评论
打印
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.
华盛顿贝尔维尤——在一个室内网球俱乐部和一个家电展销厅之间，有一栋不起眼的一层楼建筑，数十名工程师、物理学家和核专家正在里面追逐着比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)的一个天翻地覆的梦想。
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.
他们正在研制一种新型核反应堆，可以把目前的核废料作为燃料使用，供应美国未来800年里需要的所有电力，可能还可以降低核武器在全球扩散的风险。
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.
研制这个反应堆的是创业公司TerraPower，公司的领导者是盖茨和在微软的同事、亿万富翁内森·梅尔沃德(Nathan Myhrvold)。迄今为止，公司已经为这个项目筹集了数千万美元资金，但修建一座雏形反应堆成本可达50亿美元，这正是盖茨正在富庶的、能源需求量巨大的中国寻找示范工厂的原因之一。
(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.)
（当然盖茨自己也很有钱，在《福布斯》今年的富豪排行榜上，他以670亿美元的净资产名列第二。）
"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."
“希望我们可以找到一个国家，在那里建立示范工厂，可能性最大的就是中国，”去年，盖茨在跟能源专家丹尼尔·耶金(Daniel Yergin)交谈时说。“如果成功了，这种反应堆的性价比会明显优于目前我们使用的反应堆。”
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.
这种反应堆的支持者谈到了它的一些优点，其中最有吸引力的也许是它可以斩断一些武器扩散的途径，例如，伊朗表示其核计划只用于和平目的，但它浓缩的铀比发电所需的铀用量高得多。美国早已表示，伊朗浓缩铀的目的是研制核弹。
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.
目前的核反应堆使用3%至5%的铀235，这种燃料浓缩过程会产生一种纯的、基本上天然的废料，即铀238（铀弹使用90%以上的铀235）。在目前的反应堆里，一些铀238被转化成钚，作为一种用量较小的辅助燃料来使用，但绝大多数的钚都会剩下来，成为废料。
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的反应堆可以把更多的铀238转换成钚，将其作为燃料使用，因此，这种反应堆使用的几乎全是铀238，只需要少量的铀235，其作用就像在烧烤时用少量打火机油引燃木炭一样。
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的支持者们希望，这样一来，各国就不再需要像现在这样浓缩那么多铀，为支持民用计划而存储大量浓缩铀的借口也难以再成立。TerraPower的概念还会击破另一个制造核弹的托辞：绝大多数核武器是通过从使用过的反应堆燃料中提取钚制造出来的。TerraPower说，既然有这么多的铀238可以使用，就没有理由再使用那些钚了。
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."
没有核武的国家也是需要大量电力的，TerraPower的首席执行官约翰·吉尔兰德(John Gilleland)说，“我们希望他们造出来的东西不要让我们晚上睡不好觉。”
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.
但谁都知道这是一种极其长远的投入。甚至连持乐观态度的人都说，这项技术商业化最早也得到2030年。到那个时候，技术竞争（风能、太阳能、天然气或其他一些技术）会是什么样子尚不清楚。如果这个概念真的可以商业化，TerraPower能否成为首家商业化它的公司甚至都很难说。
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.
盖茨手下的工程师们承认这个挑战十分艰巨，但他们表示，他们坚信自己和盖茨正在追寻的这个解决方案，针对的不仅是能源和核武扩散问题，也包括气候变化和贫困问题。
"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.
“如果你只能选择一样东西去降低价格——减少贫困——目前看来应该选能源，”盖茨在2010年的一次发言中介绍了他的反应堆想法，当时他说，“对于这些人来说，能源和气候非常重要，实际上，这对他们比对地球上的其他人都更加重要。”他指的是，能源生产中释放的二氧化碳助长了灾难性的洪水、干旱和农作物歉收的发生。在发言中，盖茨展示了一张学童们在路灯下写作业的图片。
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.
位于贝尔维尤的TerraPower是从高智发明(Intellectual Ventures)剥离出来的一家公司。梅尔沃德是高智发明的联合创始人，这家公司专注于新产品和新技术的发明，比如面向自给农民(subsistence farmer)的经过改良的种子，让疫苗在没有电的地方保持冷藏状态的方法等。但它被批评人士称为“专利蟑螂”，因为该公司购买了大量技术专利，并且用它们来起诉其他从事软件设计、智能手机制造等等业务的公司。
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员工工作的地方跟高智发明同处一座建筑之内，这里有一个蚊子培养室，一个测试厨房，用来开发新的食物制备和保存方法，还有手工打造的精密仪器，用来测量雏形核燃料的微小细节。
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并不是唯一一家正在研制新型反应堆并从废铀料中获取能源的公司，即便这个概念可以商业化，盖茨也未必是第一个实现它的人。通用原子公司(General Atomics)最出名的产品可能是“捕食者”(Predator)无人机，但它在核电方面也拥有几十年的经验，目前该公司正在研制名为“能量倍增器”(energy multiplier)的反应堆模块，其原理跟TerraPower的大体相同。总部设在圣地亚哥的通用原子公司将使用氦而不是钠，这可能会简化某些问题。
"You just set it up, let it burn, and it goes," said John Parmentola, the company's senior vice president.
“你只需把它设置好，让它燃烧，然后它就一直运行着，”该公司高级副总裁约翰·帕门托拉(John Parmentola)说。
Like TerraPower, General Atomics is courting the Chinese.
跟TerraPower一样，通用原子公司也正在设法获取中国的青睐。
