranium-235 isotope—which accounts for less than one percent of mined uranium—while discarding the remaining 99 percent as depleted uranium waste. TerraPower reverses this paradigm by designing a reactor capable of burning the abundant uranium-238.

This concept was historically dismissed because early physicists lacked the computational tools to prove it could operate stably. Modern supercomputers have finally enabled scientists to simulate the complex physics and identify the necessary materials. Operating like a slow-burning candle or log, the reactor breeds its own fuel as the reaction progresses. It can run directly on depleted uranium tails stored at sites like Paducah, Kentucky, or on spent fuel sitting in cooling pools and dry casks at existing commercial nuclear plants, solving both fuel availability and waste disposal at the same time.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Traveling Wave Reactor Fuel Cycle accDescr: Flowchart showing how depleted uranium and reactor waste are utilized in a traveling wave reactor to generate power. subgraph Input["Fuel Sources"] U238["Depleted Uranium (U-238) / Existing Nuclear Waste"] Sea["Seawater Extraction (Long-term)"] end subgraph Reactor["TerraPower Traveling Wave Reactor"] Log["'Candle' Core: Breeds and Burns U-238 In Situ"] end subgraph Output["Results"] Power["Hundreds of Years of Clean Power"] Waste["Dramatically Reduced Final Waste Volume"] end Input --> Log Log --> Output ```

- Traditional nuclear reactors consume only the ~1% of uranium that is U-235, leaving behind the remaining 99% (U-238) as depleted uranium waste. - Depleted uranium stored at a single facility in Kentucky contains enough potential energy to power the entire United States for hundreds of years. - Gates notes that inexpensive uranium extraction from seawater could provide enough fuel for the lifetime of the planet. - Describing the design logic behind TerraPower's fuel cycle, Gates explains: “The idea of TerraPower is that, instead of burning a part of uranium -- the one percent, which is the U235 -- we decided, 'Let's burn the 99 percent, the U238.'”

---

[15:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=918s) The Innovation Report Card and the Ultimate 50-Year Wish

To measure global progress, Gates outlines a dual-track report card covering interim targets for 2020 and long-term targets for 2050. The ultimate objective remains an 80 percent global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Because the remaining 20 percent will be consumed by difficult-to-decarbonize sectors in developing economies—such as basic agriculture, alongside ongoing transitions in cement and forestry—developed nations and major economies like China must completely decarbonize their electricity grids. The 2020 intermediate benchmark must evaluate near-term efficiency measures while prioritizing whether the pipeline of innovative breakthroughs, pilot demonstrations, and regulatory modernizations is advancing at full speed.

Praising books like Al Gore's *Our Choice* and David MacKay's *Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air* for providing rigorous frameworks, Gates reflects on the singular importance of clean energy. He emphasizes that if granted only one wish over the next 50 years—above choosing a president or selecting a life-saving vaccine—he would choose the development of a zero-carbon energy source that costs half as much as current fossil fuels. To realize this goal, he calls on international climate gatherings to pivot from merely negotiating emission targets to funding energy research and development, combined with strong market mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems.

- The 2050 target requires an 80% total emissions cut; poor countries will need the remaining 20% budget for agriculture and basic development, requiring rich nations to achieve completely zero-carbon electricity. - The 2020 report card measures both efficiency cuts and measurable innovation milestones (startups funded, pilot plants built, and regulatory paths established). - Gates stresses the low baseline of public R&D spending and urges countries to use summits like Copenhagen to expand innovation budgets alongside carbon pricing mechanisms. - Underscoring his priorities, Gates declares: “If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years -- I could pick who's president, I could pick a vaccine, which is something I love, or I could pick that this thing that's half the cost with no CO2 gets invented -- this is the wish I would pick.”

---

[18:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1132s) Q&A with Chris Anderson: Engineering and Deploying TerraPower

Following the presentation, TED curator Chris Anderson joins Gates on stage to explore the real-world mechanics and business case for TerraPower. Gates outlines the capital required across different phases of the project: the initial supercomputer modeling, software design, and recruitment of world-class scientists cost tens of millions of dollars; testing material durability in an operating Russian test reactor will bring costs into the hundreds of millions; but the truly difficult hurdle is securing several billion dollars, regulatory approvals, and a host site to construct the first full-scale commercial demonstration reactor.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: TerraPower Capital and Development Stages accDescr: Progressive stages of investment and deployment required for TerraPower's traveling wave reactor. S1["Phase 1: Supercomputing & Staff"] -->|"Tens of Millions"| S2["Phase 2: Materials Testing (Russian Reactor)"] S2 -->|"Hundreds of Millions"| S3["Phase 3: First Demonstration Plant & Licensing"] S3 -->|"Several Billion Dollars"| S4["Phase 4: Commercial Scale Deployment"] ```

Anderson asks whether the reactor behaves like a subterranean column that gradually burns downward. Gates confirms the metaphor, contrasting it with conventional reactors that require regular refueling and constant physical handling of volatile assemblies. The TerraPower reactor functions like a solid 60-year fuel log that sits sealed underground without human intervention, utilizing existing reactor waste as its startup feed and drastically shrinking the volume of leftover material. Gates reports ongoing discussions with officials in Russia, India, China, and the United States Department of Energy. Because global climate targets leave approximately 20 years to invent and another 20 years to fully deploy zero-carbon energy at scale, multiple breakthrough concepts—including modular and liquid-fueled designs—must advance in parallel.

- Modeling and talent acquisition for TerraPower cost tens of millions of dollars; nuclear materials testing requires hundreds of millions; building the initial demonstration reactor requires several billion dollars. - The reactor core operates continuously without refueling for up to 60 years, eliminating the mechanical risks and human errors involved in frequent fuel cycling. - Feedstock for the reactor consists of legacy nuclear waste currently stored in cooling pools and dry-cask storage at conventional plant sites. - Emphasizing the urgent window dictated by climate science, Gates states: “Well, we need -- for one of these high-scale, electro-generation things that's very cheap, we have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to deploy.”

[23:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1393s) The Energy Density of Uranium and Geoengineering as a Plan B

Reflecting on the fundamental advantages of advanced nuclear energy, Bill Gates observes that nuclear physics offers an unmatched energy density advantage over fossil fuels, noting that an atom of uranium holds roughly a million times the energy contained in a molecule of coal. Because of this massive disparity, if engineers can successfully master the primary engineering challenges—managing radiation, mitigating capital costs, and shrinking the overall footprint—nuclear power operates in an environmental category entirely of its own. As Gates summarizes the upside, “And so, if you can deal with the negatives, which are essentially the radiation, the footprint and cost, the potential, in terms of effect on land and various things, is almost in a class of its own.”

TED curator Chris Anderson then pushes on worst-case scenarios, asking what humanity must do if clean energy breakthroughs fail to materialize in time and whether emergency interventions will be required to stabilize planetary temperatures. Gates draws an analogy to human health, likening the planetary crisis to a person who has spent decades overeating and suddenly finds themselves on the brink of an imminent heart attack: at that stage, lifestyle adjustments are no longer enough, and emergency surgical intervention becomes unavoidable. In climate terms, that emergency fallback is geoengineering—deliberate planetary-scale interventions designed to reflect sunlight or artificially delay atmospheric warming by twenty to thirty years while society gets its energy systems in order.

Gates acknowledges the fierce moral hazard debate surrounding geoengineering, where critics argue that researching emergency fallbacks induces complacency—much like a patient who refuses to diet because they assume heart surgery will bail them out later. Gates rejects the idea of abandoning research out of fear, insisting that humanity cannot afford to be caught unprepared. In his view, maintaining a viable Plan B is essential risk management: “I'm not sure that's wise, given the importance of the problem, but there's now the geoengineering discussion about: Should that be in the back pocket in case things happen faster, or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect?”

- **Energy Density Comparison**: A single uranium fuel unit delivers roughly one million times the energy yield of a comparable unit of coal. - **Geoengineering Lifespan**: Atmospheric intervention techniques are estimated to buy approximately 20 to 30 years for decarbonization deployment. - **The Heart Attack Metaphor**: Emergency geoengineering equates to open-heart surgery for a patient suffering acute consequences after years of unchecked overconsumption.

[24:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1480s) Climate Skeptics, Delayed Consequences, and the Power of Price

When Chris Anderson asks how Gates would distill an argument to convince climate skeptics that they are wrong, Gates clarifies that skepticism is not a uniform perspective, though genuinely scientific rebuttals are vanishingly rare. He points out that hypotheses proposing strong negative feedback loops—such as cloud formations neutralizing carbon warming—rest on extraordinarily improbable assumptions with perhaps a one-in-a-million chance of being accurate. Instead, the real challenge in motivating climate action lies in human psychology and temporal delay, which Gates likens to the early response to HIV/AIDS: “The main problem we have here -- it's kind of like with AIDS: you make the mistake now, and you pay for it a lot later.”

Because people are confronted with pressing day-to-day crises, asking them to endure immediate, tangible economic pain for the sake of avoiding distant and somewhat uncertain future catastrophes runs counter to typical human behavior. Gates notes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections do not even represent the absolute worst-case possibilities; yet comfortably off individuals in the developed world frequently review those forecasts and conclude the consequences are manageable. For Gates, that very band of severe, fat-tail uncertainty is precisely why aggressive decarbonization is mandatory.

Gates' ultimate vision for circumventing ideological and political gridlock is pragmatic economics: rather than relying on moral appeals or regulatory penalties, the world must invent clean technologies that simply outcompete incumbent fossil fuels on price. If a zero-emission energy source costs less than coal or natural gas, the debate vanishes. Gates humorously acts out the response of a converted skeptic who buys into clean technology purely for the savings: “OK, I don't care that it doesn't put out CO2, I kind of wish it did put out CO2. But I guess I'll accept it, because it's cheaper than what's come before.”

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Climate Innovation and Risk Strategy accDescr: Flowchart illustrating the primary R&D deployment path against market skepticism versus emergency geoengineering contingencies.

subgraph Primary["Primary Strategy: Economic Parity"] RD["Scale Energy R&D\n(Targeted High-Risk Innovation)"] --> Cheaper["Produce Ultra-Low-Cost Clean Power\n(Advanced Nuclear, Renewables, Storage)"] Cheaper --> Market["Overcome Skeptic Resistance\n(Cheaper than Fossil Fuels)"] Cheaper --> Equity["Protect Lowest Economic Quintiles\n(Bottom 2 Billion)"] end

subgraph Contingency["Contingency Path: Planetary Insurance"] Warming["Warming Accelerates or Innovation Lags"] --> Geo["Geoengineering Research\n(Buys 20–30 Years Buffer)"] end ```

[26:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=1562s) Prioritizing R&D Over Subsidies and Protecting the Global Poor

Chris Anderson asks how Gates answers the critique popularized by Bjørn Lomborg, which claims that pouring trillions into carbon mitigation diverts critical resources away from pressing human development priorities like eradicating malaria and lifting populations out of poverty. Gates rejects the premise that research conflicts with development budgets, pointing out that federal investments in fundamental energy research are relatively modest in the grand scheme. If an economy like the United States were to spend an additional $10 billion per year on energy R&D, that expenditure would not detract from humanitarian aid or global health initiatives.

The real misallocation of capital, Gates argues, occurs when governments spend massive sums subsidizing uncompetitive, non-economic energy installations before the underlying technology is ready. Unless a technology is right at the threshold of the learning curve and near-term market viability, heavily subsidizing it in the field amounts to waste. More dangerously, if environmental policy relies on artificially inflating the price of fossil fuels to force adoption, the wealthiest can absorb the cost effortlessly while vulnerable populations bear the brunt: “If the trade-off you get into is, 'Let's make energy super expensive,' then the rich can afford that. I mean, all of us here could pay five times as much for our energy and not change our lifestyle. The disaster is for that two billion.”

Gates observes that even Lomborg's stance has evolved away from hardline contrarianism toward demanding serious R&D funding, having realized that pure skepticism is an increasingly indefensible position. Gates closes with an impassioned plea to dramatically scale up innovation budgets, remarking: “The R&D piece -- it's crazy how little it's funded.” Anderson concludes the session to enthusiastic audience applause, expressing the hope of the entire TED hall that Gates' clean-energy breakthrough wish will become reality.

- **Proposed R&D Uplift**: Gates suggests an increase of approximately $10 billion annually in U.S. clean energy R&D funding. - **Economic Inequity of Price Hikes**: While affluent citizens could comfortably pay five times more for power without altering their lifestyles, exorbitant energy costs would devastate the world's two billion poorest people. - **Premature Subsidies vs. Fundamental Research**: Large subsidies for uncompetitive technologies waste capital, whereas true breakthroughs permanently alter the cost structure of zero-carbon generation.

## Notable quotes > [00:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I&t=16s) If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy. — Bill Gates

## Mentioned Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chris Anderson, Nathan Myhrvold, TerraPower, Bill Gross, eSolar, Vinod Khosla, Al Gore, David MacKay, Our Choice, Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, Bjørn Lomborg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), United States Department of Energy

## Video description http://www.ted.com At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I)

中文简报

盖茨支持核能初创公司泰拉能源以消除碳排放全球变暖将持续，直至净排放归零；这需要成本低于化石燃料的突破性能源技术，而非伤及贫困人口的补贴措施。比尔·盖茨提出了基础的气候恒等式（CO2 = P × S × E × C），并指出由于人口、经济服务以及基础能源效率在不加剧全球贫困的情况下无法降至零，能源本身的碳强度必须降至接近零。他评估了现有清洁能源解决方案的局限性——包括间歇性可再生能源面临的占地面积和电池储能限制——并呼吁开展数百项激进的高风险创新尝试。盖茨特别强调了泰拉能源的行波反应堆，该反应堆利用贫铀废料发电，无需持续补充燃料即可提供数个世纪的清洁电力。最终，他主张全球必须大幅增加基础能源研发投入，使零排放电力的价格显著低于现有化石燃料，从而让脱碳成为必然的经济选择。遏制全球变暖需要将全球碳排放彻底降至零，因为大气中的二氧化碳呈累积性积聚，而在部分减排下无法稳定。 (2:06) 比尔·盖茨利用 CO2 = P × S × E × C 框架表明，人口、服务和效率无法降至零，这使得清洁能源创新（将碳强度降至零）成为避免灾难性气候变化的唯一可行路径。 (3:57) 目前全球电池制造产能可储存的电量不足全球总能源需求的10分钟，这给风能和太阳能等间歇性可再生能源造成了关键的储能瓶颈。 (12:01) 盖茨正支持泰拉能源建造一种能够燃烧贫铀（U-238）和现有核废料的行波反应堆，从而释放足以支持美国供电数百年的燃料储备。 (13:20) 盖茨主张优先进行基础能源研发——建议美国每年追加100亿美元投资——而非过早进行大规模部署补贴，并警告称人为推高能源价格会严重伤害全球最贫困的20亿人口。 (26:02)

Source quotes

[0:16] Bill Gates: If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy.

Original transcript

[0:16] I'm going to talk today about energy and climate. [0:20] And that might seem a bit surprising, [0:22] because my full-time work at the foundation [0:25] is mostly about vaccines and seeds, [0:27] about the things that we need to invent and deliver [0:30] to help the poorest two billion live better lives. [0:35] But energy and climate are extremely important to these people; [0:40] in fact, more important than to anyone else on the planet. [0:45] The climate getting worse means that many years, their crops won't grow: [0:50] there will be too much rain, not enough rain; [0:53] things will change in ways their fragile environment simply can't support. [0:59] And that leads to starvation, it leads to uncertainty, it leads to unrest. [1:04] So, the climate changes will be terrible for them. [1:08] Also, the price of energy is very important to them. [1:11] In fact, if you could pick just one thing [1:13] to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy. [1:18] Now, the price of energy has come down over time. [1:22] Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy. [1:29] The coal revolution fueled the Industrial Revolution, [1:32] and, even in the 1900s, we've seen a very rapid decline [1:36] in the price of electricity, [1:38] and that's why we have refrigerators, air-conditioning; [1:41] we can make modern materials and do so many things. [1:45] And so, we're in a wonderful situation with electricity in the rich world. [1:52] But as we make it cheaper -- and let's say, [1:55] let's go for making it twice as cheap -- [1:59] we need to meet a new constraint, [2:02] and that constraint has to do with CO2. [2:06] CO2 is warming the planet, [2:09] and the equation on CO2 is actually a very straightforward one. [2:14] If you sum up the CO2 that gets emitted, [2:18] that leads to a temperature increase, [2:21] and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects: [2:25] the effects on the weather; perhaps worse, the indirect effects, [2:29] in that the natural ecosystems can't adjust to these rapid changes, [2:33] and so you get ecosystem collapses. [2:36] Now, the exact amount of how you map from a certain increase of CO2 [2:42] to what temperature will be, and where the positive feedbacks are -- [2:45] there's some uncertainty there, but not very much. [2:48] And there's certainly uncertainty about how bad those effects will be, [2:51] but they will be extremely bad. [2:54] I asked the top scientists on this several times: [2:56] Do we really have to get down to near zero? [2:59] Can't we just cut it in half or a quarter? [3:02] And the answer is, until we get near to zero, [3:06] the temperature will continue to rise. [3:08] And so that's a big challenge. [3:10] It's very different than saying, [3:12] "We're a twelve-foot-high truck trying to get under a ten-foot bridge, [3:16] and we can just sort of squeeze under." [3:18] This is something that has to get to zero. [3:22] Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year -- [3:26] over 26 billion tons. [3:28] For each American, it's about 20 tons. [3:32] For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. [3:35] It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. [3:39] And somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero. [3:44] It's been constantly going up. [3:47] It's only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all, [3:51] so we have to go from rapidly rising to falling, [3:55] and falling all the way to zero. [3:57] This equation has four factors, a little bit of multiplication. [4:01] So you've got a thing on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero, [4:05] and that's going to be based on the number of people, [4:08] the services each person is using on average, [4:11] the energy, on average, for each service, [4:14] and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy. [4:18] So let's look at each one of these, [4:20] and see how we can get this down to zero. [4:24] Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero. [4:28] (Laughter) [4:29] That's back from high school algebra. [4:31] But let's take a look. [4:32] First, we've got population. [4:35] The world today has 6.8 billion people. [4:38] That's headed up to about nine billion. [4:40] Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, [4:44] health care, reproductive health services, [4:47] we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent. [4:50] But there, we see an increase of about 1.3. [4:54] The second factor is the services we use. [4:57] This encompasses everything: [4:59] the food we eat, clothing, TV, heating. [5:04] These are very good things. [5:06] Getting rid of poverty means providing these services [5:09] to almost everyone on the planet. [5:11] And it's a great thing for this number to go up. [5:15] In the rich world, perhaps the top one billion, [5:17] we probably could cut back and use less, [5:19] but every year, this number, on average, is going to go up, [5:24] and so, overall, that will more than double [5:27] the services delivered per person. [5:30] Here we have a very basic service: [5:32] Do you have lighting in your house to be able to read your homework? [5:35] And, in fact, these kids don't, [5:37] so they're going out and reading their schoolwork [5:39] under the street lamps. [5:42] Now, efficiency, "E," the energy for each service -- [5:46] here, finally we have some good news. [5:48] We have something that's not going up. [5:50] Through various inventions and new ways of doing lighting, [5:53] through different types of cars, different ways of building buildings -- [5:58] there are a lot of services [6:00] where you can bring the energy for that service down [6:03] quite substantially. [6:05] Some individual services even bring it down by 90 percent. [6:08] There are other services, like how we make fertilizer, [6:12] or how we do air transport, [6:13] where the rooms for improvement are far, far less. [6:17] And so overall, if we're optimistic, we may get a reduction [6:21] of a factor of three to even, perhaps, a factor of six. [6:26] But for these first three factors now, [6:29] we've gone from 26 billion to, at best, maybe 13 billion tons, [6:34] and that just won't cut it. [6:36] So let's look at this fourth factor -- this is going to be a key one -- [6:40] and this is the amount of CO2 put out per each unit of energy. [6:46] So the question is: Can you actually get that to zero? [6:49] If you burn coal, no. [6:52] If you burn natural gas, no. [6:54] Almost every way we make electricity today, [6:57] except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. [7:03] And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, [7:06] is create a new system. [7:09] So we need energy miracles. [7:11] Now, when I use the term "miracle," I don't mean something that's impossible. [7:16] The microprocessor is a miracle. [7:18] The personal computer is a miracle. [7:20] The Internet and its services are a miracle. [7:23] So the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles. [7:28] Usually, we don't have a deadline [7:30] where you have to get the miracle by a certain date. [7:32] Usually, you just kind of stand by, and some come along, some don't. [7:36] This is a case where we actually have to drive at full speed [7:40] and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline. [7:45] Now, I thought, "How could I really capture this? [7:48] Is there some kind of natural illustration, [7:50] some demonstration that would grab people's imagination here?" [7:55] I thought back to a year ago when I brought mosquitoes, [7:59] and somehow people enjoyed that. [8:01] (Laughter) [8:03] It really got them involved in the idea of, you know, [8:07] there are people who live with mosquitoes. [8:09] With energy, all I could come up with is this. [8:14] I decided that releasing fireflies [8:17] would be my contribution to the environment here this year. [8:21] So here we have some natural fireflies. [8:24] I'm told they don't bite; in fact, they might not even leave that jar. [8:27] (Laughter) [8:31] Now, there's all sorts of gimmicky solutions like that one, [8:35] but they don't really add up to much. [8:37] We need solutions, either one or several, [8:41] that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability. [8:47] And although there's many directions that people are seeking, [8:50] I really only see five that can achieve the big numbers. [8:54] I've left out tide, geothermal, fusion, biofuels. [8:59] Those may make some contribution, [9:01] and if they can do better than I expect, so much the better. [9:04] But my key point here is that we're going to have to work on [9:07] each of these five, [9:09] and we can't give up any of them because they look daunting, [9:13] because they all have significant challenges. [9:17] Let's look first at burning fossil fuels, [9:19] either burning coal or burning natural gas. [9:23] What you need to do there seems like it might be simple, but it's not. [9:27] And that's to take all the CO2, [9:29] after you've burned it, going out the flue, [9:32] pressurize it, create a liquid, put it somewhere, [9:35] and hope it stays there. [9:37] Now, we have some pilot things [9:39] that do this at the 60 to 80 percent level. [9:41] But getting up to that full percentage -- that will be very tricky. [9:45] And agreeing on where these CO2 quantities should be put will be hard, [9:51] but the toughest one here is this long-term issue: [9:54] Who's going to be sure? [9:55] Who's going to guarantee [9:57] something that is literally billions of times larger [10:00] than any type of waste you think of in terms of nuclear or other things? [10:04] This is a lot of volume. [10:07] So that's a tough one. [10:09] Next would be nuclear. [10:11] It also has three big problems: [10:14] cost, particularly in highly regulated countries, is high; [10:18] the issue of safety, really feeling good about nothing could go wrong, [10:22] that, even though you have these human operators, [10:25] the fuel doesn't get used for weapons. [10:28] And then what do you do with the waste? [10:30] Although it's not very large, there are a lot of concerns about that. [10:34] People need to feel good about it. [10:35] So three very tough problems that might be solvable, [10:40] and so, should be worked on. [10:42] The last three of the five, I've grouped together. [10:45] These are what people often refer to as the renewable sources. [10:49] And they actually -- although it's great they don't require fuel -- [10:53] they have some disadvantages. [10:55] One is that the density of energy gathered in these technologies [11:01] is dramatically less than a power plant. [11:03] This is energy farming, [11:05] so you're talking about many square miles, thousands of times more area [11:09] than you think of as a normal energy plant. [11:12] Also, these are intermittent sources. [11:15] The sun doesn't shine all day, it doesn't shine every day, [11:18] and likewise, the wind doesn't blow all the time. [11:21] And so, if you depend on these sources, [11:23] you have to have some way of getting the energy [11:26] during those time periods that it's not available. [11:29] So we've got big cost challenges here. [11:32] We have transmission challenges; [11:34] for example, say this energy source is outside your country, [11:38] you not only need the technology, [11:40] but you have to deal with the risk of the energy coming from elsewhere. [11:44] And, finally, this storage problem. [11:47] To dimensionalize this, [11:48] I went through and looked at all the types of batteries made -- [11:52] for cars, for computers, for phones, for flashlights, for everything -- [11:56] and compared that to the amount of electrical energy the world uses. [12:01] What I found is that all the batteries we make now [12:05] could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy. [12:09] And so, in fact, we need a big breakthrough here, [12:12] something that's going to be a factor of 100 better [12:16] than the approaches we have now. [12:18] It's not impossible, but it's not a very easy thing. [12:22] Now, this shows up when you try to get the intermittent source [12:26] to be above, say, 20 to 30 percent of what you're using. [12:30] If you're counting on it for 100 percent, [12:33] you need an incredible miracle battery. [12:38] Now, how are we going to go forward on this -- what's the right approach? [12:41] Is it a Manhattan Project? What's the thing that can get us there? [12:45] Well, we need lots of companies working on this -- hundreds. [12:50] In each of these five paths, we need at least a hundred people. [12:53] A lot of them, you'll look at and say, "They're crazy." [12:56] That's good. [12:57] And, I think, here in the TED group, [13:00] we have many people who are already pursuing this. [13:04] Bill Gross has several companies, including one called eSolar [13:08] that has some great solar thermal technologies. [13:11] Vinod Khosla is investing in dozens of companies [13:14] that are doing great things and have interesting possibilities, [13:18] and I'm trying to help back that. [13:20] Nathan Myhrvold and I actually are backing a company [13:24] that, perhaps surprisingly, is actually taking the nuclear approach. [13:28] There are some innovations in nuclear: modular, liquid. [13:32] Innovation really stopped in this industry quite some ago, [13:36] so the idea that there's some good ideas laying around [13:39] is not all that surprising. [13:41] The idea of TerraPower is that, instead of burning a part of uranium -- [13:47] the one percent, which is the U235 -- [13:50] we decided, "Let's burn the 99 percent, the U238." [13:55] It is kind of a crazy idea. [13:57] In fact, people had talked about it for a long time, [14:00] but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not, [14:04] and so it's through the advent of modern supercomputers [14:07] that now you can simulate and see that, yes, [14:09] with the right materials approach, this looks like it would work. [14:15] And because you're burning that 99 percent, [14:18] you have greatly improved cost profile. [14:22] You actually burn up the waste, and you can actually use as fuel [14:26] all the leftover waste from today's reactors. [14:29] So instead of worrying about them, you just take that, it's a great thing. [14:34] It breeds this uranium as it goes along, so it's kind of like a candle. [14:38] You see it's a log there, often referred to as a traveling wave reactor. [14:42] In terms of fuel, this really solves the problem. [14:46] I've got a picture here of a place in Kentucky. [14:49] This is the leftover, the 99 percent, [14:51] where they've taken out the part they burn now, [14:54] so it's called depleted uranium. [14:55] That would power the US for hundreds of years. [14:58] And simply by filtering seawater in an inexpensive process, [15:02] you'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of the planet. [15:06] So, you know, it's got lots of challenges ahead, [15:10] but it is an example of the many hundreds and hundreds of ideas [15:15] that we need to move forward. [15:18] So let's think: How should we measure ourselves? [15:21] What should our report card look like? [15:24] Well, let's go out to where we really need to get, [15:27] and then look at the intermediate. [15:29] For 2050, you've heard many people talk about this 80 percent reduction. [15:35] That really is very important, that we get there. [15:38] And that 20 percent will be used up by things going on in poor countries -- [15:42] still some agriculture; hopefully, we will have cleaned up forestry, cement. [15:48] So, to get to that 80 percent, [15:51] the developed countries, including countries like China, [15:55] will have had to switch their electricity generation altogether. [16:00] The other grade is: Are we deploying this zero-emission technology, [16:06] have we deployed it in all the developed countries [16:08] and are in the process of getting it elsewhere? [16:11] That's super important. [16:13] That's a key element of making that report card. [16:17] Backing up from there, what should the 2020 report card look like? [16:22] Well, again, it should have the two elements. [16:24] We should go through these efficiency measures to start getting reductions: [16:28] The less we emit, the less that sum will be of CO2, [16:31] and therefore, the less the temperature. [16:33] But in some ways, the grade we get there, [16:36] doing things that don't get us all the way to the big reductions, [16:41] is only equally, or maybe even slightly less, important than the other, [16:44] which is the piece of innovation on these breakthroughs. [16:48] These breakthroughs, we need to move those at full speed, [16:52] and we can measure that in terms of companies, [16:54] pilot projects, regulatory things that have been changed. [16:57] There's a lot of great books that have been written about this. [17:00] The Al Gore book, "Our Choice," [17:03] and the David MacKay book, "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air." [17:06] They really go through it and create a framework [17:10] that this can be discussed broadly, [17:11] because we need broad backing for this. [17:14] There's a lot that has to come together. [17:16] So this is a wish. [17:18] It's a very concrete wish that we invent this technology. [17:22] If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years -- [17:25] I could pick who's president, [17:27] I could pick a vaccine, which is something I love, [17:30] or I could pick that this thing [17:32] that's half the cost with no CO2 gets invented -- [17:36] this is the wish I would pick. [17:38] This is the one with the greatest impact. [17:40] If we don't get this wish, [17:41] the division between the people who think short term and long term [17:45] will be terrible, [17:46] between the US and China, between poor countries and rich, [17:49] and most of all, [17:50] the lives of those two billion will be far worse. [17:54] So what do we have to do? [17:56] What am I appealing to you to step forward and drive? [18:01] We need to go for more research funding. [18:04] When countries get together in places like Copenhagen, [18:07] they shouldn't just discuss the CO2. [18:09] They should discuss this innovation agenda. [18:11] You'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending [18:16] on these innovative approaches. [18:18] We do need the market incentives -- CO2 tax, cap and trade -- [18:22] something that gets that price signal out there. [18:25] We need to get the message out. [18:26] We need to have this dialogue be a more rational, [18:29] more understandable dialogue, [18:30] including the steps that the government takes. [18:33] This is an important wish, but it is one I think we can achieve. [18:37] Thank you. [18:38] (Applause) [18:48] (Applause ends) [18:50] Thank you. [18:52] Chris Anderson: Thank you. Thank you. [18:54] (Applause) [18:59] CA: Thank you. [19:01] So to understand more about TerraPower. [19:05] I mean, first of all, can you give a sense of what scale of investment this is? [19:10] Bill Gates: To actually do the software, buy the supercomputer, [19:14] hire all the great scientists, which we've done, [19:16] that's only tens of millions. [19:19] And even once we test our materials out in a Russian reactor [19:23] to make sure our materials work properly, [19:26] then you'll only be up in the hundreds of millions. [19:28] The tough thing is building the pilot reactor -- [19:31] finding the several billion, finding the regulator, the location [19:36] that will actually build the first one of these. [19:38] Once you get the first one built, if it works as advertised, [19:42] then it's just clear as day, [19:43] because the economics, the energy density, are so different [19:47] than nuclear as we know it. [19:48] CA: So to understand it right, [19:50] this involves building deep into the ground, [19:52] almost like a vertical column of nuclear fuel, of this spent uranium, [19:57] and then the process starts at the top and kind of works down? [20:01] BG: That's right. [20:02] Today, you're always refueling the reactor, [20:04] so you have lots of people and lots of controls that can go wrong, [20:07] where you're opening it up and moving things in and out -- [20:10] that's not good. [20:12] So if you have very -- [20:13] (Laughter) [20:14] very cheap fuel that you can put 60 years in -- [20:17] just think of it as a log -- [20:19] put it down and not have those same complexities. [20:22] And it just sits there and burns for the 60 years, and then it's done. [20:27] CA: It's a nuclear power plant that is its own waste disposal solution. [20:31] BG: Yeah; what happens with the waste, [20:33] you can let it sit there -- there's a lot less waste under this approach -- [20:38] then you can actually take that [20:40] and put it into another one and burn that. [20:43] And we start out, actually, by taking the waste that exists today [20:47] that's sitting in these cooling pools or dry-casking by reactors -- [20:51] that's our fuel to begin with. [20:53] So the thing that's been a problem from those reactors [20:56] is actually what gets fed into ours, [20:58] and you're reducing the volume of the waste quite dramatically [21:01] as you're going through this process. [21:03] CA: You're talking to different people around the world [21:06] about the possibilities. [21:07] Where is there most interest in actually doing something with this? [21:10] BG: Well, we haven't picked a particular place, [21:15] and there's all these interesting disclosure rules [21:18] about anything that's called "nuclear." [21:21] So we've got a lot of interest. [21:23] People from the company have been in Russia, India, China. [21:27] I've been back seeing the secretary of energy here, [21:29] talking about how this fits into the energy agenda. [21:33] So I'm optimistic. [21:34] The French and Japanese have done some work. [21:36] This is a variant on something that has been done. [21:40] It's an important advance, but it's like a fast reactor, [21:44] and a lot of countries have built them, [21:46] so anybody who's done a fast reactor is a candidate [21:48] to be where the first one gets built. [21:51] CA: So, in your mind, [21:54] timescale and likelihood of actually taking something like this live? [21:59] BG: Well, we need -- for one of these high-scale, electro-generation things [22:05] that's very cheap, [22:06] we have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to deploy. [22:10] That's sort of the deadline [22:12] that the environmental models have shown us that we have to meet. [22:17] And TerraPower -- if things go well, which is wishing for a lot -- [22:23] could easily meet that. [22:24] And there are, fortunately now, dozens of companies -- [22:27] we need it to be hundreds -- [22:29] who, likewise, if their science goes well, [22:31] if the funding for their pilot plants goes well, [22:34] that they can compete for this. [22:36] And it's best if multiple succeed, [22:38] because then you could use a mix of these things. [22:41] We certainly need one to succeed. [22:43] CA: In terms of big-scale possible game changers, [22:46] is this the biggest that you're aware of out there? [22:49] BG: An energy breakthrough is the most important thing. [22:53] It would have been, even without the environmental constraint, [22:56] but the environmental constraint just makes it so much greater. [23:00] In the nuclear space, there are other innovators. [23:03] You know, we don't know their work as well as we know this one, [23:06] but the modular people, that's a different approach. [23:10] There's a liquid-type reactor, which seems a little hard, [23:13] but maybe they say that about us. [23:15] And so, there are different ones, [23:18] but the beauty of this is a molecule of uranium [23:21] has a million times as much energy as a molecule of, say, coal. [23:25] And so, if you can deal with the negatives, [23:29] which are essentially the radiation, the footprint and cost, [23:32] the potential, in terms of effect on land and various things, [23:36] is almost in a class of its own. [23:41] CA: If this doesn't work, then what? [23:44] Do we have to start taking emergency measures [23:48] to try and keep the temperature of the earth stable? [23:51] BG: If you get into that situation, [23:53] it's like if you've been overeating, and you're about to have a heart attack. [23:58] Then where do you go? [24:00] You may need heart surgery or something. [24:02] There is a line of research on what's called geoengineering, [24:06] which are various techniques that would delay the heating [24:09] to buy us 20 or 30 years to get our act together. [24:12] Now, that's just an insurance policy; you hope you don't need to do that. [24:16] Some people say you shouldn't even work on the insurance policy [24:19] because it might make you lazy, [24:21] that you'll keep eating because you know heart surgery will be there to save you. [24:25] I'm not sure that's wise, given the importance of the problem, [24:28] but there's now the geoengineering discussion [24:31] about: Should that be in the back pocket in case things happen faster, [24:35] or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect? [24:40] CA: Climate skeptics: [24:42] If you had a sentence or two to say to them, [24:46] how might you persuade them that they're wrong? [24:50] BG: Well, unfortunately, the skeptics come in different camps. [24:53] The ones who make scientific arguments are very few. [24:58] Are they saying there's negative feedback effects [25:01] that have to do with clouds that offset things? [25:03] There are very, very few things that they can even say [25:07] there's a chance in a million of those things. [25:09] The main problem we have here -- it's kind of like with AIDS: [25:12] you make the mistake now, and you pay for it a lot later. [25:16] And so, when you have all sorts of urgent problems, [25:20] the idea of taking pain now that has to do with a gain later, [25:24] and a somewhat uncertain pain thing. [25:26] In fact, the IPCC report -- that's not necessarily the worst case, [25:32] and there are people in the rich world who look at IPCC and say, [25:36] "OK, that isn't that big of a deal." [25:38] The fact is it's that uncertain part that should move us towards this. [25:42] But my dream here is that, [25:44] if you can make it economic, and meet the CO2 constraints, [25:47] then the skeptics say, [25:49] "OK, I don't care that it doesn't put out CO2, [25:51] I kind of wish it did put out CO2. [25:53] But I guess I'll accept it, [25:54] because it's cheaper than what's come before." [25:57] (Applause) [26:02] CA: So that would be your response to the Bjørn Lomborg argument, [26:05] basically if you spend all this energy trying to solve the CO2 problem, [26:09] it's going to take away all your other goals [26:11] of trying to rid the world of poverty and malaria and so forth, [26:14] it's a stupid waste of the Earth's resources [26:17] to put money towards that [26:18] when there are better things we can do. [26:20] BG: Well, the actual spending on the R&D piece -- [26:23] say the US should spend 10 billion a year more than it is right now -- [26:27] it's not that dramatic. [26:29] It shouldn't take away from other things. [26:31] The thing you get into big money on, and reasonable people can disagree, [26:34] is when you have something that's non-economic [26:36] and you're trying to fund that -- [26:38] that, to me, mostly is a waste. [26:40] Unless you're very close, [26:42] and you're just funding the learning curve and it's going to get very cheap, [26:45] I believe we should try more things [26:48] that have a potential to be far less expensive. [26:51] If the trade-off you get into is, "Let's make energy super expensive," [26:56] then the rich can afford that. [26:58] I mean, all of us here could pay five times as much for our energy [27:01] and not change our lifestyle. [27:03] The disaster is for that two billion. [27:05] And even Lomborg has changed. [27:07] His shtick now is, "Why isn't the R&D getting more discussed?" [27:12] He's still, because of his earlier stuff, [27:14] still associated with the skeptic camp, [27:16] but he's realized that's a pretty lonely camp, [27:19] and so, he's making the R&D point. [27:22] And so there is a thread of something that I think is appropriate. [27:27] The R&D piece -- it's crazy how little it's funded. [27:30] CA: Well, Bill, I suspect I speak on behalf of most people here [27:34] to say I really hope your wish comes true. [27:36] Thank you so much. [27:37] BG: Thank you. [27:38] (Applause)