Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures on Patent Hoarding, Mosquito Lasers, and its $5 Billion Arsenal

Earlier this week, it was announced that TerraPower, a startup with a design for a next-generation nuclear reactor, had raised a $35 million round of funding from Charles River Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates and others, after raising what the company is calling a first round of (undisclosed) “tens of millions” of dollars in 2008.

Its vision is ambitious to say the least. To power its reactor — which will take another 10 years and billions more dollars to get built – TerraPower expects to use the depleted uranium waste created when uranium is enriched to run in conventional power plants. Not only would doing so dampen the risk of nuclear proliferation, says the company, but there is already enough depleted uranium in the world for its reactor to power the whole planet for 100 years.

Connie Loizos

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