Bill Gates: Spent Nuclear Uranium Can Save the World

There are a lot of big ideas swirling around at the TED 2010 (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference happening this week in California.

But few are as big as what Bill Gates had to say.

The challenge? A complete overhaul of the world's energy system — eliminating all carbon emissions — to avoid catastrophic climate change.

His solution? Re-purpose spent nuclear fuel to make electricity, according to CNN.

While that sounds alarming, Gates believes it can and must be done if we are to save ourselves from an even more alarming future.

As Boing Boing reports, Gates displayed the following equation to illustrate how much carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere due to human activity, saying we need to get one of the factors to zero in order to solve our problem.

Total CO2= World population x Services x Energy of each service x CO2 per unit of energy

Since the first two factors certainly won't be cut to zero and the third could use a reduction but can't defy the laws of physics by dropping to nothing, we're left with zeroing out the fourth, the amount of carbon emissions per unit of energy.

To do this, Gates said, we need a miraculous innovation on the order of the microprocessor or the Internet. And we need it on "a pretty tight timeline."

Here's where the big idea comes in, since Gates sees nuclear as providing the mostly likely miracle in this situation. All the leftover waste produced by today's reactors can be transformed into fuel. The uranium from a single plant could satisfy the US's energy needs for 200 years.

"A molecule of uranium has a million times more energy than a molecule of coal," he said. "In terms of fuel this really solves the problem."

So what's everyone waiting for? Gates suggests we spend the next 20 years perfecting this technology and the 20 after that using it to dig out of the hole we've created for ourselves. Could this miracle come true? If so, that would be good news of drastic proportions.

Photo courtesy of Domain Barnyard via Flickr