bellevue washington usa key people lee mcintire ceo bill gates chairman of the board products traveling wave reactor website terrapower.com terrapower is a nuclear reactor design company headquartered in bellevue washington in the united states . terrapower is a class of nuclear fast reactors called the traveling wave reactor twr . 1 terrapower is partly funded by los alamos national laboratory . 2 unlike standard light water reactors such as pwrs or bwrs that operate by using enriched uranium as fuel twr uses depleted uranium instead with an estimated operation period from 40 to 60 years . the byproduct of the uranium 235 fission can be re used for other twr reactors . contents 1 traveling wave reactor 2 environmental effects 3 research and development 4 organization 5 objectives 6 see also 7 references 8 external links traveling wave reactor edit terrapower has chosen twrs as its primary technology . the major benefit of such reactors is high fuel utilization in a manner that does not require reprocessing and could eventually eliminate the need to enrich uranium . 3 twrs are designed to convert typically unusable fertile nuclides such as u 238 into fissile nuclides like pu 239 in situ and then shift the power from the highly burned region to the freshly bred region . this allows the benefits of a closed fuel cycle without the expense and proliferation risk of enrichment and reprocessing plants typically required to get them . enough fuel for between 40 and 60 years of operation could be in the reactor from the beginning . the reactor could be buried below ground where it could run for an estimated 100 years . 4 terrapower plans to have a twr prototype built by 2020 producing electricity for the grid in the several hundred megawatt capacity range . 5 as of october 2015 update the company is also investigating the molten salt reactor msr as an alternative technology . 6 environmental effects edit by using depleted uranium as fuel the new reactor type could reduce stockpiles from uranium enrichment . 7 terrapower notes that the us hosts 700 000 metric tons of depleted uranium and that 8 metric tons could power 2.5 million homes for a year . 8 some reports claim that the high fuel efficiency of twrs combined with the ability to use uranium recovered from river or sea water means enough fuel is available to generate electricity for 10 billion people at us per capita consumption levels for million year time scales . 9 research and development edit the twr design is still in the research and development phase . the company has no governmental contract for the twr s construction or operation . the conceptual framework of the twr operations was simulated by supercomputers with an empirical evidence for theoretical feasibility . as of 2015 terrapower was seeking a country willing to host the experimental reactor . us regulators postponed the construction of the experimental reactor for a decade over extended documentation for its certification process . 4 on november 6 2009 terrapower executives and major investor bill gates visited toshiba s yokohama and keihin factories in japan and concluded a non disclosure agreement with them on december 1 . 10 11 12 12 toshiba had already developed an ultracompact reactor the 4s that can operate continuously for 30 years without fuel handling and generates 10 megawatts . 12 13 14 some of the technologies used in 4s are considered to be transferable to twrs . 11 organization edit one of terrapower s primary investors is bill gates . others include charles river ventures and khosla ventures who reportedly invested 35 million in 2010 . terrapower is led by chief executive officer lee mcintire . in december 2011 india s reliance industries bought a minority stake through one of its subsidiaries . reliance industries chairman mukesh ambani will join the company s board . the terrapower team includes 15 scientists and engineers from lawrence livermore national laboratory the fast flux test facility microsoft and various universities as well as management with experience at siemens a.g. areva np the iter project and the u.s. department of energy . objectives edit company objectives include 16 exploring significant improvements to nuclear power using 21st century technologies state of the art computational capabilities and expanded data . evaluating the impact of new concepts on the entire fuel cycle from mining to spent fuel disposal . pursuing an independent privately funded path . see also edit traveling wave reactor fast breeder reactor references edit ril buys stake in us s terra power www.moneycontrol.com delacruz vanessa august 2012 . fiscal year 2012 institutional commitments midyear progress report . energy citation database 1 37 . retrieved 19 august 2012 . john gilleland . tr10 traveling wave reactor . technology review . retrieved 2010 04 19 . a b gurth robert february 27 2011 . a window into the nuclear future . the wall street journal . retrieved 19 august 2012 . john gilleland . bill gates s nuclear miracle john gilleland says terrapower needs discipline not divine intervention . xconomy . retrieved 2010 04 19 . richard martin . terrapower quietly explores new nuclear reactor strategy . technology review . retrieved 2015 11 30 . michal rick ; michael blake april 2010 . the nuclear news interview . john gilleland . on the traveling wave reactor . internationale zeitschrift f r kernenergie . 41 25 249 252 . retrieved 19 august 2012 . depleted uranium as fuel cuts path to less waste . intellectual ventures management llc . retrieved 19 august 2012 . ellis t. ; r. petroski 2010 . traveling wave reactors a truly sustainable and full scale resource for global energy needs . american nuclear society . 42 44 546 558 . retrieved 19 august 2012 . bill gates toshiba in early talks on nuclear reactor sydney morning herald march 23 2010 a b . the nikkei . 2010 03 23 . retrieved 2010 03 24 . a b c . the sankei simbun . 2010 03 23 . retrieved 2010 03 25 . . mainichi newspapers . 2010 03 23 . retrieved 2010 03 24 . dead link . the asahi simbun . 2010 03 24 . archived from the original on march 26 2010 . retrieved 2010 03 24 . terrapower team bios www.terrapower.com the terrapower initiative berkeley.edu external links edit terrapower website nuclear initiative one of newsweek s 10 big green ideas in october 2010 bill gates on energy innovating to zero ted talks on www.ted.com terrapower s patent on the traveling wave reactor v t e emerging nuclear power markets partnerships global nuclear energy partnership united states india peaceful atomic energy cooperation act next generation nuclear plant specialized plant designs fuji msr prism sc htgr iris smahtr sstar russian floating nuclear power station toshiba 4s atmea i carem nuscale gen4 energy b & w mpower terrapower transatomic power retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title terrapower & oldid 739356471 categories nuclear power reactor typesnuclear power companies of the united statesnuclear technology companies of the united statescompanies based in washington state hidden categories all articles with dead external linksarticles with dead external links from october 2010articles containing potentially dated statements from october 2015all articles containing potentially dated statements navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages edit links this page was last modified on 14 september 2016 at 06 02 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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