Nuclear powerAtoms for greeneryBill Gates's latest venture is a new-style nuclear reactorSince 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.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.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).
