Bill Gates, Toshiba in talks for nuclear energy start-up

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates's TerraPower is in discussions with Japan's Toshiba Corp. on developing a small-scale nuclear reactor that would generate cheap nuclear power, the BBC reported yesterday.

"Toshiba has entered into preliminary talks with TerraPower. We are looking into the possibility of working together," Keisuke Ohmori, a Toshiba spokesman, told BBC.

TerraPower is a unit of Intellectual Ventures, based in Bellevue, Washington, a patent-holding concern partially funded by Gates.

These cost-efficient new reactors might be suitable for use in cities or emerging-market countries.

According to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, Gates could put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into a joint venture with Toshiba.

Mini-reactors could last up to 100 years without refuelling, unlike today's units which need replenishing every few years.

Toshiba is the world's third-largest maker of microchips and also owns the Westinghouse reactor design company, which it acquired from British Nuclear Fuels in mltiple rounds of bidding for $5.4 billion in February 2006, pipping 14 other companies including General Electric Co. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (See: Toshiba buys Westinghouse for $5.4 billion).

Terra Power is looking into so-called travelling-wave reactors (TWRs), which use depleted uranium as fuel and can last far longer and Toshiba is already looking into technology that would enable mini-reactors to last about 30 years without refuelling.