There are a few inventions that might rival the personal computer for the biggest technological advancement of the 20th century, but the PC is at least in the conversation. That’s why whenever one of the men most crucial to the advances of that technology speaks, we should listen. And Bill Gates certainly made a lot of people’s ears perk up last week.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates called on the tech world last week to help create a global ‘energy miracle.’ He proposed reusing waste from nuclear power as the greatest possibility.

Gates called climate change the world’s most vexing problem, and added that finding a cheap and clean energy source is more important than creating new vaccines and improving farming techniques, causes into which he has invested billion of dollars. … The world must eliminate all of its carbon emissions and cut energy costs in half in order to prevent a climate catastrophe, which will hit the world’s poor hardest, he said.
“We have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline,” he said.
Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050. He suggested that researchers spend the next 20 years inventing and perfecting clean-energy technologies, and then the next 20 years implementing them.

The main problem with nuclear power is the waste uranium that it creates, but Gates has invested in a company that has found a way to use this waste to create more power. According to this article, the technology has more than a few benefits:

• The Uranium isotope that’s food for the new nuclear reactors doesn’t have to be enriched, which means it’s less likely to be used in atomic weapons.
• The fission reaction in the new process burns through the nuclear waste slowly, which makes the process safer. One supply of spent uranium could burn for 60 years.
• The process creates a large amount of energy from relatively small amounts of uranium, which is important as global supplies run short.
• The process generates uranium that can be burned again to create “effectively an infinite fuel supply.”

And it looks like President Obama was also paying attention to Bill Gates’ speech as yesterday he announced the creation of the first nuclear power plant in the U.S. in more than 3 decades. Can nuclear power be the answer? If it’s safe? If it’s not wasteful? Would this be the “silver bullet.” Only time will tell.