核廢料變燃料,比爾·蓋茨的新夢想

BELLEVUE, Wash. — In a drab one-story building here, set between an indoor tennis club and a home appliance showroom, dozens of engineers, physicists and nuclear experts are chasing a radical dream of Bill Gates.

華盛頓貝爾維尤——在一個室內網球俱樂部和一個家電展銷廳之間，有一棟不起眼的一層樓建築，數十名工程師、物理學家和核專家正在裏面追逐着比爾·蓋茨(Bill Gates)的一個天翻地覆的夢想。

The quest is for a new kind of nuclear reactor that would be fueled by today's nuclear waste, supply all the electricity in the United States for the next 800 years and, possibly, cut the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation around the world.

他們正在研製一種新型核反應堆，可以把目前的核廢料作爲燃料使用，供應美國未來800年裏需要的所有電力，可能還可以降低核武器在全球擴散的風險。

The people developing the reactor work for a start-up, TerraPower, led by Mr. Gates and a fellow Microsoft billionaire, Nathan Myhrvold. So far, it has raised tens of millions of dollars for the project, but building a prototype reactor could cost $5 billion — a reason Mr. Gates is looking for a home for the demonstration plant in rich and Energy-hungry China.

研製這個反應堆的是創業公司TerraPower，公司的領導者是蓋茨和在微軟的同事、億萬富翁內森·梅爾沃德(Nathan Myhrvold)。迄今爲止，公司已經爲這個項目籌集了數千萬美元資金，但修建一座雛形反應堆成本可達50億美元，這正是蓋茨正在富庶的、能源需求量巨大的中國尋找示範工廠的原因之一。

(Mr. Gates, of course, has plenty of money of his own. This year Forbes listed him as the world's second-richest person, with a net worth of $67 billion.)

（當然蓋茨自己也很有錢，在《福布斯》今年的富豪排行榜上，他以670億美元的淨資產名列第二。）

"The hope is that we'll find a country, with China being the most likely, that would be able to build the demo plant," Mr. Gates said last year in a conversation with the energy expert Daniel Yergin. "If that happens, then the economics of this are quite a bit better than the plants we have today."

“希望我們可以找到一個國家，在那裏建立示範工廠，可能性最大的就是中國，”去年，蓋茨在跟能源專家丹尼爾·耶金(Daniel Yergin)交談時說。“如果成功了，這種反應堆的性價比會明顯優於目前我們使用的反應堆。”

Perhaps one of the most intriguing arguments supporters make about Mr. Gates's reactor is that it could eliminate several routes to weapons proliferation. Iran, for example, says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but it is enriching far more uranium than it needs for power generation. The United States has long said that Iran is enriching uranium to develop a nuclear bomb.

這種反應堆的支持者談到了它的一些優點，其中最有吸引力的也許是它可以斬斷一些武器擴散的途徑，例如，伊朗表示其核計劃只用於和平目的，但它濃縮的鈾比發電所需的鈾用量高得多。美國早已表示，伊朗濃縮鈾的目的是研製核彈。

Today's nuclear reactors run on concentrations of 3 to 5 percent uranium 235, an enriched fuel that leaves behind a pure, mostly natural waste, uranium 238. (A uranium bomb runs on more than 90 percent uranium 235.) In today's reactors, some uranium 238 is converted to plutonium that is used as a small, supplemental fuel, but most of the plutonium is left behind as waste.

目前的核反應堆使用3%至5%的鈾235，這種燃料濃縮過程會產生一種純的、基本上天然的廢料，即鈾238（鈾彈使用90%以上的鈾235）。在目前的反應堆裏，一些鈾238被轉化成鈈，作爲一種用量較小的輔助燃料來使用，但絕大多數的鈈都會剩下來，成爲廢料。

In contrast, the TerraPower reactor makes more plutonium from the uranium 238 for use as fuel, and so would run almost entirely on uranium 238. It would need only a small amount of uranium 235, which would function like lighter fluid getting a charcoal barbecue started.

相比之下，TerraPower的反應堆可以把更多的鈾238轉換成鈈，將其作爲燃料使用，因此，這種反應堆使用的幾乎全是鈾238，只需要少量的鈾235，其作用就像在燒烤時用少量打火機油引燃木炭一樣。

The result, TerraPower's supporters hope, is that countries would not need to enrich uranium in the quantities they do now, undercutting arguments that they have to have vast stores on hand for a civilian program. TerraPower's concept would also blunt the logic behind a second route to a bomb: recovering plutonium from spent reactor fuel, which is how most nuclear weapons are built. Since so much uranium 238 is available, there would be no reason to use that plutonium, TerraPower says.

TerraPower的支持者們希望，這樣一來，各國就不再需要像現在這樣濃縮那麼多鈾，爲支持民用計劃而存儲大量濃縮鈾的藉口也難以再成立。TerraPower的概念還會擊破另一個製造核彈的託辭：絕大多數核武器是通過從使用過的反應堆燃料中提取鈈製造出來的。TerraPower說，既然有這麼多的鈾238可以使用，就沒有理由再使用那些鈈了。

Countries that do not have nuclear weapons will still need lots of electricity, said John Gilleland, chief executive of TerraPower, and "we would like to see them build something that allows us to sleep at night."

沒有核武的國家也是需要大量電力的，TerraPower的首席執行官約翰·吉爾蘭德(John Gilleland)說，“我們希望他們造出來的東西不要讓我們晚上睡不好覺。”

But no one disputes that this is a very long-term bet. Even optimists say it would take until at least 2030 to commercialize the technology. What the competition would look like then — wind, solar, natural gas or some other technology — is not clear. If the idea can be commercialized, it is not even clear that TerraPower could do it first.

但誰都知道這是一種極其長遠的投入。甚至連持樂觀態度的人都說，這項技術商業化最早也得到2030年。到那個時候，技術競爭（風能、太陽能、天然氣或其他一些技術）會是什麼樣子尚不清楚。如果這個概念真的可以商業化，TerraPower能否成爲首家商業化它的公司甚至都很難說。

The engineers working for Mr. Gates acknowledge the enormous challenges but say they are convinced that he, and they, are chasing the solution not only to energy and weapons proliferation but also to climate change and poverty.

蓋茨手下的工程師們承認這個挑戰十分艱鉅，但他們表示，他們堅信自己和蓋茨正在追尋的這個解決方案，針對的不僅是能源和核武擴散問題，也包括氣候變化和貧困問題。

"If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of — to reduce poverty — by far you would pick energy," Mr. Gates said as he introduced the reactor idea in a speech in 2010. "Energy and climate are extremely important to these people, in fact, more important to them than anyone else on the planet," he added, referring to killer floods, droughts and crop failures driven by carbon dioxide given off in energy production. He illustrated his talk with a photo of schoolchildren doing their homework under street lamps.

“如果你只能選擇一樣東西去降低價格——減少貧困——目前看來應該選能源，”蓋茨在2010年的一次發言中介紹了他的反應堆想法，當時他說，“對於這些人來說，能源和氣候非常重要，實際上，這對他們比對地球上的其他人都更加重要。”他指的是，能源生產中釋放的二氧化碳助長了災難性的洪水、乾旱和農作物歉收的發生。在發言中，蓋茨展示了一張學童們在路燈下寫作業的圖片。

In Bellevue, TerraPower is a spinoff of Intellectual Ventures, a company co-founded by Mr. Myhrvold that focuses on inventing new products and techniques, among them improved seeds for subsistence farmers and methods for keeping vaccines cold for weeks in places where there is no electricity. But its critics call it a patent troll because it buys large portfolios of technology patents and uses them, they say, to sue software designers, smartphone makers and others.

位於貝爾維尤的TerraPower是從高智發明(Intellectual Ventures)剝離出來的一家公司。梅爾沃德是高智發明的聯合創始人，這家公司專注於新產品和新技術的發明，比如面向自給農民(subsistence farmer)的經過改良的種子，讓疫苗在沒有電的地方保持冷藏狀態的方法等。但它被批評人士稱爲“專利蟑螂”，因爲該公司購買了大量技術專利，並且用它們來起訴其他從事軟件設計、智能手機制造等等業務的公司。

TerraPower employees work in a building that also houses Intellectual Ventures, which includes a chamber for raising mosquitoes, a test kitchen for developing new ways to prepare and preserve food, and hand-built, high-precision instruments for measuring tiny details of prototype nuclear fuel.

TerraPower員工工作的地方跟高智發明同處一座建築之內，這裏有一個蚊子培養室，一個測試廚房，用來開發新的食物製備和保存方法，還有手工打造的精密儀器，用來測量雛形核燃料的微小細節。

TerraPower is not alone in pursuing a reactor that will turn waste uranium into energy, and if such a concept can be commercialized, Mr. Gates might not be the first to do it. General Atomics, which has decades of experience in nuclear power, but is probably best known for producing the Predator drone, is pursuing what it calls an "energy multiplier" reactor module on the same general principal. General Atomics, which is based in San Diego, would use helium, not sodium, however, potentially simplifying some problems.

TerraPower並不是唯一一家正在研製新型反應堆並從廢鈾料中獲取能源的公司，即便這個概念可以商業化，蓋茨也未必是第一個實現它的人。通用原子公司(General Atomics)最出名的產品可能是“捕食者”(Predator)無人機，但它在覈電方面也擁有幾十年的經驗，目前該公司正在研製名爲“能量倍增器”(energy multiplier)的反應堆模塊，其原理跟TerraPower的大體相同。總部設在聖地亞哥的通用原子公司將使用氦而不是鈉，這可能會簡化某些問題。

"You just set it up, let it burn, and it goes," said John Parmentola, the company's senior vice president.

“你只需把它設置好，讓它燃燒，然後它就一直運行着，”該公司高級副總裁約翰·帕門托拉(John Parmentola)說。

Like TerraPower, General Atomics is courting the Chinese.

跟TerraPower一樣，通用原子公司也正在設法獲取中國的青睞。