{"id":114388,"date":"2021-02-25T16:53:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T16:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=114388"},"modified":"2021-02-25T16:53:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T16:53:26","slug":"bill-gates-nuclear-power-will-absolutely-be-politically-acceptable-again-its-safer-than-oil-coal-natural-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/business\/bill-gates-nuclear-power-will-absolutely-be-politically-acceptable-again-its-safer-than-oil-coal-natural-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates: Nuclear power will 'absolutely' be politically acceptable again \u2014 it's safer than oil, coal, natural gas"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nuclear energy will "absolutely" be politically palatable, billionaire philanthropist, technologist and climate change evangelist Bill Gates recently told Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC's "Squawk Box."<\/p>\n
Nuclear power has to overcome a baneful reputation garnered by association with the atomic bomb and radioactive disasters, but it's a necessary, worthy and surmountable challenge to correct the naysayers, according to Gates.<\/p>\n
That's because the need for clean energy is dire, and the operation of nuclear power plants produces no greenhouse gas emissions. According to Gates, new innovations in nuclear technology (in which he is an investor) are making nuclear energy safer and more affordable, and countries around the world are starting to adopt nuclear power.<\/p>\n
Nuclear energy has long had reputation of being dangerous: Early innovations in nuclear power were made in furtherance of the nuclear bomb, and in more recent decades, there have been high-profile disasters like the\u00a0Chernobyl plant\u00a0meltdown in 1986 in Ukraine and the the\u00a0Fukushima Daiichi plant accident in 2011 in Japan.<\/p>\n
But while the disasters get a lot of attention, Gates points to the relative safety of nuclear power over time.<\/p>\n
"Nuclear has actually been safer than any other source of [power] generation," Gates told Sorkin. "You know, coal plants, coal particulate, natural gas pipelines blowing up. The deaths per unit of power on these other approaches are \u2014 are far higher," Gates said, a fact he also references in his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster."<\/p>\n