Two 'bomb' cyclones form at once in one ocean

A 'bomb' cyclone is defined as a low-pressure area that deepens by at least 24mb in 24hrs 
8 Feb 2020
I

n this file photo, snow covers cars in Paradise, Newfoundland, in this image obtained from social media [Kim Porter/Reuters]

A "bomb" cyclone with a central pressure of 929 millibars (mb) has formed between Greenland and Iceland, while another deep low pressure area has opened up over the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

A "bomb" cyclone is defined as a low pressure area that deepens by at least 24mb in 24 hours.

The storm over Canada has been encouraged by a jetstream at the top of the atmosphere, about 12km up, blowing at 400km per hour. This wind defines the meeting of two air masses, one Arctic in origin and the other more tropical.

The cyclone over Nova Scotia is at the head of a frontal boundary that, over the past two days has brought tornadoes, gales, flooding rain and snow from Texas to Tennessee to Connecticut.

The storm centre will soon be steered across Newfoundland.

For the second time this season, Newfoundland will get a significant taste of winter. Heavy snow, severe gales, freezing rain and driving ice pellets are all expected and Environment Canada issued has red weather warnings in advance.

Then, as the Greenland bomb cyclone slowly relaxes its hurricane-force winds, it steers the Newfoundland cyclone directly towards northwest Europe where, as windstorm Ciara, it will bring widespread potentially damaging winds.

Met Eireann, the Irish meteorological service, has already issued warnings for strong winds across Ireland and the UK, while winds of 70km/h gusting to 130km/h are likely to sweep across northwest Europe on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

The Real Story Behind the Myth of Area 51
There are no aliens at America's most famous top-secret military base, but what is there is just as interesting.

DAVID BECKER GETTY IMAGES By Matt Blitz  Jul 17, 2019

For decades, Nevada's Area 51 Air Force facility has represented the eye of a conspiratorial hurricane that swirls around "evidence" that aliens (and their technology) exist and are hiding behind its walls. Books, TV shows, and even massive online "raids" have tried to glimpse beyond its stark signs warning against trespassers.

While aliens aren't taking up residence in the compound, what is going on there is just as interesting.

In the middle of the barren Nevada desert, there's a dusty unmarked road that leads to the front gate of Area 51. It's protected by little more than a chain link fence, a boom gate, and intimidating trespassing signs. One would think that America's much mythicized top secret military base would be under closer guard, but make no mistake. They are watching.

Beyond the gate, cameras see every angle. On the distant hilltop, there's a white pickup truck with a tinted windshield peering down on everything below. Locals says the base knows every desert tortoise and jackrabbit that hops the fence. Others claim there are embedded sensors in the approaching road.



What exactly goes on inside of Area 51 has led to decades of wild speculation. There are, of course, the alien conspiracies that galactic visitors are tucked away somewhere inside. One of the more colorful rumors insists the infamous 1947 Roswell crash was actually a Soviet aircraft piloted by mutated midgets and the wreckage remains on the grounds of Area 51. Some even believe that the U.S. government filmed the 1969 moon landing in one of the base's hangars.

For all the myths and legends, what's true is that Area 51 is real and still very active. There may not be aliens or a moon landing movie set inside those fences, but something is going on and only a select few are privy to what's happening further down that closely-monitored wind-swept Nevada road. "The forbidden aspect of Area 51 is what makes people want to know what's there," says aerospace historian and author Peter Merlin who's been researching Area 51 for more than three decades.

"And there sure is still a lot going on there."


The U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, in the late 1950s.
U.S. AIR FORCEGETTY IMAGES
The Origins of a Mystery

The beginning of Area 51 is directly related to the development of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. After World War II, the Soviet Union lowered the Iron Curtain around themselves and the rest of the Eastern bloc, creating a near intelligence blackout to the rest of the world. When the Soviets backed North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June 1950, it became increasingly clear that the Kremlin would aggressively expand its influence. America worried about the USSR's technology, intentions, and ability to launch a surprise attack—only a decade removed from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I WANT TO BELIEVE

5 Scientific Reasons for Believing in Aliens

In the early 1950s, U.S. Navy and Air Force sent low-flying aircraft on reconnaissance missions over the USSR, but they were at constant risk of being shot down. In November 1954, President Eisenhower approved the secret development of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft called the U-2 program. One of the first orders of business was to track down a remote, covert location for training and testing. They found it in the southern Nevada desert near a salt flat known as Groom Lake, which had once been a World War II aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots.

Known by its map designation as Area 51, this middle-of-nowhere site became a new top-secret military base. To convince workers to come, Kelly Johnson, one of the leading engineers of the U-2 project, gave it a more enticing name: Paradise Ranch.


Making a Myth

U-2 testing began in July 1955, and immediately reports came flooding in about unidentified flying object sightings. If you read the details in a 1992 CIA report that was declassified with redactions in 1998 (and subsequently released nearly in full in 2013), it's easy to see why.

Many of these sightings were observed by commercial airline pilots who had never seen an aircraft fly at such high altitudes as the U-2. Whereas today's airliners can soar as high as 45,000 feet, in the mid-1950s airlines flew at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet. Known military aircraft could get to 40,000 feet, and some believed manned flight couldn't go any higher than that. The U-2, flying at altitudes in excess of 60,000 feet, would've looked completely alien.


Kelly Johnson, left, and Francis Gary Powers with U-2 aircraft behind. Powers was eventually shot down in the USSR in 1960.
U.S. AIR FORCE

Naturally, Air Force officials knew the majority of these unexplained sightings were U-2 tests, but they were not allowed to reveal these details to the public. So, "natural phenomena" or "high-altitude weather research" became go-to explanations for UFO sightings, including in 1960 when Gary Powers' U-2 was shot down over Russia.

What's also interesting about the most recent 2013 report is that it confirms Area 51's existence. While the 1998 version does have significant redactions when referencing the name and location of the U-2 test site, the nearly un-redacted version from 2013 reveals much more, including multiple references to Area 51, Groom Lake, and even a map of the area.
"This Is Earth Technology"

U-2 operations halted in the late 1950s, but other top secret military aircrafts continued tests at Area 51. Over the years, the A-12 and numerous stealth aircrafts like Bird of Prey, F-117A, and TACIT BLUE have all been developed and tested in the Nevada desert. More declassified documents reveal Area 51's role in "Project Have Doughnut," a 1970s attempt to study covertly obtained Soviet MiGs.



"THIS IS EARTH TECHNOLOGY. YOU GOT FOLKS CLAIMING IT'S EXTRATERRESTRIAL WHEN IT'S REALLY GOOD OLD AMERICAN KNOW-HOW."

"They flew them [over Area 51]..and pitted our own fighters against them to develop tactics," says Merlin, "They learned that you can't out-turn it, but you can outrun it. And it's still going on today.... Now, instead of seeing MiG-17s and 21s, there's MiG-29s and SU-27s."

The flights are ongoing. In September 2017, an Air Force Lt. Col. was killed under mysterious circumstances when his plane crashed in Nevada and the Pentagon would not immediately ID the aircraft. It seems he was most likely flying a foreign jet obtained by the United States.


Even so, the alien conspiracies gained ground in 1989 when Bob Lazar claimed in an interview on Las Vegas local news that he'd seen aliens and had helped to reverse-engineer alien spacecrafts while working at the base. Many have disregarded this as fiction and are even offended at the notion, including Merlin, who has spent years talking with former Area 51 engineers and employees angered by all the fuss about E.T.

"Some are even mad because they worked on these things and built these amazing planes," Merlin says. "This is Earth technology. You got folks claiming it's extraterrestrial when it's really good old American know-how."


Area 51 on July 20, 2016.
GETTY IMAGES
The Truth Is Out There

Today, Area 51 is still very much in use. According to Google Earth, new construction and expansions are continuously happening. On most early mornings, eagle-eyed visitors can spot strange lights in the sky moving up and down. No, it's not a UFO. It's actually the semi-secret contract commuter airline using the call-sign "Janet" that transports workers from Las Vegas's McCarran Airport to the base.

As for what's happening these days in America's most secretive military base, few know for sure. Merlin has some educated guesses, including improved stealth technology, advanced weapons, electronic warfare systems and, in particular, unmanned aerial vehicles. Chris Pocock, noted U-2 historian and author of several books about the matter, told Popular Mechanics he thinks classified aircraft, more exotic forms of radio communication, directed energy weapons, and lasers are currently under development at the base.

While the lore around Area 51 may be nothing more than imaginative fiction, that won't stop people from gawking just beyond those chain link fences. "At the most basic level, anytime you have something secret or forbidden, it's human nature," says Merlin. "You want to find out what it is."
How to Explore Area 51



Fact or fiction, aliens are a big tourism draw. In 1996, the state of Nevada renamed Route 375 as the "Extraterrestrial Highway," and destinations such as the Alien Research Center and the Little A'Le'Inn (in the town of Rachel with a population around 54) dot the road.

To Area 51's west, there's the Alien Cathouse which is advertised as the only alien-themed brothel in the world. Geocaching also attracts visitors here since the highway is considered a "mega-trial" with over 2,000 geocaches hidden in the area.

Then there's the actual base. While getting inside is not in the cards for most, curious civilians can actually drive up to front and back gates. Locals will direct you, and the website Dreamland Resort is a great resource full of maps, driving directions, and first-hand accounts.

However, one should be careful when planning a trek to Area 51. It's the desert, after all, so bring plenty of water, snacks, and have proper weather gear—for the hot days and the cold nights. Phone service and GPS probably won't work, so have printouts and actual maps. Gas stations are few and far in between, so carry spare fuel and tires.

Also, remember the government doesn't really want you peering into Area 51. Both Merlin and Pocock confirmed that they have been closely observed or even intimidated by guards and security (including an F-16 fly-by). Do not trespass under any circumstances or arrests and heavy fines await you.

This story was originally published on September 14, 2017.

India needs nearly 30 times more solar power to phase out coal jobs

February 7, 2020 By Mayank Aggarwal

Climate Consciousness
Climate change-induced disasters are a new normal across the world. A magic pill that is prescribed to combat these impacts is complete phasing out of coal and transitioning to renewable power.

A recent study has now revealed that India would need to scale up its current solar capacity to nearly 30 times, or about 1,000 gigawatts, to transition about half a million people directly working in coal mines.

The study, “Solar has greater techno-economic resource suitability than wind for replacing coal mining jobs,” published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in January, is a collaborative work between researchers from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Chalmers University, Sweden under a project funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

The study focused on India, China, the US, and Australia—countries that represent 70% of global coal production. Coal mining directly employs over 7 million workers and benefits millions more through indirect jobs globally. Repeated studies have advocated for cutting down coal production to tackle climate change. But the question remains whether those employed in coal mining can be rehabilitated in jobs in the solar and wind power industry.

The study evaluated the local solar and wind capacity required in each coal mining area and the scale of renewable energy deployment required to enable all coal miners to transition to solar or wind jobs. It focused mainly on solar and wind jobs because they represent over half of today’s renewable power jobs.

Phasing out coal-based power is also one of the major targets of climate agreements. At the Paris Agreement in 2015, the world agreed to make efforts to limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degree celsius above pre-industrial levels and to try its best to limit the increase to 1.5 degree celsius. However, to meet the 1.5 degree celsius climate target, coal’s share in global energy supply should decline between 73-97% by 2050. But that would mean a near elimination of coal mining jobs.
Phasing out coal-based power is one of the targets of climate agreements.

The study showed that except for the US, each coal mining area would require several gigawatts (GW) of solar or wind power capacity locally to enable all coal miners in these areas to transition to solar or wind jobs. It stressed that deploying solar and wind power may not be techno-economically feasible in all coal mining areas due to low suitability of the resource.

“It is clear that while solar has greater techno-economic resource suitability than wind for replacing local coal mining jobs, this suitability doesn’t exist in all coal mining areas,” the study said.

For instance, in China, only 29% of coal mining areas have suitable solar power resources. In India and Australia nearly all coal mining areas are suitable for solar power, while around 62% of coal mining areas in the US are suitable for solar power.

It stated that the wind power suitability in coal mining areas is low in all four countries at less than 7% of coal mining areas having suitable resources. “Less than 5% of coal mining areas are suitable for both solar and wind power generation,” said the study.

It emphasised that even for solar, countries would need to substantially increase their current installed solar capacity, from three times in the US to 37 times in India, to transition only those coal miners who live in suitable solar areas to solar jobs.

“Our study shows that in general, wind industry jobs are not a feasible replacement for local coal mining industry jobs in any of these countries. There isn’t enough wind around coal mines. Solar industry jobs may be an option in India and Australia’s coal mining areas, and perhaps the US. However, there isn’t enough sun in most Chinese coal mining areas for this to be a viable option,” Sandeep Pai, a researcher at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia and the lead author of the study, told Mongabay-India.

The study also said that answering this question is significant to ensure a “just transition” and to overcome possible politically-powerful coal mining interests so that they do not impede energy transitions.

It is because historical analysis of the coal industry declines show that coal miners do not migrate when they lose their jobs. For instance, in the US, coal miners helped support the rise of president Donald Trump, who, once elected, pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement.
Coal industry is a big employer

In India, the study looked at states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh, which account for over 85% of the country’s coal production. It found that around each coal mine nearly two gigawatts of solar power would need to be installed to absorb all coal miners working in the mines.
At present, about 485,000 coal miners are employed in India.

At present, about 485,000 coal miners are involved in India in the production of over 700 million tonnes of coal annually. There are also a large number of indirect jobs connected with the broader coal mining industry. Like, there are millions of people in coal mining towns across India, who run local tea stalls shops, restaurants, and grocery stores and thus if the coal industry declines, the survival of all these jobs will be difficult.

The study revealed that, at the regional level, all key coal-producing states are suitable for solar power generation, but almost no coal mining areas in India and its key coal-producing states are suitable for wind-power generation, because of the paucity of the wind resources.

The study’s lead author Sandeep Pai explained that “there is a complete mismatch between areas in India suitable for wind power and areas where coal mining is happening.” “Thus, creating wind jobs are not really an option in the coal mining area in India,” he said.

This means that for providing solar jobs for coal miners working in 500 operating mines in India, the country would have to scale up the current solar capacity substantially to almost 1,000 GW which is more than 30 times the current capacity. The key challenge is that this would need to be done in a few major coal-mining states.

At present (till December 31, 2019), India has an installed solar capacity of 33.73 GW India has a target of 175 GW of renewable power by 2022 and of that 100 GW is from solar power.

“Even if the government wanted to do it and there is energy demand in the future, building 960 GWs of solar capacity is a huge ask. One of the biggest challenges would be acquiring land. Although Coal India has large tracts of abandoned land, it might not be enough to create such a capacity,” said Pai.

Viable transition?

The study stated that the scale of deployment of renewable energy required raises serious questions about the viability of a transition path that depends solely on local renewable energy jobs for coal miners.

“This is true at both the local level where several GWe of installed capacity would be required per coal mining area and in aggregate where several times national capacity would be required just for absorbing mining jobs in areas suitable for renewable energy deployment. This means, in practical terms, not all coal miners may be able to transition to solar or wind jobs locally even in areas with suitable resources,” said the study.

There are numerous international organisations like the International Labour Organisation and International Renewable Energy Agency which claim that green jobs (like solar and wind jobs) can replace fossil fuel industry jobs. For instance, the ILO estimates that around 24 million green-jobs including renewable energy jobs, could be created worldwide by 2030 if governments take action to limit warming to 2 degree celsius.

Another report by the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) said that renewable energy could employ more than 40 million people by 2050. It said that total energy sector employment can reach 100 million by 2050, up from around 58 million today should the international community utilise its full renewable energy potential.

“While solar jobs could be the answer in some coal mining areas, policymakers would need to focus on a variety of industries including both renewables and non-renewables to help coal miners make an employment transition locally,” the study said. The study said that one innovative solution would be to provide coal miners with alternate jobs.

“The government needs to present an example of moving people from fossil fuel-based industry to renewables. Right now, the government is not targeting the people involved in the fossil fuel-based industry while running these skill programmes. Moreover, they need to look beyond renewable power sector jobs and reskill them in terms of alternate jobs,” Rakesh Kamal, an independent climate negotiations expert and host of the podcast, Climate Emergency, told Mongabay-India.

Sandeep Pai also cautioned that “globally, researchers and policymakers need to think beyond renewable energy jobs for fossil fuel workers.”

This post first appeared on Mongabay. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com

#CRYPTOZOOLOGY #CRYPTID


Is Bigfoot Real? The Long Strange Story of Our Search for #Bigfoot

For centuries, people have reportedly seen this mythical primate-like animal in the woods of North America.

By Matt BlitzFeb 4, 2019

]

The film is mostly three-and-a-half minutes of grainy fall foliage, men riding horses, and jerky pans. The famous footage—used for decades afterward in every documentary about whether Bigfoot is real or fake—comes across as just someone having fun with their new camera. But, about two minutes in, the lens of a rented 16mm Cine Kodak camera catches something strange.

“We were just riding out alongside the creek, riding along enjoying the warm sunshine day,” says Bob Gimlin. “Then, across the creek, there was one standing. Everything happened so fast.”


What Gimlin's camera sees is a strange, large ape-like figure limbering on its hind legs across a clearing. For a brief moment, the animal appears to look directly at the camera, and, then, it’s gone. This is the famed Patterson–Gimlin film reportedly shot in October 1967 in the heavily wooded forests of Northern California, and it is one of the most heavily analyzed pieces of film in American history.

To some, this is definitive proof that Bigfoot is as real as mountain gorillas or narwhals. For others, it’s a hoax alongside videos claiming to show ghosts, aliens, and lizard people. But Gimlin knows exactly what he saw that day. “It walked upright and for quite a long ways. It didn’t look like a bear. I’ve been in the woods my whole life,” 86-year-old Gimlin tells Popular Mechanics. “There’s no doubt in my mind at all what it was.”
A Centuries-Old Tale


Pictographs at the Carrizo Plain National Monument belonging to the Yokut aboriginal tribe in Central California.
DAVID MCNEWGETTY IMAGES

This elusive, possibly fictitious animal goes by a number of different names—Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yowie, Skunk Ape, Yayali—and for centuries, people across North America have had sightings.

Many Native American cultures have written oral legends that tell of a primate-type creature roaming the continent's forests. In these tales, the animals are sometimes more human-like and, other times, more ape-like. In the mythology of the Kwakiutl tribe that once heavily populated the western coast of British Columbia, Dzunukwa is a big, hairy female that lives deep in the mountainous forests]

]

“SOME TRIBES REALLY LOVE BIGFOOT…TO OTHER TRIBES THOUGH…HE’S AN ABSOLUTE ORGE, A MONSTER, AND SOMETHING BEST LEFT ALONE."

According to the legend, she spends most of her time protecting her children and sleeping, hence why she’s rarely seen. In fact, the name “Sasquatch” comes from Halkomelem, a language spoken by several First Nation peoples that occupied the upper Northwest into British Columbia.

In California, there are century-old pictographs drawn by the Yokuts that appear to show a family of giant creatures with long, shaggy hair. Called “Mayak datat” by the tribe, the image bears a resemblance to the commonly held vision of Bigfoot.

“Some tribes really love Bigfoot, they have a great relationship with him,” says Kathy Moskowitz Strain, author of the book Giants, Cannibals & Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture and archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “To other tribes though, like the Miwoks, he’s an absolute orge, a monster, and something best left alone.”

To this day, Strain says, many of the tribesmen she does field research with believe that Bigfoot walks among us. “I’ve been in the field with tribal members where something strange happens and they always blame it on a Bigfoot,” says Strain.
There’s Bear Men in Them Hills


A still from the famous Patterson–Gimlin film, 1967.
BETTMANNGETTY IMAGES

Native Americans weren’t the only ones seeing this hairy, primate creature roaming the wilds of America. Nineteenth- and early 20th-century newspapers had whole sections devoted to the miners, trappers, gold prospectors, and woodsmen claiming to have seen “wild men,” “bear men,” and “monkey men.”

Most famously, in 1924, a group of prospectors hunkering down in a cabin along the shoulder of Mount St. Helen in Washington State claimed they were attacked late one night by a group of “ape-men.” Later, one of the prospectors admitted that they weren’t unprovoked attacks. He had taken potshots at the creatures earlier in the day.

Even then, as noted in Chad Arment’s 2006 book Historical Bigfoot, these accounts like the ones from the prospectors in 1924 were often regarded with a general sense of skepticism often due to the unreliable nature of the witnesses.


1895 article describing a grizzly bear with the nickname "Bigfoot."
PLACERVILLE MOUNTAIN DEMOCRATWIKIMEDIA COMMONS

“It’s hard to know what came out of the bottom of a whiskey bottle and what’s real,” says former NPR producer Laura Krantz, who’s a host of the new podcast Wild Thing, which digs deep into the search for Bigfoot.


There were also times when one animal was confused for another, possibly explaining the origin of the name “Bigfoot.” Newspaper accounts show that “Bigfoot” was a common nickname for particularly large, aggressive grizzly bears who ate cattle, sheep, and attacked humans. It wasn’t until 1958 when a California tractor operator named Jerry Crew “found” a series of huge muddy footprints that the term was popularized in reference to the primate-like animals.

That same year, another man named Ray Wallace also said he had discovered large prints belonging to Bigfoot. Upon his death in 2002, it was revealed that this was a hoax.
Sasquatch Goes Mainstream




KEVIN SCHAFERGETTY IMAGES



It was in the mid 20th century when Bigfoot stepped from local lore to national phenomenon.

In 1961, naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson published his book Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. In the book, Sanderson uses footprints, eye witnesses, and bone samples as potential evidence of “sub-humans” living on five continents across the world, including North America’s Sasquatch and the Himalayas’ Yeti (though others believe that the Yeti is a totally different species).

Sanderson’s work caught enough people’s attention that William Straus, a well-regarded primate evolutionary biologist at John Hopkins University, reviewed it for Science Magazine, saying Sanderson’s standards for evidence are “unbelievably low” and that the evidence is “anything but convincing.”


Nonetheless, Strauss admits it would be foolish and quite unscientific to say that the creatures Sanderson describes absolutely don’t exist.


Original cover of Ivan T. Sanderson’s book Abominable Snowman: Legend Come To Life.
CHILTON

Sanderson’s book was followed by the Patterson–Gimlin film six years later. Gimlin says it happened so fast that he considers himself and Roger Patterson pretty lucky that they were able to get any footage at all of the hairy, mythical animal lumbering along only yards away from them.

When he watched the footage for the first time a few days later, Gimlin was pretty pessimistic that this would be enough to convince anyone. “I didn’t think the film was that good. I saw it [with my two eyes] better than that,” says Gimlin. Yet, it became a phenomenon.

Some, like former director of the primate biology program at the Smithsonian Institution John Napier, saw it as a well-done, elaborate hoax. But not everyone saw it that way, including Grover Krantz.

A professor of physical anthropology at Washington State University and “a leading authority in hominoid evolution” and primate bone structures, Krantz also believed in Sasquatch. His unwavering belief came from eyewitnesses, the creature’s gait in the Patterson–Gimlin film, and, most importantly, the anatomical structure of found footprints. It was the dermal ridges, where sweat pores open on palms and soles, depicted in the prints that left him convinced that at least some were authentic.

His working theory was that Sasquatch was part of the hominid family, the same one humans shared with apes, and was a descendant of thought-to-be-long-extinct humongous primate species that once lived in Asia appropriately named Gigantopithecus. At some point, million of years ago, it had crossed the Bering Strait when it was still a land bridge into North America and evolved into its own species on this continent.

“Grover was eclectic. That’s a good word describe him,” says Jeff Meldrum, author of the book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, a professor of anatomy at Idaho State University, and a one-time colleague of Krantz’s. “There were many ideas that he had that were a decade or two ahead of his time and…when he pursued some of these ideas, he would be ridiculed.”

When asked about the possibility of Sasquatch existing, Krantz was always unequivocal, saying that he “guaranteed” it.
Family Ties


Grover Krantz with casts of footprints supposedly belonging to Sasquatch, 1974.
BETTMANNGETTY IMAGES

Krantz’s conviction in Bigfoot didn’t help his academic career, though. Passed over for promotions and nearly missing receiving tenure at Washington State, he knew the only way he would be able to convince his colleagues of this primate’s existence was by producing a body.

So, Krantz was known to spend his nights in the middle of the Pacific Northwest old growth forests with a shotgun quite literally hunting Bigfoot. He rationalized this by saying it was the only way to get the scientific community to believe him and that, technically, it wasn’t against the law.

“It has not yet been established that the Sasquatch exists,” Krantz once wrote. “To pass laws against harming sasquatches presently makes little more sense than protecting unicorns.”



“THE KIND OF REAL PROOF THAT WOULD ACTUALLY MAKE PEOPLE SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE DOESN’T ACTUALLY EXIST AT THIS POINT."

Krantz died in 2002 as a complex figure in the eyes of the scientific community, highly respected for his work in primate evolution yet mocked for his belief in Bigfoot. However, during Krantz’s life and after it, the search for Bigfoot took on a life of its own. More sightings, films, and books, some from respected researchers, emerged. Bigfoot documentaries captured the public’s imagination. Harry lived with the Hendersons and entertained the masses. Even Jane Goodall, the famed chimpanzee expert, admits that there’s a possibility that a undiscovered large primate may exist in the world.


In 2006, Laura Krantz, at the time an NPR reporter based in D.C., read an article about the quirky anthropologist who shared her last name. “It originally didn’t ring any bells…he just seemed like an eccentric weirdo.

But, then, she saw that he was also from Salt Lake City, like her father’s family—they were related. As Krantz’s grandfather told her at the time, “Oh, yeah. Grover. That was my cousin. He used to come to the family picnics and measure people’s heads with a caliper.” This began Krantz’s own journey into the wilderness in search of Bigfoot, which she documented for her new podcast Wild Thing, which aired its first episode on October 2, 2018.

She acknowledges, much like her cousin Grover, that without a body (or skeleton), it’s hard to convince others that this long-lost primate still exists in North America’s backwoods. “A lot of people who think Bigfoot is out there, they realize…that there’s a lack of evidence,” says Krantz. “The kind of real proof that would actually make people sit up and take notice doesn’t actually exist at this point.”

But the things she’s observed during her research for the podcast has changed her mind about the possibility of Bigfoot.

“I went from ‘Bigfoot is a legend’ to I can’t just say out of hand that Bigfoot never existed or doesn’t exist now,” says Krantz. “I can’t fully dismiss it anymore.”

[Related: The FBI Just Released Bigfoot's Official File]

Our Ancient Ancestors Were Pretty Excellent Engineers

Those old guys knew the best materials for each job, according to new stress tests.


By Caroline Delbert Feb 5, 2020

Homo antecessor, artwork RAUL MARTIN/MSF

Scientists used robots and replica tools to stress test ancient materials and designs used by hominins.

Humans aren't millions of years old, but toolmaking certainly is.

Ancient hominins chose materials based on what worked best for the work they were doing.

Archaeologists are testing ancient stone tool designs using very modern engineering. In the journal Royal Society Interface, a group of three archaeologists based in England and Spain surveyed tools found at the two-million-year-old Olduvai Gorge site and ran them through engineering tests to try and understand if ancient hominins were iterating better and better materials and designs.

The archaeologists noticed that tools in different families were made with different materials, the same way a mallet is made of a different material than a saw or a socket wrench. Especially in a time before there was any kind of forging, ancient hominins could only use what they could find in pretty pure form in their local environments.

“For more than 1.8 million years hominins at Olduvai Gorge were faced with a choice: whether to use lavas, quartzite, or chert to produce stone tools,” the researchers explain. Lavas include igneous rocks like basalt and granite. Chert is a subgroup of sedimentary rock and includes flint, opal, and jasper.
If toolmaking was more of an unstudied crapshoot, scientists would expect tools of all kinds to be made with all three of these families of stone. Instead, the sharpest, finest cutting tools were made of delicate, but fine-textured quartzite. Bulkier, more heavy-duty cutting tools were made from lavas. The archaeologists saw a clear pattern in toolmaking, but was that evidence-based? Were ancient hominins using kind of a scientific method?

To find out, the research team made a bunch of replica tools and found a robot to stress test them. They tested sharp cutting on lengths of PVC pipe and longer-term durable cutting on tree branches. “We quantify the force, work and material deformation required by each stone type when cutting, before using these data to compare edge sharpness and durability,” the scientists write.

A sharp, fine cutting tool could be used for a ton of different jobs, from gathering wild food to scraping the bark off of sticks. Functionally it’s more like a knife, and while it certainly could be durable, that’s a lot less important than holding a sharp edge. Compare that with a larger cutting implement that’s usually used like an axe. An axe isn’t just sharp—it’s also a tough wedge that you must be able to bury in a log in order to keep forcing the two sides apart.


The edge still has to be sharp, but the axe itself must be very durable and strong. You wouldn’t use a knife to cut down a tree any more than you’d use a hand axe to cut down fine grasses or peel sticks—at least not if you had a choice. “When combined with artifact data, we demonstrate that Early Stone Age hominins optimized raw material choices based on functional performance characteristics,” the scientists write.

This shows that ancient hominins weren’t only making tools. They were considering what happened with past tools and making decisions based on what had worked best. That level of abstraction and logical decision-making is itself an accomplishment for a species that predated humans by more than a million years\

New Catalyst Could Make Fossil Fuel Industry Much Cleaner, Greener

Step one: Slash fossil fuel refinery emissions. Step two: Kickstart new renewables.

By Caroline Delbert  Feb 7, 2020

FUNFUNPHOTOGETTY IMAGES

A new way to make efficient, high-acidity catalyst material could decrease fossil fuel refinery emissions.
The process can benefit the fossil fuel industry, but may also enable new renewable fuel sources.
The key is increasing aluminum in order to boost reactive Brønsted acid sites.

Scientists in Australia say they’re working on an oil-refinement catalyst material that could create 28 percent less carbon dioxide than what the industry relies on now. The difference is all in the mix, with more acidity that increases how active the catalyst substance is.

Petrochemicals can be refined in one of a few different processes, and this catalyst is used in the process known as cracking. The process dates back over 100 years, when a Standard Oil chemist discovered thermal cracking, where heating alone is used to break big hydrocarbons into smaller ones: oils, diesel and gas, petroleum coke, and gases like propane.

Adding a catalyst, which began in the 1920s, makes for a more efficient process with higher-quality outcomes, and scientists have continued to make better catalyst materials, formats, and applications. The reason lead was originally added to gasoline was to raise octane and reduce engine knocking. The development of better catalysts over time increases octane on the front end, making it easier first to phase out lead and later to continue to make smaller, more efficient engines.

The University of Sydney team began with amorphous silica-aluminas (ASAs), which are one of the most widely used catalysts in petrochemical refining today. During the cracking process, a lot of carbon dioxide is released, and higher-temperature cracking furnaces must periodically be cleared of coke residue, which also produces carbon dioxide.

“Estimates suggest 20 to 30 percent of crude oil is transferred to waste and further burnt in the chemical process, making oil refineries the second largest source of greenhouse gases behind power plants,” the press release reads. A more efficient catalyst could reduce both emissions waste and just raw materials waste.

The catalyst these researchers developed works by increasing the presence of a specific element called a Brønsted acid sites (BAS) within a particular ASA formulation. “The lower performance of ASA in many catalytic applications is widely attributed to their moderate Brønsted acidity,” the team writes in its paper. So increasing that acidity can make catalysts better.

But how can we do that? The secret is in boosting a specific chemical component. “The formation of BAS in silica-aluminas is based on aluminum centers distributed in the silica framework or network,” the team explains. “The study revealed that compared to the widely accepted model of one Al center, two proximate Al centers can significantly boost its acid strength.”

There are many required next steps for this research to become practical. Identifying even a really promising chemical mechanism is just one important but tiny piece. Scientists first have to be able to make the materials at scale for even one petrochemical refinery plant, let alone enough to be impactful on the world’s refining emissions.

But these researchers point out that a high-efficiency, high-acidity catalyst could open up entire new avenues of refinement with biomass and other renewable energy that isn’t feasible with lower-efficiency catalysts. The researchers say that in a near future where we’ll continue to rely on fossil fuels and traditional refineries for at least a while longer, we might as well invest in making them cleaner and better.

---30---

Bahraini protest movement urges civil disobedience on uprising anniversary

Sunday, 09 February 2020 
In this file picture, a protester waves a Bahraini flag as he flashes a victory sign during an anti-regime protest organized by Bahrain's main opposition group al-Wefaq, in the village of Daih, north of the capital Manama. (Photo by Reuters)

A Bahraini opposition protest movement has called for nationwide dissidence on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the popular uprising against the Al Khalifah regime.

The February 14 Youth Coalition, named after the date of the beginning of the popular uprising against the Manama regime, demanded the action to start as of the evening of Wednesday, February 12, until the evening of Friday, February 14.

The opposition movement outlined some acts of civil disobedience as school strike on Thursday, and local residents switching off the lights of their houses at eight o’clock in the evening for two consecutive nights.
O
Bahrain summons, detains another Shia cleric as crackdown persistsBahraini officials arrest a Shia cleric as a heavy crackdown against members of the religious community persists in the kingdom.

The February 14 Youth Coalition then urged Bahraini shop owners to shutter their stores as of eight o'clock in the evening on Wednesday, and re-open them on Friday sunset, not to travel along King Fahd Causeway, which connects Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, on February 13 and 14, and to boycott shopping mall on the mentioned days.

It also called on Bahraini people from all walks of life to participate actively in the diverse popular movement as well as various peaceful demonstrations.

Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the country in mid-February 2011.

PressTV-Al-Wefaq demands release of sick Bahrian prisonersDozens of Bahrain’s prisoners-of-conscience have been languishing in the Kingdom’s notorious prisons for years.

They are demanding that the Al Khalifah regime relinquish power and allow a just system representing all Bahrainis to be established. Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.

On March 5, 2017, Bahrain’s parliament approved the trial of civilians at military tribunals in a measure blasted by human rights campaigners as being tantamount to imposition of an undeclared martial law countrywide.

Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah ratified the constitutional amendment on April 3, 2017.

Amnesty intl' calls for urgent action over Bahrain executions

Wednesday, 15 January 2020 Bianca Rahimi Press TV, London

Mohammad Ramadan and Hussein Mousa are accused of being involved in the explosion in al-Dair on 14 February 2014. But they say they were tortured for days, hung from the ceiling and beaten with iron rods and batons. They claim the guard’s also threatened to subject their families to torture and rape; guards trained by British instructors.

Because of its alleged complicity in their torture, the UK intervened on Christmas day 2018, preventing their execution. Amnesty International and Reprieve say Westminster must intervene again. But will it?

Ramadan and Mousa’s fourth Death penalty appeal hearing was scheduled for Christmas day 2019, but was delayed. On the 8th of January the death penalties were upheld.

Bahrain has the largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world. Britain has spent at least 5,000,000 pounds on Bahrain’s justice system since 2012, on the pretext of helping improve its abysmal human rights record.

But human rights charities like Reprieve say the UK has failed to investigate alleged torture and Manama is not feeling any pressure to stop the abuse.

The fact is that torture and questionable court proceedings are common in Bahrain and observers say that if foreign governments and rights organizations do not intervene regularly, the situation will only get worse.

Homeless US student population 'highest in over a decade': Study
Tuesday, 04 February 2020
 

A homeless man sleeps on a sidewalk on October 18, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (AFP photo)

A new study shows the population of homeless students in the United States has reached the highest level in over a decade.

More than one and a half million public school students said they were homeless during the 2017-18 school year, according to the report from the National Center for Homeless Education .

Most of the 1.5 million homeless schoolchildren stayed with other families or friends. But 7 percent lived in abandoned buildings or cars.

The data shows an increase of over 100 percent in the number of homeless reported over a dozen years ago.

“The ripple effect here is real,” Dr. Megan Sandel, a director of the Grow Clinic at the Boston Medical Center, told the New York Times.

Sandel said housing instability was associated with developmental delays in children and children in fair or poor health.

Students living in unsheltered places also saw an increase of nearly 140 percent.

The study found that the crisis was often caused by fluctuating economic conditions, unaffordable housing, and drug addiction.

Despite the rising numbers, experts suggest that many families still refrain from reporting homelessness.

Meanwhile, homelessness for common public is also growing in large American cities mainly as a result of rising rent prices, despite a drop in the number of people living on streets across most of the US.

US homelessness surges across West Coast: ReportMany cities on the US West Coast are struggling with acute homelessness amid an unprecedented level of poverty and hardship in the region, a new report suggeest.

The incidence of homelessness is growing faster in the least affordable rental housing markets and cities with skyrocketing home prices, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, DC, according to the study by Zillow, an online real estate database company.

Is This The Death Knell For Nuclear?

By Haley Zaremba - Jan 18, 2020


It’s nearly impossible to discuss climate change and the future of the energy industry without discussing nuclear energy. Nuclear energy produces zero carbon emissions, it’s ultra-efficient, it’s already in widespread use, and could be scaled up to meet much more of our global energy needs with relative ease, but it is, and will likely always be, an extremely divisive solution.

For all its virtues, nuclear energy certainly has its fair share of drawbacks. It may not emit greenhouse gases, but what it does produce is deadly nuclear waste that remains radioactive for up to millions of years and we still don’t really know what to do with it other than hold onto it in ever-growing storage spaces. And then there are the horror stories that keep civilians and politicians alike wary if not outright antagonistic toward the technology. Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island loom large in our collective doomsday consciousness, and not without good reason.

We’re still dealing with the aftermath of these nuclear disasters. Japan is in many ways still reeling from 2011’s Fukushima nuclear disaster and recently even threatened to throw radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean or letting it evaporate into the air because they are running out of storage space for the wastewater they have been using to keep the damaged Fukushima reactors from overheating again. So yeah, nuclear isn’t perfect.

Because of all of these reasons, as well as financial burden, nuclear energy has been on the decline in much of the world (with some notable exceptions in the nuclear-friendly administrations in China and Russia). This is not new news. Now, however, Chatham House, the UK's Royal Institution of International Affairs, has taken things a step further by taking the official stance that nuclear will never be a serious contender as a solution to catastrophic climate change. Related: Bearish Sentiment Returns To Oil Markets

As paraphrased by environmental news site EcoWatch, the energy experts at Chatham House “agreed that despite continued enthusiasm from the industry, and from some politicians, the number of nuclear power stations under construction worldwide would not be enough to replace those closing down.” The consensus was that this is nuclear’s swan song, and we are now unequivocally entering the era of wind and solar power.

These conclusions were arrived at during a summit convened to discuss the findings of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2019, which concluded that “money spent on building and running nuclear power stations was diverting cash away from much better ways of tackling climate change.”

This echoes the sentiment of many other climate and energy experts, who have long been sounding the alarm bells that renewable energy is not being built up or invested in with nearly enough urgency. Last year the International Energy Agency announced that renewables growth has slumped, and that our current renewable growth rate of 18o GW of added renewable capacity per year is “only around 60 percent of the net additions needed each year to meet long-term climate goals”.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) did the math, calculating exactly how much renewable energy will need to be installed by 2030 if the world has any hope of meeting the goals set by the Paris climate agreement, and they found that “7.7TW of operational renewable capacity will be needed by 2030 if the world is to limit global warming to ‘well below’ 2C above pre-industrial levels, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement,” according to reporting by Wind Power Monthly. “However, at present, countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) amount to 3.2TW of renewable installations by 2030, up from 2.3TW currently deployed.”

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report succinctly sums up the situation while sounding the death knell for nuclear: "Stabilising the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow. It meets no technical or operational need that these low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper, and faster."

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com



The Unexpected Consequences Of Germany’s Anti-Nuclear Push

By Irina Slav - Jan 14, 2020


Germany, the poster child for renewable energy, sourcing close to half of its electricity from renewable sources, plans to close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Its coal-fired plants, meanwhile, will be operating until 2038. According to a study from the U.S. non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research, Germany is paying dearly for this nuclear phase-out--with human lives.

The study looked at electricity generation data between 2011 and 2017 to assess the costs and benefits of the nuclear phase-out, which was triggered by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and which to this day enjoys the support of all parliamentary powers in Europe’s largest economy. It just so happens that some costs may be higher than anticipated.

The shutting down of nuclear plants naturally requires the replacement of this capacity with something else. Despite its reputation as a leader in solar and wind, Germany has had to resort to more natural gas-powered generation and, quite importantly, more coal generation. As of mid-2019, coal accounted for almost 30 percent of Germany’s energy mix, with nuclear at 13.1 percent and gas at 9.3 percent.

The authors of the NBER study have calculated that “the social cost of the phase-out to German producers and consumers is $12 billion per year (2017 USD). The vast majority of these costs fall on consumers.”

But what are these social costs--exactly?

“Specifically,” the authors wrote, “over 70% of the cost of the nuclear phase-out is due to the increased mortality risk from local air pollution exposure as a consequence of producing electricity by burning fossil fuels rather than utilizing nuclear sources.”Related: Is This The Start Of A New Offshore Oil & Gas Boom?




The culprit is coal. According to the study, some 1,100 people die because of the pollution from coal power generation every year. This, the authors say, is a lot worse than even the most pessimistic cost estimates of so-called “nuclear accident risk” and not just that: 1,100 deaths annually from coal-related pollution is worse even when you include the costs of nuclear waste disposal in the equation.

The results of the study, which used machine learning to analyze the data, surprised the authors. The cost of human lives had not been expected to be the largest cost associated with the nuclear phase-out.

“Despite this, most of the discussion of the phase-out, both at the time and since, has focused on electricity prices and carbon emissions – air pollution has been a second order consideration at best,” one of the authors, economist Steven Jarvis, told Forbes.

Just two decades ago, air pollution was a top concern for many environmentalists. Now, carbon emissions and their effect on climate seem to have taken over the environmental narrative and, as the research from NBER suggests, this is leading to neglecting important issues. Meanwhile, there are voices—and some of them are authoritative voices—that are warning a full transition to a zero-emission economy is impossible without nuclear power, which is virtually emission-free once a plant begins operating.

None other than the International Energy Agency—a staunch supporter of renewables—said in a report last year that the phase-out of nuclear capacity not just in Germany but everywhere could end up costing more than just increased carbon emissions as the shortfall in electricity output would need to be filled with fossil fuel generation capacity, just like it is filled in Germany.

Why can't renewables fill the gap? Here’s what the IEA had to say:

“If other low-carbon sources, namely wind and solar PV, are to fill the shortfall in nuclear, their deployment would have to accelerate to an unprecedented level. In the past 20 years, wind and solar PV capacity has increased by about 580 gigawatts in advanced economies. But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. Such a drastic increase in renewable power generation would create serious challenges in integrating the new sources into the broader energy system.”Related: Are Oil Prices Still Too High?

Translation: we are not adding wind and solar fast enough and we can never add them fast enough without risking a grid meltdown.

Even Germany’s fellow EU members recognize the importance of nuclear power. Leaving aside France, where it is the single largest source of energy, accounting for 60 percent of electricity generation, the EU members agreed in December to include nuclear power in their comprehensive climate change fighting plan, which the union voted on at the end of the year.

“Nuclear energy is clean energy,” the Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babis, said at the time. “I don’t know why people have a problem with this.”

The reason so many people have a problem with nuclear is, of course, obvious. Actually, there are two reasons: Chernobyl and Fukushima. One might reasonably argue that two accidents for all the years nuclear power has been used for peaceful purposes by dozens of nuclear plants make the risk of a full meltdown a small one, but statistics is one thing--fear is an entirely different matter.

The problem with nuclear plants, in most opponents’ minds, is that a meltdown may be rare, but when it does happen, it is far more disastrous than a blackout caused by a slump in solar energy production, for example.

There is no way to remove the risk of a nuclear reactor meltdown entirely. Reactor makers are perfecting their technology, enhancing safety features, and making sure the risk will be minimal, but the risk remains, deterring politicians--those in the ultimate decision-making position--to make a pragmatic decision that, as the NBER research suggests, could actually save lives.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com


The World Can’t Let Nuclear Energy Die
Despite wavering public sentiment and…

The Biggest Challenges Facing America’s Nuclear Sector=



GLOBAL RISK INSIGHTS

GlobalRiskInsights.com provides the web’s best political risk analysis for businesses and investors. Our contributors are some of the brightest minds in economics, politics, finance, and…

Nuclear Is Japan’s Only Choice For Energy Independence



Japan has adopted a peaceful approach towards nuclear technology, limiting it to the use of supplying electricity. This is despite being the only nation to have suffered devastating effects of nuclear warfare. However, the 2011 tsunami triggered an accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant and dramatically changed public sentiment with widespread protests calling for the abandonment of this energy source. The balance between these demands and the use of reliable and affordable energy supply is significantly conditioning Japanese politics.


Energy security in Japan

Japan relied heavily on imports of fossil fuels while recovering from WWII. This vulnerability became critical in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis and led to diversification in Japan’s energy mix towards a significant use of nuclear energy.

This trend was sustained during the following decades and even increased at the beginning of the 21st century due to environmental concerns. For example, in 2008, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) set the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 54 percent by 2050, and 90 percent by 2100. This would lead to nuclear power contributing around 60 percent of primary energy consumption by 2100 and being responsible for 51 percent of emission reduction.

However, in July 2011, after the Fukushima accident, the Japanese government decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants. As a consequence by February 2012, electricity costs increased by 15 percent.

Figure: The trend of Power Generation Costs (Total for 12 Companies)





(Click to enlarge)



The cut in nuclear plants affected Japan’s trade balance. Between 2011 and 2013, the cost of importing energy resources into Japan was $40 trillion, and the total trade deficit between April 2011 and March 2014 was $227 billion. As a result, the government was forced to adopt the 4th Strategic Energy Plan in 2014 and declare that nuclear energy was a vital energy source that would continue being used under optimal security conditions to achieve a stable and affordable energy supply.

So, energy security is Japan’s main geopolitical concerns. As an island nation without indigenous energy sources, Japan relies heavily on imported fossil fuels. This overreliance on imports endangers the country’s energy system if a geopolitical event disrupts shipping to East Asia. The most likely disruptive events being a war between the United States and Iran, an open conflict with China over the Senkaku islands, or an attack (conventional or nuclear) from North Korea.

Japan’s energy future and the problem of public opinion

However, the most severe challenge facing policy-makers and the nuclear industry in Japan is the loss of public confidence in this type of energy. For instance, the 2015 Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organization (JAERO) survey found that 47.9 percent of respondents want nuclear power abolished gradually. 14.8 percent think it should be halted immediately. Only 10.1 percent said that the use of atomic energy should be maintained and 1.7 percent said it should increase.

These opinions have a bigger eco in the countryside where mayors or prefecture’s chief have informal veto power on the reopening of nuclear power plants, which at the same times is highly conditioned by electoral dynamics and popular support.

In 2013, Abe’s government created the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), an agency with an independent decision-making authority based on scientific and technological data, to develop new safety standards and boost public confidence for the nuclear reactors reopening process. Related: Oil Prices Set For Worst Weekly Drop In Five Weeks

However, faith in nuclear energy has not been restored. According to a more recent JAERO study, the ratio of the public who trust the nuclear industry is 1.2 percent, and those who do not is 22.0 percent. The reasons for these figures are the lack of information disclosure, insufficient preparation and management on safety, and the perceived lack of honesty from industrials and public officials.

The problem of nuclear waste

The Japanese government must also find safe ways to manage stocks of irradiated nuclear fuel. By the end of 2016, Japan had 14,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored in nuclear power plants, filling about 70 percent of its on-site storage capacity. The law requires reprocessing of spent fuel to recover its plutonium and uranium content. But fuel storage in Rokkasho, Japan’s only commercial reprocessing plant, is nearly full, causing potential risks derived from the lack of storage space, such as the need to stop uranium reprocessing or halting nuclear power plants activity increasing like that Japan’s energy vulnerability.

Other risks derived from excessive storage and conservation conditions can be leaks of irradiated particles, which represent a threat to public health. That’s why the construction of an interim storage facility in Mutsu is planned, however, in the medium term this problem will force Japan to move spent fuel to dry cask storage, and in the long term, it will need to increase this capacity and find a candidate site for final disposal of spent fuel.

Japan also has nearly 48 tons of separated plutonium. Just one tone of separated plutonium is enough material to manufacture more than 120 nuclear weapons. Many countries have expressed concern about Japan’s plans to store plutonium and use it as nuclear fuel. Some, such as China, fear that Japan may use the material to produce nuclear weapons rapidly. Consequently, maintaining this policy could increase security concerns and regional tensions, and could stimulate an arms race in East Asia.

The geopolitics of nuclear energy

Although only nine of Japan’s 38 commercial reactors are currently functioning, the government and the nuclear industry hope to be able to solve much of the problems associated with this sector by exporting energy and infrastructures to foreign markets. For the Japanese government, this is a critical component of its program to boost economic growth, and for the Japanese nuclear industry, this is the last hope to do business after Fukushima.

Companies like Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi, entered foreign markets with the help and support of the Japanese government. Japan’s public-private partnership to build nuclear power plants is a lucrative opportunity that could position Japan as one of the world’s leading energy suppliers in the future. After all, nuclear power is in demand in countries such as Turkey, Poland, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Argentina, that are eager to reduce CO2 emissions and increase their energy security.Related: China’s Fight Against Pollution To Generate Billions In Extra Solar Income

At the same time, demand for reactors appears to be stable worldwide. In particular, China and Russia have been vigorously entering foreign markets in recent years through their state-owned companies. For example, Rosatom announced last year that it had acquired contracts to build 35 new reactors, 67 percent of the world total. Chinese and Russian state-owned companies have been supplying nuclear material at lower costs than Japanese and Western ones, which has pushed up fossil fuel prices and raised national security concerns in many countries. This is why in 2017 a memorandum of understanding was signed between Japan and the United States to promote the global leadership role of both countries in the field of civil nuclear energy to counter Chinese and Russian dominance of the global nuclear energy market.

General assessment and foresight

Since Fukushima, the reopening of nuclear power plants in Japan has become more difficult in many ways. The Japanese government has adopted much stricter safety measures, and the nuclear industry has had to fight tirelessly to regain the confidence of the Japanese people.

In the coming years, the public acceptance of nuclear energy among Japanese local and regional leaders will be highly likely for environmental and employment reasons. However, the process of recovering Japan’s public support for nuclear energy is expected to take several years. The Nuclear Regulation Authority appears to be a credible and effective voice for public acceptance of the reopening of nuclear power plants. However, it is essential that this agency maintains its role as an impartial, fact-based entity to maintain its credibility with opponents of nuclear energy.

On the other hand, Japan will need to make significant strategic efforts to develop alternative energy sources. To bring its energy self-sufficiency rate back to the 2010 level or even higher, an optimal combination of renewable and nuclear energy is imperative.

By Global Risk Insights

Ottawa Prepares Lifeline For Alberta If It Rejects Major Oil Project

By Irina Slav - Feb 07, 2020

The federal Canadian government is preparing a financial aid package for Alberta in case it decides against a controversial large-scale oil sands project, Reuters reports, citing sources close to the cabinet.

“Rejecting Teck without providing Alberta something in return would be political suicide,” one of the sources said. This means the government must be prepared to compensate the oil province to dull the pain.

Teck Resources’ Frontier oil sands project, valued at some $15.7 billion (C$20.6 billion) will produce some 260,000 bpd of crude oil at peak production and will have a productive life of 40 years.It is as controversial as any new oil sands project would be under a Liberal government that has pledged to do more about climate change, but for Alberta it is essential not just as a job creator but as an indicator of this government’s readiness to support—or defeat—Alberta’s oil industry as a whole.

The Liberals would be careful to do the latter, the Reuters sources said, after they lost all seats in Alberta at last year’s election precisely because of their negative attitude to new energy projects that have depressed the oil industry in the province.

Yet there is little wiggle room. As one analyst put it right after the elections, “We have got a Liberal minority and the balance of power shifts to the NDP and the Greens, who are completely opposed to any progressive energy policies.”

This means it is quite likely that Ottawa would reject the Frontier project, angering Alberta. The implications of such a development are grim for the oil province but none too rosy for the Liberals either; they would have to find a way to make up for their decision on Frontier in a way that would satisfy Alberta.

It’s worth noting, however, that even if the federal government approves the Frontier project, Teck might decide to shelve it: when it proposed the development, oil was trading much higher than it is trading now, casting a shadow over the economic viability of the project.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com