Three decades of cleanup work marked at US legacy site

09 December 2021

The US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) is marking thirty years of cleanup work at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site to ensure the protection and safety of the underlying Snake River Plain aquifer in compliance with state and federal regulations.

The INL site is underlain by the Snake River Plain aquifer (Image: EM)

The 890 square mile (2300 square kilometre) site, located on the ancestral lands of the Shoshone and Bannock Tribes in southeast Idaho, was established in 1949 to design, build and test nuclear reactors for land, sea and air applications. Fifty-two reactors - most of them first-of-a-kind - were built at the site, including the US Navy's first prototype nuclear propulsion plant and Experimental Breeder Reactor No 1, the first reactor used to produce a usable quantity of electricity from nuclear fission and now a registered National Historic Landmark open to the public.

Four of those 52 reactors remain in operation today: the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), the ATR Critical Facility, the Neutron Radiography Reactor, and the Transient Reactor Test Facility. INL today is part of the DOE's complex of national laboratories, carrying out nuclear energy research and development, and the site has also been selected by NuScale Power and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systemsfor the deployment of a small modular reactor plant by the end of this decade.

In December 1991, the DOE, the state of Idaho and the US Environmental Protection Agency signed a Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order outlining a plan to investigate and clean up, if necessary, more than 500 individual waste areas within the 890-square-mile site. The agreement provides the regulatory framework that is still in use for the cleanup of legacy wastes that include contamination from World War II- and Cold War-era conventional weapons testing, plus wastes from government-owned research and power-reactor development and testing, used nuclear fuel reprocessing, laboratory research, and defence missions at INL other government sites.

Waste sites consisting of unlined wastewater disposal ponds, debris piles, radioactive groundwater plumes, buried barrels and boxes of radioactive and hazardous wastes, and even unexploded ordnance, have all been evaluated and most of the cleanup is complete, EM said.

Two of the cleanup projects - the removal of 49,000 drums, of radioactive and hazardous waste from an unlined Cold War landfill known as the Subsurface Disposal Area, and the use of vacuum-extraction units to remove solvent vapours from beneath it - were specifically designed to protect the aquifer, which lies 585 feet (178 metres) below the landfill surface. The vacuum extraction project was completed early, and the waste removal is now expected to be completed 18 months ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile, at the northern end of the INL site, more than 825 million gallons (over 3 million cubic metres) of water have been treated with a pump-and-treat system over the last 20 years, and bioremediation - by injecting sodium lactate or a similar product into a contaminant plume in the aquifer to create conditions favourable for naturally occurring microorganisms to "feed" on the waste - is ongoing.

Construction of the 510,000-cubic-yard (390,000-cubic-metre) Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) Disposal Facility in the early 2000s has allowed waste material from many areas of the site to be consolidated into a single, managed landfill that includes several feet of impermeable liners as well as a leachate collection system and lined disposal ponds.

Exhumation of buried waste from the areas of the landfill that pose the greatest risk to people and the environment, is expected to be completed within the coming weeks, EM said.

"The amount of environmental cleanup work that crews have completed is impressive," said Fred Hughes, programme manager for EM INL Site contractor Fluor Idaho. "The progress is visible, and the aquifer is benefitting from a host of waste remediation projects."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

One of the strongest ocean currents is speeding up, concerning scientists

Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc
Wed., December 8, 2021


One of the strongest ocean currents is speeding up, concerning scientists

Decades of data have revealed the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), the only ocean current that encircles the entire globe, has started flowing faster.

The ACC wraps around Antarctica and is a barrier between the tepid subtropical waters north of it and the cool waters to the south, helping keep temperatures low near the frozen continent.

The subtropical waters above the ACC have absorbed significant amounts of heat over the past few decades. In fact, over 90 per cent of the excess heat in the atmosphere created by greenhouse gases has been absorbed and stored in oceans since the 1970s.

The Southern Ocean, which is where part of the ACC flows through, has absorbed particularly high amounts of this extra atmospheric heat. Scientists have noticed that the additional heat is increasing the temperature difference between the two areas of water the current separates, which is causing it to flow at a faster rate.

During a SOCCOM expedition on the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer, a scientist watches as a large wave enters the Baltic Room, where the operations crew deploys and recovers equipment. She is strapped into a safety line and is waiting for a moment to safely perform the task at hand. ⁠(SOCCOM Project/ Greta Shum)More

During a SOCCOM expedition on the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer, a scientist watches as a large wave enters the Baltic Room, where the operations crew deploys and recovers equipment. She is strapped into a safety line and is waiting for a moment to safely perform the task at hand. ⁠(SOCCOM Project/ Greta Shum)

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, used data satellites and Argo, which is a network of floating robotic instruments that record ocean conditions like temperature and salinity. There are currently 4,000 floats scattered across the world’s oceans that are collecting data.

Warming global temperatures have also been affecting prevailing westerly winds and causing them to energize ocean eddies, which are smaller, circular currents of water, near the ACC. However, these winds are playing less of a role in the ACC’s flow rate than the scientists initially suspected.

Scientists recording oceanic data near Antarctica. (SOCCOM Project/ Melissa Miller)

Scientists recording oceanic data near Antarctica. (SOCCOM Project/ Melissa Miller)

“The ACC is mostly driven by wind, but we show that changes in its speed are surprisingly mostly due to changes in the heat gradient,” said co-author Lynne Talley, a physical oceanographer at Scripps Oceanography, in the study’s press release.

“From both observations and models, we find that the ocean heat change is causing the significant ocean current acceleration detected during recent decades,” said Jia-Rui Shi, study contributor and postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Between 2003-2019 Antarctica’s ice sheet lost an average of 118 gigatons of ice each year, making this continent one of the fastest-changing landscapes on Earth. Warming ocean temperatures exacerbate the melting that ice sheets are experiencing because they thaw the base of glaciers and enhance their breakage.

Global impacts are also possible if this region continues to warm abnormally fast since all the ocean currents act as a conveyor belt that circulates heat, nutrients, and carbon around the planet.

Thumbnail credit: SOCCOM Project/ Hannah Zanowski

Hidden on a Mountain in the Desert, Signs of the World’s First Reefs

Archaeocyaths were Earth’s original reef builders, and one of the best places to see them is in the Nevada desert

In the mountains of southwestern Nevada, the dark fossilized remnants of extinct archaeocyath reefs dot the tops of the hills. Millions of years ago, these peaks were at the bottom of the sea. Photo by Sara Pruss

.by Jack Tamisiea
December 8, 2021 |

In the mountains of Esmeralda County, high above the parched expanse of southwestern Nevada and just across the border from California’s Death Valley, Emmy Smith is on the hunt for the signs of what seems unimaginable in such a scorched place: a tropical reef.

Around 520 million years ago, not long (geologically speaking) after the Cambrian explosion ushered in a sudden abundance of complex life, the tops of these mountains were the seafloor. The Paleozoic sea teemed with invertebrate life, and the organisms living here found refuge in an entirely new kind of ecosystem—an animal-built reef.

“This was a major biological innovation, and it was recorded out in California and Nevada,” says Smith, a paleontologist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

At a field site roughly eight kilometers northeast of the largely deserted backwater of Gold Point, Nevada—a former mining town with a population of just six people—Smith and her colleagues recently examined the fossilized ruins of one of these ancient reefs.

“You’re in the desert walking around on mountains, but at the same time you feel like you’re scuba diving,” Smith says.

To the untrained eye, the rocks don’t look like much. But under a microscope, a thin cross section swarms with shapes resembling segmented donuts and dark, sinuous veins. This abstract motif is the fossilized vestige of the archaeocyaths, a diverse group of filter-feeding sponges.

Up close, the rocks in the Nevada desert bristle with the fossilized remains of ancient life. 

Photo by Mary Lonsdale

Archaeocyaths were the world’s first reef builders. Common just after the Cambrian explosion, archaeocyaths predate reef-building corals by 40 million years. Like their modern equivalents, archaeocyaths grew on the calcified skeletons of their forebearers, adding their own tubular and branching bodies to build immense structures over generations.

These thriving ecosystems were relatively short lived. Globally, archaeocyathan reefs only persisted for around 20 million years, a mere blip in oceanic history. It is a mystery why they went extinct, but the Gold Point reef, which offers one of the last known examples of these reef-building sponges, holds a clue.

Fossilized archaeocyathan reefs have been found everywhere from Siberia to Morocco. But the reef high up in the mountains of southwestern Nevada is a particular boon to scientists’ understanding of the volatile conditions after the Cambrian explosion. The fossilized reef is 70 meters thick in certain spots, says Sara Pruss, a paleontologist at Massachusetts’ Smith College who was involved in the research. “You can look at the fine-scale changes through time because you get this big, thick period of deposition,” she says. “You can actually see how the environment changes.”

Within the fossilized remains, Pruss and Smith have found evidence of an abrupt change in the climate. By around 515 million years ago, a large slab of ancestral North America known as Laurentia had splintered from a southern supercontinent, spewing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, which siphoned oxygen from the oceans and acidified the water in an event known as the archaeocyath extinction carbon isotope excursion.

This event, says Pruss, mirrors how the ocean’s chemistry has changed today, though in a much more dramatic fashion: “There are so many commonalities between the archaeocyath extinction and the decline [of] modern coral reefs,” says Pruss.

The detailed preservation of the Gold Point reef also paints a picture of what it would have looked like in its heyday.

The fossils encapsulate a spectrum of coastal habitats and archaeocyath species, from nearshore inhabitants that preferred the wave-battered shallows, to those that could only tolerate quiet deepwater enclaves. This breadth of archaeocyath lifestyles echoes modern-day coral diversity, says Pruss. “If you go to the Bahamas and snorkel around, you see the same [pattern] of different corals living in different places.”

A fossilized archaeocyath as seen in Cambrian limestone unearthed in South Australia. 

Photo by The Natural History Museum/Alamy Stock Photo

Yet while the Gold Point reef shares structural similarities with a modern coral-encrusted Caribbean key, David Cordie, a paleontologist at Wisconsin’s Edgewood College, says it probably would not have made for great snorkeling. Nearshore and extremely shallow, these reefs would have been swamped by nutrients and sediment washing in from the coasts. “If you were to go back in time, it was probably murky, really shallow, with not nearly as much activity as you might expect in reef environments today,” says Cordie, who was not involved in the new Gold Point research. “So maybe a little underwhelming by some peoples’ standards.”

However, if you could peer through the cloudy water, you would be greeted by an outlandish group of reef inhabitants. Spiny trilobites scuttled along the seafloor, swerving around the featherlike arms of crinoids and cactus-like stalks of chancelloriids, an enigmatic group of sessile creatures encased in hundreds of star-shaped plates of armor. Other excavations nearby have yielded fossilized hyoliths, a bizarre group of ancient brachiopods seemingly ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel. Some hyolith species propped themselves up on the seafloor using a pair of long spines and deployed a roving set of tentacles between their two shells—the lower of which tapered off into a cone—to gather planktonic prey. (Their fossils look a little like an ice cream cone with arms.)

Like their modern analogs, archaeocyathan reefs “were hubs of diversity,” says Smith. And the Gold Point reef’s wonderful preservation—which includes its complex three-dimensional structure—has allowed the paleontologists to pinpoint the nooks and crannies where trilobites and early crinoids hunkered down between the stalks of sponges. “You really get a sense of the little houses that things lived in,” says Mary Lonsdale, a graduate student pursuing her doctorate in Smith’s lab at Johns Hopkins. “It’s a thriving ecosystem.”

“Reefs are incredible places of diversity, and they’re quite beautiful,” Lonsdale says. “Reef environments are just delightful in the modern world—but they are equally as delightful in the past.”

Never-before-seen ammonite muscles revealed in 3D from Jurassic fossil

by Nicky Jenner, Caroline Brogan, Imperial College London

Left: 3D reconstruction. Right: Labelled internal organs. Credit: Cherns et al.

For the first time, researchers have revealed the soft tissues of a 165-million-year-old ammonite fossil using 3D imaging.

They found that the now-extinct molluscs sported hyponomes: tube-like siphons through which water is expelled to jet propel animals forward in water, as found in modern squid and octopuses. They also found strong muscles that ammonites used to retract into their shells to defend against predators.

The team, led by researchers from Cardiff University and including Imperial College London, found this by analyzing the muscles and organs of an exceptionally well-preserved ammonite fossil found over 20 years ago in Gloucestershire, UK.

The research, published in Geology, marks the first time an ammonite's softer parts have been visualized in three dimensions—and is thanks to a combination of modern technology, the fossil's exceptional preservation, and collaboration across interdisciplinary teams and facilities.

The findings add insight into how ammonites lived and are evidence that coleoids, the sub-group of animals containing squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish, might be evolutionarily closer to ammonites than previously thought.

Credit: Imperial College London

Study co-author Dr. Alan Spencer, from Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering and the Natural History Museum, said: "This ammonite is remarkably well preserved, which is very rare. New imaging techniques allowed us to visualize the internal soft parts of ammonites that have so far resisted all our previous efforts to describe them. This is a major breakthrough in ammonite palaeobiology."

Squid-like propulsion

Ammonites, which became extinct around 66 million years ago, once thrived in oceans as dinosaurs ruled the Earth. They are among the most common fossils worldwide, but almost everything we know about them so far is based on their hard shells as these are more easily preserved over millennia than bodily tissues. Thus, ammonite fossils with preserved muscles and organs are extremely rare.

To carry out the study, the researchers studied the five-centimeters-across ammonite fossil which was found within an exposed Jurassic sediment at a Gloucestershire site in 1998. They looked at the fossil's remaining soft tissues and scarring where muscles once attached to the inside of its shell.

Backlit shell with visible organs (to the left). Credit: Cherns et al.

By combining high-resolution X-ray and high-contrast neutron imaging, they created a detailed 3D computer reconstruction of the structure, size and orientation of its muscles and organs. From this detailed model, they were able to infer the functions of the muscles and organs.

The arrangement and relative strength of the muscles suggests ammonites swam by expelling water through their hyponomes, found next to the opening to the body chamber. This type of swimming, called jet propulsion, is used by a wide range of living animals, including cephalopods—the larger group to which ammonites belong.

The imaging also revealed paired muscles extending from the ammonite's body, likely used to retract the animal deep into the body chamber for protection. This would have been an important anti-predator adaptation in ammonites, which lacked defensive features like the ink sac seen in modern relatives like octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish.

Patience yields results

Because ammonites' soft tissues are rarely preserved, scientists have used modern Nautilus as a 'body-plan' for reconstructing ammonite biology. However, this study highlights that ammonites and Nautilus may not be as similar as previously thought.

One half of the block of rock in which the ammonite was discovered. Credit: Cherns et al.

The study's lead author Dr. Lesley Cherns of Cardiff University said: "Preservation of soft parts is exceptionally rare in ammonites, even in comparison to fossils of closely related animals like squid. We found evidence for muscles that are not present in Nautilus, which provided important new insights into the anatomy and functional morphology of ammonites."

The findings demonstrate that combining different imaging techniques can be highly effective for investigating fossil soft tissues, highlighting exciting possibilities for studying the internal structure of well-preserved specimens.

Dr. Spencer added: "Despite being discovered over 20 years ago, scientists have resisted the destructive option of cutting it apart to see what's inside. Although this would have been much quicker, it risked permanent loss of some information. Instead, we waited until non-destructive technology caught up—as it now has. This allowed us to understand these interior structures without causing this unique and rare fossil any damage.

"This result is a testament to both the patience shown and the amazing ongoing technological advances in paleontology."Study of giant ammonites suggest they grew large because their predators grew large

More information: Lesley Cherns et al, Correlative tomography of an exceptionally preserved Jurassic ammonite implies hyponome-propelled swimming, Geology (2021). DOI: 10.1130/G49551.1

Journal information: Geology 

Provided by Imperial College London 

 Nfld. & Labrador·CBC Explains

What makes the biofuel set to come out of Come By Chance sustainable? An expert weighs in

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Refinery emissions could be cut by 50 to 90%, says

 chemical engineer Bradley Saville

Alex Kennedy · CBC News · Posted: Dec 05, 2021 

The Come By Chance oil refine will soon produce biofuel using refined cooking and vegetable oils. (Sherry Vivian/CBC)

A deal to transform the Come By Chance oil refinery and create renewable and sustainable biofuel will breath new life into the facility by the middle of 2022, according to Premier Andrew Furey.

Cresta Fund Management has bought a controlling stake of the idled refinery, and plans to convert the plant to make aviation fuel and diesel from used cooking oil, corn oil and animal fat. Cresta says initial production capacity will be 14,000 barrels per day, but could reach as high as 35,000.

• Come By Chance refinery sold, will become biofuel operation by mid-2022

But what makes the fuel renewable and sustainable? To learn more, CBC Radio's On The Go spoke to Bradley Saville, a chemical engineer at the University of Toronto and a leading expert in biofuel.

What is biofuel, and what makes it sustainable?

The type of fuel that will be created in Come By Chance will be created using what Saville calls "second use oils," taking things like cooking oil or poultry fat that have limited use outside their primary function.

"They've already been used once or they have very limited use otherwise, and therefore are great options for feeding into a refinery to make renewable fuel," Saville said.

Not all materials, or feedstocks, are made equally, he said, comparing the waste fats collected from a restaurant to a clean sample. The oils we use for food make the best feedstock, according to Saville.

The refinery will need to add tools to clean impurities from the feedstock, but he says the process of refining cooking oil doesn't vary much from refining crude oil.

Bradley Saville is a chemical engineer at the University of Toronto and a leading expert on biofuels in Canada. (University of Toronto)

In terms of what makes the fuel sustainable, he said, renewable fuel tends to emit the same levels of carbon dioxide as diesel fuel when coming out of a tailpipe but the difference comes in how and when the emissions are produced.

"The difference is that we're talking about carbon dioxide that's been generated really that same year," he said.

"It's considered renewable because it's what we call biogenic — a lot different from the CO2 that comes from the carbon that's sequestered in crude oil and has been there for millions of years."

Will the refinery be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

The short answer is yes. According to Seville, it could come down by a large margin.

"Work that's been done with these types of fuels and with these kinds of feedstocks in similar types of refineries have shown greenhouse gas emission reductions ranging from 50 to perhaps 90 per cent compared to conventional aviation fuel, compared to conventional diesel fuel," he said.

"Those are really significant, and obviously a great opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our transportation sector."

• IN DEPTH
  What we know, and don't know, about the environmental deal at Come By Chance

He said the technology to refine sustainable fuel has taken off in recent years, and is already translating to the aviation industry. According to Seville, almost every plane flying out of Los Angeles International Airport contains fuel refined at a local refinery.

What does the price of sustainable fuels look like?

Depending on the oil you use, Seville says the price can vary. Used oils or grease tend to fetch lower prices than crude oil, while fuel made using some vegetable oils can be comparable to — and sometimes more expensive than — fuel made using crude oil.

"But, as we know, crude oil prices vary a lot," he said.

The fuel produced in the Come By Chance refinery will be used in the aviation industry. (Michelle Parise)

The biggest downside is the availability of feedstocks and their price.

"It really comes down to [the fact that] we don't have a huge amount of these feedstocks," Seville said.

"So this is going to be really valuable … but it's really part of what we need to do from an overall perspective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

Renewable Energy Is Great—but the Grid Can Slow It Down

Many solar and wind projects face a problem: getting the energy from where it’s made to where it’s needed.

PHOTOGRAPH: DU YI/GETTY IMAGES

GREGORY BARBER

SAY YOU WANT to build a wind farm. You find a nice empty knoll in northern Vermont, where the breeze blows steadily and the neighbors don’t complain about sullied views. (A damn miracle, in other words.) You line up investors, get the right permits, and prepare to install your turbines. Then you hit snag: power lines. There aren’t enough in rural Vermont; they’re all in Boston, along with the people and their Teslas. So you’ve got a problem. The wind is blowing here, but there’s no way to get its green energy there.

Since 1889, when the US got its first long-distance power line (it traversed a whopping 14 miles), the grid largely has been set up for energy that’s consumed relatively close to where it is produced. There are exceptions—like hydropower that reaches cities from far-flung dams—but for the most part, it has been a century of linking coal and gas plants with people living nearby. But now, with wind farms dotting mountain ridges and solar plants sprawling in the desert, distance is more common.

The wires aren’t ready for it. Researchers at Princeton University estimate that the country’s high-voltage transmission capacity needs to grow by 60 percent in the next decade to meet its clean energy goals. “The grid that we have wasn’t designed for what we do with it now, let alone what we want to do with it, with all sorts of renewables,” says Seth Blumsack, an economist who studies the grid at Penn State University.

In many parts of the country, wind and solar are already the cheapest ways to produce energy, but transmission is a limiting factor, explains Kerinia Cusick, cofounder of the Center for Renewables Integration, a nonprofit that advocates modernizing the grid for green energy. That means that in places like rural Vermont, wind farm owners are frequently ordered to shut down when a healthy breeze is blowing—a move known as “curtailment”—because there’s too much power coming over the wires.

For plants that are yet to be built, the situation is even worse, because grid constraints mean backers must string new lines, and pay for them, before installing turbines or solar panels. Each year, hundreds of renewable energy projects stall in advanced planning stages due to delays in upgrading transmission lines and the cost of making those upgrades.

“There’s a very likely risk that’ll kill your project,” says Hudson Gilmer, chief executive of LineVision. Gilmer’s company attacks the problem from another angle: make the existing grid carry more power. Even when plans for a new line are approved, there’s no guarantee it actually happens. Nobody wants massive power lines draped over their backyard or across an endangered wetland. So Gilmer looks for ways to eke more power out of the lines where congestion is a big problem.

“The grid that we have wasn’t designed for what we do with it now, let alone what we want to do with it, with all sorts of renewables.” 

SETH BLUMSACK, ECONOMIST, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY

That’s possible because power lines generally are not used to their fullest. Limits on how much power the lines can carry are typically set in advance, and they're based on assumptions about physics and engineering that were made decades ago. They’re conservative—understandably so, in the interest of keeping the lights on reliably and safely. But Gilmer and others argue that technological improvements allow line owners to more closely monitor their system and push through more power. “We’re not suggesting that we don’t need those new high-voltage lines carrying renewables from the Dakotas or West Texas to urban areas,” Gilmer says, alluding to two of the nation’s most productive areas for wind power. For that, the country still needs new electron superhighways. But the idea is to get a little more out of the lines where there are bottlenecks, and make room for more of the renewables that are languishing in the queue.

LineVision specializes in a technique called dynamic line rating. One of the physical limits of power lines is the heat they generate as a current flows through them. Too much power and the line will start to sag as the wires get hot and expand, potentially sparking and causing a fire. But nobody actually monitors each line. The limits are based on assumptions meant to avoid a worst-case scenario. There are other factors that affect the line’s temperature—for example, the weather. Most days there’s a breeze blowing on the wires, and it cools them down—maybe just by a couple of degrees, but enough to theoretically carry more power. So Gilmer’s company installs sensors that monitor the lines for sagging, using lidar and other devices. It claims the technology can increase a line’s capacity by up to 40 percent.

Renewables—which ebb and flow with the wind and the sun—add more uncertainty into how much power a line needs to carry. “Flexibility is the coin of the realm going forward,” says Carl Imhoff, a researcher at Pacific Northwest National Lab who studies so-called grid-enhancing technologies. Among them is a form of power steering for the grid. The way that power will flow through a grid is hard to predict—it changes depending on supply and demand, and it can leave certain lines clogged while others sit unused. The first step is knowing what’s happening: The method relies on a network of devices called synchrophasors—electronic sentinels that quickly measure changes in the power flowing through the lines. Those observations help grid operators understand where there’s congestion. That way, they can redirect power through a better route by applying a voltage to the lines, which serves to push or pull a current through them.

A form of that technology is used in the UK, where National Grid, which operates lines across the country, uses power flow devices to push energy from the renewable-rich north of England to power-hungry areas around London. Such tools would be especially useful in places like the Northeast US, explains Terron Hill, who directs clean energy development at National Grid’s US-based utility arm. That’s because the region is covered by a spider web of transmission lines—but often not as thickly as needed in places that are best for renewables. The wires in those areas are among the country's oldest, notes Hill, after returning from inspecting 80-year-old equipment that was due for maintenance.

It’s slow going. The utility has experimented with a variety of grid-enhancing tools, including dynamic line rating to improve capacity in the Hudson Valley and ferry renewable energy south to New York City. But for the most part, the utility follows a straightforward game plan for upgrading transmission: install more wires, even with the challenges of doing so. “You need to change the mindset away from ‘build build build’ to what’s best for customers and how to use your network more efficiently,” Hill says.

The reasons for that mindset get wonky, fast. The grid is complicated. The people who most often own and operate the transmission lines—including private utilities that answer to investors, as well as public entities—are often different from the people building renewable plants that will connect to them. The whole system is overseen by a tangle of planners and regulators, helmed nationally by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. When a utility wins approval to build a new power line, it’s usually part of a plan to handle demand from its customers—and it comes with a guarantee that the utility and its shareholders will recoup that investment and more. When a generator wants to hook up to the grid? That’s different. The entities that own the surrounding wires say what upgrades are required and how much it will cost, and the owner of the new solar plant or wind farms pays for it.

Neither of these scenarios leaves much opportunity to make existing lines more efficient. Big investments in new lines mean bigger returns for utilities that put them up. In other words, it's more profitable to spend big. And while utilities may see potential in new technologies, they also come with risks, including safety and reliability problems, and investments in new people and training that might not pay off. “There is a great fear of failure,” says Blumsack of Penn State. “If you try something new and it fails, who pays for it?”

Utilities say their caution is rooted in reliability. Use a newfangled device to increase the capacity of the line and you may end up with a problem that results in penalties for the utility and higher prices for customers. “It puts us in a place not to innovate,” says Elizabeth Cook, general manager of advanced grid solutions for Duquesne Light Company, a utility in the Pittsburgh area. That’s why it’s important to test. The region isn’t a renewable hot spot or facing much congestion right now, but the utility is gathering data using a LineVision device. That way it can be prepared to raise the capacity if it needs to.

Incentives from agencies like FERC would help utilities try new technology and gather data, says Hill. The agency is considering such moves, along with new rules to incentivize more efficient grid planning, including cooperation among different players on the grid. Cusick, the grid improvements advocate, also hopes it will give generators more say over transmission improvements, so the default isn’t an expensive new line.

But what’s needed most, Blumsack says, is a better overall plan for the electric grid. Technologies that enhance the existing grid are one part of a much bigger puzzle. The topology of the old grid is now defunct, and it will take a lot to get it oriented the right way. That means efficiently building new wires not just where they’re needed today, but where they’ll be needed tomorrow—and using every technology we’ve got to get more power through them. Without that, the wind can blow and the sun can shine, but the US won’t be able to harness them.

Oceans Hold Promise as Climate-fighting Carbon Sinks

  December 8, 2021

© artifirsov / Adobe Stock

The United States should study how the world’s oceans could be used to remove planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through methods like cultivating seaweed or manipulating nutrients in the water, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The report comes amid a growing realization among the world’s scientists and governments that reducing greenhouse gas emissions from activities like burning fossil fuels will not be enough to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Huge volumes of carbon must also be removed and stored away using strategies that are not yet proven to work on a large scale.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report said oceans are a promising area to study because of their size and capacity to store carbon. A handful of techniques are already available to accelerate the ocean’s carbon-absorbing powers and need to be scrutinized, it said.

"If society wants to be well-informed, if these decisions need to be made at some point, we need to improve an unbiased knowledge base," said Scott Doney, a scientist at the University of Virginia who helped lead the report.

The report recommended an initial $125 million U.S. research program to “complete some very critical research in the next decade” on the subject, Doney said.

China announced in August it would explore ways to increase its ocean "carbon sink" as part of its pledge to reduce greenhouse gases to net zero by 2060. 

The report identified six potential strategies that could be studied in detail, including large-scale seaweed farming, sprinkling phosphorous, nitrogen or iron on the ocean surface to speed photosynthesis by carbon-absorbing phytoplankton, or passing an electrical current into the water to make it more alkaline and thereby enhance its ability to store CO2.

Other ideas include protecting and recovering fish and marine mammal species that store carbon in their bodies and excrete carbon-rich waste to the ocean floor, or artificially forcing ocean upwelling and downwelling to bring nutrients for carbon-absorbing phytoplankton to the surface and carbon to the deeps.

The National Academies said it did some preliminary evaluations of these strategies for how well they are likely to work, along with their costs, scalability and environmental impact, but that much was still unknown.

It found that adjusting the alkalinity of the ocean with electrical currents to enhance its carbon-absorbing ability had among the highest likelihoods of being effective, but also among the highest potential costs.

Seaweed farming, it said, was likely to have medium efficacy, but also moderate to high environmental risks that need to be better understood, including contributing to ocean acidification and reducing available oxygen in the water.

Seagrasses play a large role in regulating ocean environments, storing more than twice as much carbon from planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) per square mile as forests do on land, according to a 2012 study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Gold mining project in northwestern B.C. gets green light from Mines Act

Premier Gold Project is expected to create opportunities for service providers throughout the region

Prince George Citizen 

Ascot Resources Ltd. project drilling site. Ascot Resources Ltd.

A gold mining venture in northwestern B.C. is moving ahead after receiving a Mines Act permit.

The Ascot Resources Ltd. project has received a Mines Act permit for the construction and operation of the Premier Gold Project.

It’s located in the “Golden Triangle” of northwestern British Columbia.

The Golden Triangle is a 500 km belt of mineralization stretching south from Atlin near the border with the Yukon to Kitsault just southeast of Stewart.

The area has long been known as a mineral-rich region with gold and copper deposits and is also home to silver, nickel and zinc deposits.

The Ascot Resources project is expected to create jobs for as many as 140 people during construction and approximately 280 people during operations.

“This project will be a welcome source of employment for hundreds of people who live in the northwest,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation in a news release.

“Ascot Resources Ltd. is working with the Nisga’a Nation to bring good-paying jobs to the community and those who live around Stewart.”

With the receipt of their Mines Act permit, Ascot Resources Ltd. can move forward with full-scale construction of the Premier Gold Project.

The province notes that once built, Ascot Resources anticipates Premier will be one of B.C.’s lowest carbon-intensive gold mines, connected to BC Hydro’s clean, hydroelectric grid power.

Beyond the hundreds of jobs in construction and operation, the mine will create work opportunities for sub-contractors, suppliers and additional service providers within the region.

Ascot Resources is set to begin underground development at the “Big Missouri” deposit in the coming months with project construction expected to take one year.

The mine is expected to be in operation for an initial term of eight years.

“Receiving the Mines Act Permit for PGP is a momentous milestone for Ascot, and the culmination of extensive collaboration and consultation with Nisga’a Nation and the provincial regulators,” said Derek White, president and CEO, Ascot Resources Ltd.

“We are grateful that our community-centred approach to responsible mine development and environmental stewardship was a vision shared by all parties involved in the permitting process. We would like to thank our shareholders, Nisga’a Nation and the local towns of Stewart, B.C. and Hyder, Alaska for their support as we progressed through the permitting process and are looking forward to the next chapter as we advance Canada’s next gold mine toward production.”

Eva Clayton, president, Nisga’a Lisims Government said they are very pleased to see that the Mines Act Permit for the construction and operation of the Premier Gold Project has been issued.

“The Nisga’a Nation has worked in extensive collaboration with Ascot throughout the permitting process, including through the Mine Review Committee process leading up to the granting of the permit,” added Clayton.

“The rights under our Treaty and our commitment to stewardship of the Nass Valley and Nisga’a citizens have helped to set the Premier Gold Project to be a safe, prosperous and responsible mining operation. We have developed a strong working relationship with Ascot and we wish to congratulate them on this important milestone. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Ascot in the full-scale construction and operation phases of the project.”

Military's former head of HR charged with sexual assault, indecent acts

TIME FOR ALL FEMALE COMMAND & CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT

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Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson denied the allegations

Ashley Burke · CBC News · Posted: Dec 08, 2021 

Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson has been charged under the Criminal Code. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson, the military's former commander in charge of military human resources, has been charged with sexual assault and committing indecent acts.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS) laid the Criminal Code charges today. 

"As the matter is now proceeding through the civilian justice system, no further information can be released at this time," Department of National Defence spokesperson Daniel Le Bouthillier said in a media statement. 

The allegations against Edmundson date back more than two decades, to when he was a lieutenant-commander overseeing training at the naval officer training centre in Esquimalt, B.C.

Retired Canadian Forces member Stéphanie Viau went public with her allegations in March in a CBC News story.

• EXCLUSIVE
  Senior military commander under investigation after being accused of sexually assaulting subordinate

Viau alleged that she was a 19-year-old steward in the navy when Edmundson, a superior and lieutenant commander in 1991, started exposing his genitals to her onboard a navy ship deployed to the Pacific Ocean for an exercise.

Viau said she yelled at Edmundson and told him it was unacceptable behaviour. Days later, she said, the misconduct escalated and Edmundson raped her onboard HMCS Provider in early November, 1991, while the ship was docked in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Edmundson's lawyer, Brian Greenspan, said his client denies the allegations. 

"Vice-Admiral Edmundson continues to deny any suggestion of criminal misconduct and looks forward to the opportunity to restore his distinguished reputation for service to our country," Greenspan wrote in a statement to CBC News. 

In response to the charges laid Tuesday, Viau's lawyer, Paul Champ, told CBC News his client "will make no comment on this matter other than to say we will wait for justice to take its course."

Champ said last month that CFNIS was consulting with civilian prosecutors in Ontario to determine if criminal charges should be laid. The defence department said the case would be handed over to civilian prosecutors.

Defence Minister Anita Anand announced last month that she had accepted former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour's recommendation to transfer sexual misconduct investigations to civilian police except in cases where an investigation is close to completion.

"In this particular case, the investigation was near completion," Le Bouthillier said regarding why CFNIS laid the charges.

This case is not part of the transfer of cases from the military to the civilian justice system.

Stéphanie Viau accused Hayden Edmundson of sexual assault. (Andrew Lee/CBC News)

The military placed Edmundson on paid leave when CBC's story first aired in March and later replaced him as the commander in charge of military human resources when the allegations were made public.

At the time, Greenspan called it regrettable that Edmundson was "replaced in his role without an opportunity to appropriately respond and defend against untested allegations which he categorically and unequivocally denies."

The Canadian military is engaged in a public struggle with sexual misconduct in the ranks. Since February 2021, multiple current and former senior Canadian military leaders have been sidelined, investigated or forced into retirement from some of the highest ranking posts in the Armed Forces.

The allegations against Edmundson are the most serious to be levelled recently against a senior leader in the Forces.

DND said that since May 12, Edmundson has been posted as a supported member at the Transition Centre Ottawa. While many military members who go to the transition group end up leaving the military, some transition back in.

Edmundson's first court appearance is set for Jan. 25 in Ottawa.