{"id":190284,"date":"2026-08-15T20:30:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T20:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/190284\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T20:30:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T20:30:39","slug":"bill-gates-visits-south-korea-to-discuss-smr-cooperation-with-government-and-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/190284\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates visits South Korea to discuss SMR cooperation with government and industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Bill Gates, Chair of the Gates Foundation, visited South Korea on the 13th. Photo by Yonhap News\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/25bcec4b855b83f6a25347814f53c819.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates, Chair of the Gates Foundation, visited South Korea on the 13th. Photo by Yonhap News<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates, Chair of the Gates Foundation, is meeting government, National Assembly, and business leaders in South Korea to discuss cooperation in small modular reactors (SMRs).<\/p>\n<p>According to major media reports including Yonhap News, Chair Gates arrived in South Korea at 9:20 p.m. on the 13th, landing at Gimpo Airport&#8217;s Gimpo Business Aviation Center on a private jet.<\/p>\n<p>Gates is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on the 14th and is also reportedly coordinating a closed-door meeting with National Assembly Speaker Cho Jeong-sik. He will meet HD Hyundai Chairman Chung Ki-sun to discuss cooperation on SMR projects. A meeting with executives of SK Group, a major shareholder in TerraPower, is also anticipated.<\/p>\n<p>Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft (MS) and the founder of the next-generation nuclear power company TerraPower. His visit comes as TerraPower is ramping up its next-generation nuclear power projects in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>In April, TerraPower obtained construction approval for its first nuclear power plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It is the first case of a commercial-scale next-generation nuclear power plant receiving construction approval in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Cooperation with South Korean companies has also expanded. In May, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries was selected as the preferred bidder to supply the Reactor Enclosure System (RES), a core facility of TerraPower&#8217;s &#8220;Natrium&#8221; reactor. Natrium is a fourth-generation reactor based on a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) design that uses liquid sodium as a coolant.<\/p>\n<p>Korea Hydro &amp; Nuclear Power acquired a 40 million dollar (about 60 billion won) stake in TerraPower this January.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly increases power demand from data centers, SMRs are drawing attention as a stable source of electricity. During his visit to South Korea last year, Gates also highlighted SMRs as a means to respond to rising power demand in the AI era.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u24d2 DongA Science. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Gates, Chair of the Gates Foundation, visited South Korea on the 13th. Photo by Yonhap News Bill&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[156],"tags":[651,862,28485,80937,26081,2336,85313,85314,85315,85316,85317],"class_list":["post-190284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bill-gates","tag-bill-gates","tag-microsoft","tag-nuclear-power-plant","tag-small-modular-reactor","tag-smr","tag-terrapower","tag-85313","tag-85314","tag-85315","tag-85316","tag-85317"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117101423896143279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}