To say that nuclear energy has a bad name would be an understatement. To say that it has a future, however, would be to state the obvious. Despite soaring solar and wind generation capacity additions globally, the world is still almost completely reliant on fossil fuels—and nuclear power is a much cleaner, cheap alternative to these. Rather, it would be, were it not for the risk of a meltdown and the problem with radioactive waste. One company, chaired by none other than Bill Gates, says it has found solutions to both these problems. TerraPower came into existence in 2008 with the purpose of finding a reliable alternative to fossil fuels using a nuclear reactor concept first developed more than half a century ago. The breed and burn reactor, so called by the Russian scientist who first conceived of it, Savely Feinberg, was supposed to be able to produce the […]