TED Talks always give you something to think about, but today we wanted to share this one featuring Bill Gates discussing his work on new energy sources.
"And so, we need energy miracles. Now, when I use the term miracle, I don't mean something that's impossible. The microprocessor is a miracle. The personal computer is a miracle. The internet and its services are a miracle. So, the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles. Usually, we don't have a deadline, where you have to get the miracle by a certain date. Usually, you just kind of stand by, and some come along, some don't. This is a case where we actually have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline."We at Baja Trek tend to feel that the most urgent problem is to reduce energy usage rather than find new energy sources, but realistically, we'll need to do both. So it was exciting when he spoke about the work being done to use the dangerous and, at the moment, useless waste materials put out by nuclear power plants to create even more power. The machine that would accomplish this is called a traveling-wave reactor, and it sounds pretty swell.
We're particularly excited about this idea after having watched Into Eternity, a fascinating, sad, bizarre, Kubrick-esque documentary about a Finnish project to bury spent nuclear waste miles below ground and keep it there for the 100,000 years it takes for such materials to become non-radioactive. Watch the trailer below!
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This nuclear waste is toxic and dangerous. It will be for 100K years. I am hoping that in a fairly short time, mankind will have the technology to detoxify it or maybe even find a good use for it. That might happen in the next 100 years. I believe it will most definitely happen within the next 1000 years given the rate of technological advancement that is happening now. That is if mankind hasn't destroyed everything on earth by then.
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