Bill Gates: Nuclear waste is not a reason to avoid nuclear energy
Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaks during the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in New York, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. The first-ever Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit brings together climate leaders to showcase transformative solutions that repair and regenerate the planet.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nuclear waste is not a reason to avoid using nuclear energy, according to Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist who more recently founded a next-generation nuclear energy startup, TerraPower.
One common criticism of nuclear power is that nuclear reactors generate waste that stays radioactive for thousands of years.
“The waste problems should not be a reason to not do nuclear,” Gates said in an interview with the German business publication Handelsblatt, published on Thursday. “The amount of waste involved, the ability to do geological sequestration — that’s not a reason not to do nuclear.”
The volume of nuclear waste is very small, especially when compared with the energy generated, Gates said.
“Say the U.S. was completely nuclear-powered — it’s a few rooms worth of total waste. So not, it’s not a gigantic thing,” Gates said. The cost of storing and sequestering nuclear waste underground is “not a huge problem,” as it can be put into deep boreholes underground “where it stays geologically for hundreds of millions of years,” he said.
In contrast, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions generated from burning fossil fuels for energy is “something gigantic” and sequestering that underground is a very hard problem, which Gates said “may not be possible.”
Nuclear power is classified as a “zero-emission clean energy source” by the U.S. Department of Energy, because generating electricity with nuclear fission does not release any greenhouse gas emissions.
Currently, 19% of electricity generated in the United States comes from nuclear power plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That represents about half of the carbon-free electricity generation in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
But after a boom of nuclear power reactor construction in the 1970s and 1980s, the construction of new nuclear power generation came to a virtual standstill.
“The best hope for nuclear is if we could get a completely new generation — and I’m biased, because I’m involved in that — where the countries that are committed to nuclear prove it out and show that the economic safety, waste management is handled,” Gates said.
“And then the other countries who are less engaged can look at that and see what they think, give it a fresh evaluation. And, you know, that data on that won’t be in for almost another eight years or so,” Gates said.
No permanent nuclear waste repository in the U.S.
After decades of nuclear power generation, there is still no permanent repository for nuclear waste in the United States. The closest the U.S. nuclear industry got to a permanent nuclear waste repository was at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that effort has been stalled because of political impasses.
This undated image obtained 22 February, 2004 shows the entrance to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository located in Nye County, Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
AFP | AFP | Getty Images
Currently, nuclear waste is stored in dry casks, which are stainless steel canisters surrounded by concrete. The top nuclear watchdog in the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, considers these dry casks to be safe. The world’s first permeant underground geological storage site is being constructed in Olkiluoto, Finland.
Also, not all nuclear waste has the same level of radioactivity. Most of the radioactivity is in a very small percentage of the waste generated.
“The vast majority of the volume of nuclear waste there is Low Level Waste,” Jonathan Cobb, spokesperson for the World Nuclear Association, told CNBC. “Around 90% of the volume of nuclear waste produced is LLW, but it contains only 1% of the radioactivity. This can include things like protective clothing, mops, filters, equipment and tools that have become contaminated with radioactive material at a low level. One common category of LLW comes from nuclear medicine use and can include swabs, injection needles and syringes.”
Meanwhile the high-level nuclear waste, which includes used nuclear fuel or higher activity wastes from reprocessing, is “about 3% of the volume of radioactive wastes produced, but contains 95% of the radioactivity,” Cobb told CNBC.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
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Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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