Nuclear waste fed into a terrapower reactor would potentially burn for decades before being exhausted, unfortunately, researching and testing terrapower will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with the building of a test reactor likely to cost in the billions.
Gates dismissed climate change sceptics, saying terrapower would render arguments moot because the energy produced would be cheaper than pollution-spewing methods used today. Work on terrapower has been done in France and Japan, and there has been interest in India, Russia, China and the United States.