比尔·盖茨的新梦想把核废料变燃料

2014-10-23 15:26:42来源：可可英语

　　BELLEVUE, Wash. — In a drab one-story buildinghere, set between an indoor tennis club and a homeappliance showroom, dozens of engineers, physicistsand nuclear experts are chasing a radical dream ofBill 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 thatwould be fueled by today's nuclear waste, supply allthe electricity in the United States for the next 800 years and, possibly, cut the risk of nuclearweapons 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 afellow Microsoft billionaire, Nathan Myhrvold. So far, it has raised tens of millions of dollars forthe project, but building a prototype reactor could cost $5 billion — a reason Mr. Gates islooking 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 theworld'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 tobuild the demo plant," Mr. Gates said last year in a conversation with the energy expertDaniel Yergin. "If that happens, then the economics of this are quite a bit better than the plantswe 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 isthat it could eliminate several routes to weapons proliferation. Iran, for example, says itsnuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but it is enriching far more uranium than it needs forpower generation. The United States has long said that Iran is enriching uranium to develop anuclear 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。

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