John Gilleland’s first day on the job was a little different from most people’s. The nuclear physicist showed up at Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA, and sat down at the conference table with his new boss, CEO Nathan Myhrvold, and another, shall we say prominent, techie.

“The guy on my left looked familiar,” Gilleland says. “It was Bill Gates.”

Gilleland had been on the job for all of three minutes when Myhrvold said jokingly, “John, you’re late on your deliverables.”

That was back in December 2006. Gilleland is now CEO of TerraPower, the spinoff from Intellectual Ventures that is focused on creating a fundamentally new kind of nuclear reactor. It’s the invention firm’s biggest research project to date, spinning out as a separate entity in the fall of 2008 with 30-some staff and untold amounts of funding from Gates and other investors. It is a project that Intellectual Ventures likes to cite as a potentially transformative, homegrown invention.

The basic idea is to create a reactor that needs only a small amount of enriched uranium to get started, and then uses depleted uranium (spent fuel) or natural, unenriched uranium to produce the nuclear-fission reactions necessary to generate power for 60 years or more without refueling. The design is called a traveling wave reactor, and the idea dates back to the early 1990s. If it works, the key benefits would be cheaper power, much more plentiful fuel, more efficient nuclear waste disposal, and less risk of nuclear proliferation.

Gates has been gushing about the project as of late. He mentioned TerraPower prominently in his talk at the TED conference in California last month, calling out the proposed reactor design as a possible “miracle” innovation in the effort to provide clean energy to more of the world’s population without increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere. (Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S.)

Gilleland (see photo, left) has been given the keys to Gates and Myhrvold’s nuclear kingdom for good reason. Previously, he co-founded and led Archimedes Technology Group, which developed improved techniques for cleaning up nuclear weapons waste, among other things. Before that, he was chief scientist and vice president of energy programs at Bechtel, and U.S. managing director of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program for fusion energy, and he spent 16 years at General Atomics doing fusion research.

The traveling wave reactor is certainly an intriguing idea, and one that could be a true breakthrough. But the question, skeptics say, is whether it can be made to really work—and how long that will take. The idea is that the reactor makes its own fuel and uses it as it goes along: the neutrons emitted by a small amount of enriched uranium convert depleted uranium into plutonium, which splits to produce energy and also emits more neutrons that continue to “breed” new fuel. There is no precedent for TerraPower’s particular design, and the project faces some major challenges—technical, business, and regulatory. So far the physics has only been tested in computer simulations, albeit using the most advanced supercomputers available. (It’s worth mentioning that only someone like Gates could afford to fund this and risk having it not work—which is exactly why Myhrvold sees the need for an “invention capital” industry.)

On the plus side, the environment for nuclear power development is more promising … Next Page »

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Here are my top 10 innovations that are coming to the forefront in 2010. Of course, none of these would be possible without the economic engine that is embodied by the USA Science & Engineering Festival, which is creating the innovative minds of the future.

1) High-tech treatment of nuclear waste, a technology that solves the key bottleneck to new nuclear growth and old nuclear cleanup. Example: stealth company Kurion of New York, NY.

2) Coal to Liquid Technologies are the culmination of decades of innovative processes now ready for widespread commercialization. That makes abundant U.S. coal a clean fuel. Example: Accelergy of Houston, TX.

3) LEDs for clean water. Using ultraviolet light emitting diodes (LEDs), which operate at 265nm—the optimum wavelength for germicidal disinfection—represents a breakthrough in water purification. Example: CrystalIS of Green Island, NY.

4) Nanotechnology is transforming cancer treatment by using precise targeting of out-of-control cells, which limits the harsh side-effects of poisoning people with chemotherapy and burning them with radiation. Example: Cerulean Pharma of Cambridge, MA.

5) Rapid Vaccine discovery. Quickly evolving antigens need quickly evolving vaccines. Example: Genocea Biosciences of Cambridge, MA.

6) Wireless TV & Video at 60GHz cuts the cords and the messy morass of connecting wires to create higher quality in-room wireless video area networks. Example: SiBeam of Sunnyvale, CA, with offices in San Diego, Tokyo and Seoul.

7) Efficient data centers at light-speed. By integrating high-performance optics directly with silicon-based electronics, it is possible to bring “fiber to the chip” connectivity to market. Example: Luxtera of Carlsbad, CA.

8) Touch-screens so cheap they’re disposable. Nanostructured materials offer display devices and components with enhanced performance at a lower manufacturing cost. Example: Cambrios of Sunnyvale, CA.

9) Powerless Memory, using the magnetism of electron spin. Technology innovation makes it feasible to store information in magnetic material integrated with silicon circuitry to deliver the speed of SRAM with the non-volatility of Flash. Example: Everspin Technologies of Chandler, AZ.

10) Bio-algae produced fuels. Using the tools of modern biotechnology to identify and optimize strains of algae for the production of biological oils as a substitute for petroleum-based crude oil. Example: Sapphire Energy of San Diego.

[Editor's Note: As the decade comes to an end, we've asked Xconomists and other technology leaders around the country to identify the top innovations they've seen in their fields the past 10 years, or predict the top disruptive technologies that will impact the next decade.]

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Nuclear waste dumps require careful handling. To avoid incidences of nuclear material leaking into the surrounding soil and water, the Department of Energy must monitor the 80 sites in the U.S. regularly and do its best to adjust conditions if warranted. Issaquah, WA-based consulting firm Predicus has used mathematical modeling software developed by fellow Issaquah company GoldSim Technology Group to create a software program to help the DOE do just that.

According to a news release today, the DOE will use the Prioritization Risk Integration Simulation Model (PRISM) created by Predicus and GoldSim to evaluate the Hanford, WA, nuclear waste facility. If the evaluation goes well, the program may be used at the other American nuclear waste sites as well. Financial details of the DOE contract were not disclosed.

PRISM will run data provided by Predicus and the DOE on the facilities’ capabilities, the environment, and other factors so Predicus can recommend appropriate management plans. PRISM takes into account not only environmental issues, but budgetary and legal considerations in its calculations.  It will then simulate different possibilities so the DOE can figure out what, if anything, needs to be done to improve the nuclear waste sites and prioritize those projects based on things like immediate need and available money.

GoldSim’s software was originally released in 1999, although the company was founded in its current form in 2004. The software has been adapted for risk management and planning for businesses, academic institutions, and government agencies around the world.

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