評論
打印
Nuclear power
核能
Atoms for greenery
綠色原子
Bill Gates's latest venture is a new-style nuclear reactor
比爾·蓋茨的最新投資是一種新型核反應堆
Since handing over the reins as Microsoft's chief executive in 2000, Bill Gates has been best-known for his philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest charities, has given billions of dollars to vaccination drives, family-planning clinics, research into drug treatments for malaria and more.
自從2000年作為微軟首席執行官移交權力以來，比爾·蓋茨一直以他的慈善事業而聞名。世界上最大的慈善機構之一比爾和梅琳達·蓋茨基金會已經向疫苗接種運動、計劃生育診所、瘧疾藥物治療研究等領域捐贈了數十億美元。
But Mr Gates has not abandoned the business world entirely. On June 2nd TerraPower, a company he founded in 2008, announced that it would build a demonstration of an exotic, high-tech nuclear power station in Wyoming. The firm's Natrium reactor is one of a gaggle of new designs that have emerged in recent years, as engineers try to come up with cheaper, simpler nuclear power plants that can provide low carbon electricity with fewer of the cost and safety worries that have plagued the industry in the past.
但是蓋茨先生并沒有完全放棄商業世界。6月2日，他于2008年創立的泰拉能源公司宣布將在懷俄明州建造一座具有異國風格的高科技核電站。該公司的鈉反應堆是近年來涌現的眾多新設計之一，工程師們想要設計出更便宜、更簡單的核電站，以更低的成本和更少的安全擔憂提供低碳電力，過去這些問題一直困擾著核電行業。
The Natrium reactor makes two big changes to the standard nuclear-power-plant design. It replaces the liquid water that normally courses through the core with hot, liquid sodium (natrium, in Latin). And instead of using the heat generated by the reactor to make electricity directly, it first employs it to heat a tank of molten salt that acts as a giant battery. The upshot, the firm hopes, will be a cheaper reactor that is better suited to power grids that will increasingly be dominated by intermittent sources of energy such as wind turbines and solar panels.
鈉反應堆對標準核電站的設計做出了兩項重大改變。它用炙熱的液態鈉(拉丁文是：natrium)取代了通常流經核心的液態水。它并沒有直接利用反應堆產生的熱量發電，而是首先用它加熱一個裝有熔鹽的水箱，這個水箱就像一個巨大的電池。該公司希望，其結果將是一種更便宜的反應堆，更適合電網，而電網將越來越多地由斷斷續續的能源(如風力渦輪機和太陽能電池板)主導。
Start with the reactor itself. Most nuclear power plants are light-water reactors (LWRS), a technology developed in America in the 1950s. They use ordinary water both to cool the reactor core and to increase the intensity of the chain-reaction by moderating the speed of the neutrons that are emitted when uranium atoms split. Thus slowed, these neutrons are more likely to go on to split more atoms in turn.
從反應堆本身開始。大多數核電站都是輕水反應堆(LWRS)，即20世紀50年代在美國發展起來的一種技術。他們使用普通的水來冷卻反應堆核心，并通過減慢鈾原子分裂時釋放的中子的速度來增加鏈式反應的強度。這樣，這些中子就更有可能依次分裂更多的原子。
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