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TerraPower is also funded by Los Alamos National Laboratory who hopes this partnership will help strengthen and expand their science and energy programs.

Gates' investment is reportedly in the tens of millions of dollars. Other key investors are Venture-capital firms Charles River Ventures and Khosla Ventures, who reportedly invested $35 million in 2010.

Executives at TerraPower say their reactor could even be buried below ground, where it could run for an estimated 100 years.

At this point, the TWR is still a virtual endeavor. TerraPower is looking for a country that is willing to house a experimental reactor. The company has pitched to Russia, Japan, France, China, and India but have had no success. The U.S. will not be hosting an experimental reactor for a decade or more because they do not yet have a certification process for reactors like TerraPower's.

The new reactors could reduce the amount of nuclear waste by using existing stockpiles of depleted uranium as fuel. By extracting centuries' worth of energy from waste at enrichment plants, these reactors would turn a social and financial liability into an asset, he said. TerraPower says there are 700 000 metric tons of spent fuel in the U.S. alone, and one 8-ton canister could power 2.5 million homes for a year.

TerraPower is led by cheif executive officer, John Gilleland, a member of the American Nuclear Society.

Some reports note that the high fuel efficiency of TWRs combined with the ability to use uranium recovered from river or sea water, enough fuel is available to generate electricity for 10 billion people at U.S. per capita levels for million-year time-scales.