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This is Bill Gates’ nuclear option. 

TerraPower, which was founded by Gates, intends to continue the Microsoft creator’s knack for innovation by introducing a new form of small-scale, low-cost nuclear power plant never before seen in America. 

The New Nuclear

For decades, nuclear plants have generally needed about one square mile of space — think of the power plant from “The Simpsons” with its massive cooling towers, but without the hundreds of donut-eating employees and secret tunnel system guarded by a giant spider. (We think.) But nowadays, the sector is pivoting toward the development of small modular reactors (SMRs), which take up less space and have an energy capacity of roughly one-third of standard plants’ output.

TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque told the Financial Times that not only would the company’s Natrium-branded reactor, which is slated to be built near a coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, be smaller than traditional nuclear plants, but it would also be cooled with liquid sodium instead of water, cutting operating costs by roughly half. 

Nuclear power has, to say the least, something of a stigma — bombs, horrific meltdowns, and radiation poisoning will do that. But it increasingly looks like the energy of the future, especially as nations attempt to mitigate their dependence on highly polluting fossil fuels:

• Levesque told the FT that TerraPower would apply for a construction permit this month with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Regardless of when TerraPower receives approval, the company will start the non-nuclear part of construction this June, and Levesque expects it to be up and running by 2030.
• TerraPower has the advantage of robust private and public funding. So far, it has privately raised about $1 billion — with some of that coming from South Korea-based SK Inc., Warren Buffett, and Gates himself — to go toward developing its Natrium reactors. It also secured $2 billion from the Department of Energy to complete work at the site in Wyoming. 

Maybe EVs aren’t so hot right now, but bedazzling your car sure is.

Luxury carmaker Bentley reported its second-biggest annual profit ever on Tuesday, and put its success down to more customers opting for bespoke vehicles. The question is: Did any of them spring for the ejector seats and grappling hooks favored by Bentley’s most famous (and fictional) patron? 

Brunei State of Mind

According to Bentley, an overwhelming majority of the 13,560 cars it sold in 2023 had some level of customization included by buyers. Per the Financial Times, CEO Adrian Hallmark described the increase in demand for customization as “jaw-dropping,” adding: “Previously it would be one person in Brunei, now we have a handful of people [for whom] we are actively engaged in creating one-off cars.” Per the FT, seven out of 10 customers spent more than €40,000 ($43,000) on customizations, and some customers requested so many alterations it doubled the base price of the car. Those are some platinum bells and whistles.

Millionaire-class stylizing notwithstanding, the company also gently tweaked its EV transition goals for 2030 and leaned more into its hybrid car offerings, a move that’s also very in vogue at the moment:

• Bentley had previously said it planned to sell only EVs after 2030, but that goal has been retired. Although most prospective Bentley buyers probably aren’t worried about affording an EV, given 70% of them are willing to trick their cars out with extra wood paneling or fiberglass, Hallmark made it sound like the difficulty in shifting to EVs is more infrastructural.
• “We have seen a definite change, not just in the UK, but globally in respect of regulations and governments taking a different view on the rate of movements towards full EVs,” Hallmark said, per the FT.

Hybrid vehicles are far outpacing EVs, with US sales of hybrid cars rising 50% in the first two months of 2024 compared to just 13% for EVs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

I scream, you scream, but will anyone else scream for ice cream? 

Unilever, the consumer giant behind Hellman’s mayonnaise, Dove soap, and Vaseline, announced on Tuesday that it is parting ways with its stable of household name ice cream brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Popsicle, and Magnum. Unilever is in the midst of a rigorous cost-cutting process and didn’t immediately say how it plans to spin out the unit, but it’s not the only company looking to banana split from its ice cream business.

Avoiding a Meltdown

Last summer, Unilever hired a new CEO, Hein Schumacher, who could potentially bag himself a €17.4 million ($18.9 million) pay packet this year if he hits targets to whip the consumer goods giant into shape. To that effect, Unilever also announced it’s cutting 7,500 jobs, equivalent to roughly 5% of its global workforce.

Although Unilever has been in the ice cream business for more than a century, the company decided to cut the cord, citing the operational difficulty of the frozen dairy treat:

• Unilever said that, unlike its other offerings, ice cream possesses a more awkward supply chain (read: it needs to be kept cold), higher seasonality (cold only sells when it’s hot out), and has “greater capital intensity.” 
•  Per the Wall Street Journal, Unilever’s ice cream products accounted for the slowest growth in the company last year. There are also some investor worries mounting on the sugary treat market as a whole, with the shadow of Wegovy-esque weight-loss drugs looming ever larger.