A firm founded by Bill Gates bets on a novel nuclear reactor

SINCE HANDING over the reins as Microsoft’s chief executive in 2000, has been best-known for his philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest charities, has given billions of dollars to , family-planning clinics, research into drug treatments for malaria and more.But Mr Gates has not abandoned the business world entirely. On June 2nd TerraPower, a company he founded in 2008, announced that it would build a demonstration of an exotic, high-tech nuclear power station in Wyoming. The firm’s Natrium reactor is one of a gaggle of new designs that have emerged in recent years, as engineers try to come up with cheaper, simpler nuclear power plants that can provide low-carbon electricity with fewer of the cost and safety worries that have plagued the industry in the past.