Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and chairman of the Gates Foundation, has arrived in South Korea for talks on advanced technology cooperation, including small modular reactors (SMRs), with government and business leaders such as Prime Minister Han Sung-sook and HD Hyundai Chairman Chung Ki-sun.
Gates, who also founded the next-generation nuclear firm TerraPower, landed at the Gimpo Business Aviation Center in western Seoul aboard a private jet at around 9:20 p.m. on the 13th, according to industry sources.
Gates will meet Han on the 14th, his second day in the country. The meeting was proposed by Gates's side, sources said. He is also arranging a closed-door meeting with National Assembly Speaker Cho Jeong-sik, according to the sources.
Gates will meet Chung the same day to discuss expanding cooperation on SMRs. Gates founded TerraPower, and HD Hyundai is a major shareholder in the firm. After HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering invested $30 million in TerraPower, HD Hyundai won an order to build the reactor vessel for TerraPower's 345-megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) in Wyoming and is now manufacturing it.
The meeting between Gates and Chung comes seven months after they met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, early this year. The two have met repeatedly, signing a memorandum of understanding in the United States in March last year to expand the manufacturing supply chain for commercializing sodium reactors, and discussing further cooperation in Seoul that August.
SK Group is also a major shareholder in TerraPower, and a meeting between Gates and SK executives, including Chairman Chey Tae-won, is being arranged, according to sources.
TerraPower's fourth-generation "Natrium" reactor is an SFR that uses liquid sodium as a coolant and is regarded as a next-generation reactor capable of complementing renewable energy. The South Korean government is also pursuing broader cooperation in the field, moving to lay the groundwork for commercialization by building SMR manufacturing support centers in Changwon, Busan and Gyeongju, following the passage of a special SMR law by the National Assembly in February.
