Nuclear-technology developer Terra Power, LLC, announced last week it had raised $35 million in a second round of financing.

The Bellevue-based company – a spinoff of Intellectual Ventures – is working on a new nuclear reactor that would run on depleted uranium, theoretically operating for hundreds of years without refueling.

The primary investors for this Series B round were Charles River Ventures and repeat backers Khosla Ventures and Bill Gates.

Intellectual Ventures is an invention and investment firm that started in 2000. The company already ranks among the top 50 patent filers in the world, and has generated over $1 billion in revenue since its founding.

But the firm is far from resting on its laurels. Vice president Eben Frankenberg said in January that he expects the Terra Power nuclear reactor to be the company’s first true blockbuster.

The hope is that the reactor would eliminate the need for uranium mining and enrichment, while also solving the problem of nuclear proliferation.

“Just based on the amount of depleted uranium sitting around the U.S. right now, you could power at least the U.S. for about a thousand years at current rates of consumption,” Frankenberg told The Reporter in January.

Charles River Ventures partner Izhar Armony said in a statement that the Terra Power reactor could potentially “transform nuclear waste liabilities into assets.”

MIT Technology Review named concept as one of its 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009.