BW Offshore Denies NGO’s Claim of Ship Recycling Accident in India

BW Offshore's former FPSO is being dismantled in India (NGO Shipbreaking Platform)

PUBLISHED APR 27, 2022 2:40 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

BW Offshore, one of the largest operators of floating offshore energy vessels (FPSOs) finds itself involved in a “war of words” with an NGO over the company’s efforts to properly recycle its end-of-life FPSOs. NGO Shipbreaking Platform issued a statement picking up on a report from German media saying that one of BW Offshore’s former vessels had been the site of an accident at a scrapyard in India and questioned the company’s recycling efforts. The ship operator responded with a statement denying the NGO’s statements and directing questions to the scrapper. 

In February 2022, BW announced that its retired FPSO BW Cidade de São Vicente was going to be recycled at Priya Blue Industries in Alang, India. While the Indian shipyards are not accredited by the European Union, BW Offshore highlighted that it was taking steps to ensure the responsible recycling of the vessel. They said that the yard is certified to ISO standards and has been issued with a Statement of Compliance by Class NK following the IMO as well as the Hong Kong International Convention for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships. 

Further, the company said a recycling plan had been prepared with the yard and that it would have third-party monitoring for compliance with health, safety, and environmental regulations. They also said they would pay a “safe recycling” bonus upon completion to incentivize safe operations by the scrapper.

NGO Shipbreaking Platform issued a statement today saying that there had been an accident at the yard killing one worker. They contend that the accident took place at the BW Cidade de São Vicente when a nitrogen tank was removed from the vessel and exploded killing the worker.

“The company can confirm that it, on April 21, was informed about a fatal accident at Priya Blue plot V1. The accident was unrelated to the ongoing recycling of former BW Offshore FPSOs at the yard,” BW Offshore responded in its statement. The company said its representative was in touch with the yard and offered to assist while referring all further questions to the scrapper in India.

In addition to saying that the FPSO was the site of the accident, the NGO also commented on the Indian yard while contending that BW Offshore had taken a higher value offer from the Indian yard versus a “more sustainable solution for the recycling of the vessel,” at a dry-dock and steel production facility in the Middle East.

Priya Blue Industries was amongst the first yards in India to obtain a so-called “Statement of Compliance with the Hong Kong Convention” from Japanese ClassNK, and is also a member of the Sustainable Shipping Initiative since 2018, acknowledged the NGO. They however contend that the yard along with others in Alang was cited in a European Commission audit for a series of structural deficiencies. They said this includes the lack of infrastructure to contain pollutants in the primary cutting area, the non-existence of capacity to handle several hazardous wastes originating from ships downstream, the absence of medical facilities, and breaches of labor laws.

Ingvild Jenssen, Executive Director of NGO Shipbreaking Platform said the group was encouraging BW Offshore to ensure that its end-of-life fleet is managed exclusively in facilities that can ensure the highest environmental and social standards. “When safer alternatives to beaching exist, ignoring the social and governance failings in Alang and contributing to the greenwashing of an outmoded and polluting method for the sake of more money is simply not acceptable anymore."

BW Offshore announced a month ago that it had sold a second vessel, FPSO Umuroa, also for recycling in India. They again stated that the yard is certified to ISO standards and has been issued with a Statement of Compliance by Class NK. They again will have a third-party representative and were offering a safe recycling incentive.

The debate over the use of South Asian yards for the end-of-life vessels continues with NGO Ship Breaking reporting in its annual report that those yards accounted for three-quarters of all vessels sold to be dismantled in 2021. They said that 583 of the largest tankers, bulkers, floating platforms, cargo- and passenger ships ended up on the beaches of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan while citing reports of injuries, fatalities, and environmental pollution at the yards.

 

12 Years Later: The Deepwater Horizon Spill

The fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon, April 2010 (USCG)

PUBLISHED APR 27, 2022 5:31 PM BY WILLIAM THIESEN

 

"Even Exxon Valdez pales in comparison to the volume, scale, number of Coast Guard resources, how much time has been devoted to [Deepwater Horizon]—all far exceed any previous event." - Capt. Duke Walker, Federal On-Scene Coordinator, U.S. Coast Guard, 2012

On the evening of April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up at the Macondo well site, 45 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana. The explosion resulted in the deaths of 11 workers and, within two days, the loss of the rig. The resulting spill of over 200 million gallons of crude oil became the largest discharge of oil in U.S. waters.

A century earlier, petroleum products had fueled tremendous growth in industrial, government and civilian uses. Oil products became common ship fuel and cargo and, offshore oilrigs grew in numbers as land-based reserves dried up.

The Coast Guard’s role in oil and chemical spill response officially began in 1924, when Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act. This act included the first federal statutes regulating the discharge of fossil fuels from seagoing vessels. In 1948, Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to protect public water supplies for public, agricultural, recreational and industrial uses. Coast Guard veterans will remark how laws mandating the service’s search and rescue mission were written in blood, but the service’s pollution response mission laws were written in oil.

After World War II, chemical spills and hazardous waste events began to occur frequently. Major spills in the 1960s brought attention to oil and chemical pollution, including the tanker Torrey Canyon oil spill in 1967 and the 1969 fire on Cleveland’s polluted Cuyahoga River. The 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill focused attention on the dangers of spills from offshore oil rigs. With these environmental disasters came greater awareness of chemical pollution spurring enactment of the U.S. National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (a.k.a. “NCP”) in 1968 and, in 1970, passage of the Water Quality Act and establishment of the nation’s annual Earth Day observance.

By the 1970s, tanker oil spills averaged nearly 80 per year worldwide. With these frequent spills came regulation of oil tankers and better technology for responding to spills. Congress tasked the Coast Guard with monitoring unauthorized substance discharge, enforcing ballast water regulations and ensuring that commercial vessels met U.S. environmental standards. In 1972, Congress made sweeping amendments to the Water Pollution Control Act, which came to be known as the Clean Water Act and resulted in establishment of the Coast Guard’s National Strike Force (NSF). In the 1970s and 1980s, the NSF’s oil and chemical spill responsibility expanded under several more environmental protection laws passed by Congress.

In 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran onto a rock ledge near Valdez, Alaska, causing the worst oil spill in U.S. waters up to that time. The disaster led to passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90). OPA 90 regulations created the Oil Spill Lability Trust fund and codified the “polluter pays” principle. OPA 90 also required alcohol and drug abuse monitoring of licensed mariners, and established legal penalties and a claims system for oil spill remediation. Enforcement of OPA 90 and protection of U.S. territorial waters became a vital part of the Service’s mission and led to a more robust Coast Guard response capability.

Picture of the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989 after she ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and spilled 15 million gallons of crude oil. (U.S. Coast Guard)

After Exxon Valdez, Coast Guard assets and personnel continued to respond to all kinds of oil and hazardous material releases, even some beyond U.S. waters. These events included the sabotaged oilrigs of the 1990 Persian Gulf War and consequent oil spills—considered one of the largest discharges of oil in history. Other spills included those caused by hurricanes Floyd, Katrina and Rita; barge and tanker oil spills of the 1990s and early 2000s; and aviation accidents, such as the 1999 Egypt Air and 2000 Alaska Airlines crashes.

Coast Guard units, including the NSF, played a leading role in responding to the Haiti Earthquake in 2010. That same year, the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion occurred. The resulting spill is considered the world’s largest maritime oil spill and the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The Deepwater gusher spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 60,000 barrels per day for nearly 90 days. The oil slick covered thousands of square miles of water and nearly 4,500 miles of Gulf shoreline.

Relief well drilling operations at the Deepwater Horizon response site (USCG)

Daniel Beltra / Greenpeace

From April 2010 through April 2014, the Coast Guard led the effort to clean and evaluate shoreline segments along the Gulf of Mexico. In 2012 and in 2013, the shoreline-cleaning program collected around seven million pounds of oily material. By the summer of 2013, shoreline remediation was deemed complete on the Gulf shores of Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In 2014, the program collected around 30,000 pounds of oily material, about one percent of the previous year’s total. By 2014, the bulk of oily material found consisted primarily of small tar balls dispersed along the shorelines. By then, it became difficult to distinguish between oil from Deepwater Horizon and oil from other sources found along the shoreline. By late February 2015, the Coast Guard shifted operational oversight of response effort to local commands along the Gulf Coast. 

The Coast Guard’s response to the Deepwater Horizon spill became the largest for an environmental disaster in the Service’s history. At the height of the effort, the Coast Guard-led command oversaw an armada of over 6,000 vessels, including skimmers, vessels of opportunity, research vessels, Coast Guard cutters, and specialized vessels. This command also established an Aviation Coordination Center that oversaw more than 120 aircraft vital to the response effort. To ensure the flow of commerce in the impacted area, the Coast Guard established a Marine Transportation System Recovery Unit. The combined efforts of these assets involved nearly 50,000 Coast Guard and civilian personnel.

Today, as part of its homeland security obligations, the Coast Guard responds to human and environmental impacts of oil discharges, hazardous material releases, and other disasters. The Coast Guard remains ready, relevant and responsive to adapt and expand its environmental protection mission to ever-changing natural and manmade threats to the nation and its marine environment.

William Thiesen is the Coast Guard Atlantic Area historian. This article was first released in 2020, and it is reproduced here courtesy of Coast Guard Compass. The original is no longer available online. 

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

 

IMO Urges Ratification of Cape Town Agreement on Fishing Vessel Safety

U.S. Coast Guard file image

PUBLISHED APR 28, 2022 1:11 AM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has renewed the push for countries to ratify the Cape Town fishing vessel safety agreement to help tackle the perennial problem of illegal fishing.

A decade after it was adopted in 2012, the international treaty that aims to make fishing safe, sustainable and legal as well as protect fishers has yet to come into force because too few countries have ratified it.

The treaty aims to establish standards for vessel construction and seaworthiness, nonslip decks, heating, ventilation of unmonitored machinery spaces, fire safety regulations, life-saving appliances, emergency procedures and radiocommunications, with the overall objective of making commercial fishing safe and sustainable.

“I remain confident that by working together, we will ensure the agreement enters into force to complete the missing pillar for safe, sustainable and legal fishing,” said Kitack Lim, IMO Secretary General.

He added the world cannot afford to be complacent when it comes to addressing the safety of fishers and fishing vessels, thus the need for countries to ratify the agreement to enable it to come into force.

To enter into force, the agreement must be ratified by 22 countries with a combined fleet of 3,600 fishing vessels with an aggregate 24 meters in length. Once that happens, fishers would be legally entitled to the same level of protection at sea that is enjoyed by merchant seafarers. So far, the Cape Town agreement has been ratified by 17 states with 1,925 fishing vessels declared.

Following a ministerial conference in 2019, more than 50 states have signed the Torremolinos Declaration to indicate their determination to ratify the agreement by its tenth anniversary, which will be in October. If the agreement is fully ratified by October, it could enter into force as early as October 2023.

According to Peter Horn, Project Director International Fisheries at the US-based NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, by ratifying the agreement, states will make it clear that they want fish and seafood that was caught only in a safe and sustainable way to enter their markets.

“The agreement is relevant anywhere fish and seafood products are consumed, which means everywhere in the world. Besides, consumers are increasingly demanding that the seafood they buy be sustainably caught,” he said.

Entry into force of the agreement will usher in an international regime that would contribute to the broader fight against illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities. This would help to protect world fish stocks, ensure fair competition in fishing, better working conditions, and safeguard fishers from human rights abuses.

Additionally, the regime would help to reduce marine litter from fishing vessels. It would also reduce search and rescue missions responding to distress calls from poorly-maintained fishing vessels.

The journey for bringing a binding safety regime for fishing vessels into force began in Torremolinos, Spain in 1977 with the adoption of the Torremolinos international convention for the safety of fishing vessels. In 1993, the Torremolinos Protocol was adopted, but it also did not achieve the desired level of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession due to legal and technical difficulties.

In 2012, the Cape Town agreement was adopted to address the difficulties and to facilitate ratification of a binding instrument establishing an international safety regime for fishing vessels.

 

New Zealand Unions Call for Safety Review After Two Cargo-Ops Deaths

File image courtesy Lyttelton Port Company

PUBLISHED APR 26, 2022 10:32 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

A stevedore was killed at the Port of Lyttelton, New Zealand on Monday, marking the second longshore fatality in the small island nation in the span of a week.

The casualty occurred aboard the bulker ETG Aquarius at Lyttelton's Cashin Quay. The worker was employed by the Lyttelton Port Company (LPC), which confirmed the accident in a brief statement. 

"Sadly an LPC staff member has passed away while the vessel was being loaded with coal for export," LPC CEO Kirstie Gardener said. "Our focus right now is on supporting our staff and the family of our LPC team member at this tragic time."

Just last Tuesday, another stevedore died in an accident at the Ports of Auckland on New Zealand's North Island. 26-year-old Atiroa Tuaiti, an employee of Wallace Investments, was killed aboard the boxship Capitaine Tasman when he sustained a fall on April 19. 

"We've got a terrible record in the industry in the last few years," Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison told Radio New Zealand. "It's not a big industry and if you compare us to the Australian steel and mining industries, which have far greater volumes and not anywhere the fatalities or harm we seem to be facing, we can't be doing this every week - we shouldn't be doing it at all."

New Zealand's Minister of Transport has directed the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) to look into the circumstances of the two accidents and provide an independent safety investigation, including an examination of any potential system-wide factors in the ports sector. 

A safety review at the Ports of Auckland in 2021 found "systemic" issues with safety management and safety culture, and the port's CEO stepped down after the results were published. Auckland has experienced four fatal port accidents since 2017, including a well-publicized incident in which a swimmer was struck by a speeding pilot boat. 

Wildfires in US, Canadian boreal forests could release sizable amount of remaining global carbon budget

New Science Advances study finds reducing these emissions should be factored into fire management decisions, budgets

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS

WASHINGTON (April 27, 2022)—A paper by U.S. scientists published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances today finds that fires occurring in U.S. and Canadian boreal forests between now and 2050 could release about 3% of the remaining global carbon budget unless greater investments are made to limit fire size in these carbon-rich forests. The first-of-its-kind study was led by Dr. Carly Phillips, a fellow with the Western States Climate Team at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and co-authored with a team of researchers from the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Tufts University, Harvard University, the University of California, and Hamilton College. 

The latest scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes clear that countries have a quickly narrowing window to rein in heat-trapping emissions. To meet the Paris Agreement’s principal goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid some of the worst climate change impacts, nations need to drastically reduce heat-trapping emissions during this consequential decade and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“Wildfires in boreal forests can be especially harmful in terms of the amount of emissions they release into the atmosphere since they store about two-thirds of the world’s forest carbon, most of which is contained in the soil and has accumulated over hundreds or even thousands of years,” said Dr. Phillips. “If not properly contained, heat-trapping emissions from wildfires in boreal forests could dramatically increase, jeopardizing nations’ ability to limit warming in line with the Paris Agreement.”

The study found that by midcentury, burned area in Alaskan and Canadian boreal forests is projected to increase as much as 169% and 150%, respectively, releasing nearly 12 gigatons of net carbon emissions—equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.6 billion cars—which represents about 3% of the remaining global carbon budget. These estimates are conservative, as the study did not assess the potential for boreal forest wildfires to accelerate permafrost thaw and other ecosystem processes that could further increase net carbon emissions.

“Governments rightly prioritize rapid suppression of wildfires that occur near heavily populated areas and crucial infrastructure, but allow other areas that hold large amounts of carbon to burn–a practice hazardous to the health and safety of communities in Alaska, Canada and beyond,” said Dr. Peter Frumhoff, a research scientist at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment and a co-author of the study. “Expanding fire management to keep wildfires near historical levels across boreal North America would provide multiple benefits and leave us far better positioned to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

Despite contributing an outsized share of carbon emissions, U.S. and Canadian boreal forests are given disproportionately small amounts of funding for fire suppression efforts. Alaska, for example, accounts for roughly 20% of burned land area and half of U.S. fire emissions annually, yet only receives about 4%, on average, of federal fire management funding. The study found the average cost of avoiding the emission of 1 ton of carbon dioxide was about $12, a cost comparable to or below that of other measures to mitigate climate change. In Alaska, that would mean investing an average of $696 million per year over the next decade to keep the state’s wildfire emissions at historical levels.

“Reducing boreal forest fires to near-historical levels and keeping carbon in the ground will require additional investments,” said Dr. Brendan Rogers, an associate scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center and co-author of the study. “These funds are comparatively low and pale in comparison to the costs countries will face to cope with the growing health consequences exacerbated by worsening air quality and the more frequent and intense climate impacts that are expected if emissions continue to rise unabated. They can also ensure wildlife, tourism, jobs, and many other facets of our society can persevere in a warming world.”

A corresponding UCS fact sheet is available here. Related blog posts by Dr. Phillips and by Dr. Rogers are also available.

More information can be found online in the Science Advances press package at eurekalert.org. Reporters will need their user ID and password to access the information.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet's most pressing problems. Joining with people across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future. For more information, go to www.ucsusa.org.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abl7161 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Escalating carbon emissions from North American boreal forest wildfires and the climate mitigation potential of fire management

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

27-Apr-2022

Climate change will more than double the risk of intense tropical cyclones by 2050

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON

Human-caused climate change will make strong tropical cyclones twice as frequent by the middle of the century, putting large parts of the world at risk, according to a new study published in Scientific Advances. The analysis also projects that maximum wind speeds associated with these cyclones could increase around 20%.

Despite being amongst the world’s most destructive extreme weather events, tropical cyclones are relatively rare. In a given year, only around 80-100 tropical cyclones form globally, most of which never make landfall. In addition, accurate global historical records are scarce, making it hard to predict where they will occur and what actions Governments should take to prepare.

To overcome this limitation, an international group of scientists involving Ivan Haigh from the University of Southampton developed a new approach that combined historical data with global climate models to generate hundreds of thousands of “synthetic tropical cyclones”.

Dr. Nadia Bloemendaal  from the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who led the study, said:

“Our results can help identify the locations prone to the largest increase in tropical cyclone risk. Local governments can then take measures to reduce risk in their region, so that damage and fatalities can be reduced”

“With our publicly available data, we can now analyse tropical cyclone risk more accurately for every individual coastal city or region”

By creating a very large dataset with these computer-generated cyclones, which have similar features to natural cyclones, the researchers were able to much more accurately project the occurrence and behaviour of tropical cyclones around the world over the next decades in the face of climate change, even in regions where tropical cyclones hardly ever occur today.

The team’s analysis found that the frequency of the most intense cyclones, those from Category 3 or higher, will double globally due to climate change, while weaker tropical cyclones and tropical storms will become less common in most of the world’s regions. The exception to this will be the Bay of Bengal, where the researchers found a decrease in the frequency of intense cyclones

Many of the most at risk locations will be in low-income countries. Countries where tropical cyclones are relatively rare today will see an increased risk in the coming years, including Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique and many Pacific Island Nations, such as the Solomon Islands and Tonga. Globally, Asia will see the largest increase in the number of people exposed to tropical cyclones, with additional millions exposed in China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

Dr. Ivan Haigh, Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, said:

“Of particular concern is that the results of our study highlight that some regions that don’t currently experience tropical cyclones are likely to in the near future with climate change”

“The new tropical cyclone dataset we have produced will greatly aid the mapping of changing flood risk in tropical cyclone regions”

The study could help governments and organisations better assess the risk from tropical cyclones, thereby supporting the development of risk mitigation strategies to minimise impacts and loss of life.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abm8438 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A globally consistent local-scale assessment of future tropical cyclone risk

Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossible

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: ARTIST IMPRESSION OF A SUPERCONDUCTING CHIP view more 

CREDIT: TU DELFT

Associate professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at TU Delft have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911 – up till now. The discovery, published in Nature, makes use of 2D quantum materials and paves the way towards superconducting computing. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, all with zero energy loss. Ali: “If the 20th century was the century of semi-conductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.”

During the 20th century many scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, have puzzled over the nature of superconductivity, which was discovered by Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 (read more about this in the frame below). In superconductors, a current goes through a wire without any resistance, which means inhibiting this current or even blocking it is hardly possible – let alone getting the current to flow only one way and not the other. That Ali’s group managed to make superconducting one-directional – necessary for computing – is remarkable: one can compare it to inventing a special type of ice which gives you zero friction when skating one way, but insurmountable friction the other way.

Superconductor: super-fast, super-green
The advantages of applying superconductors to electronics are twofold. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, and implementing superconductors into our daily lives would make IT much greener: if you were to spin a superconducting wire from here to the moon, it would transport the energy without any loss. For instance, the use of superconductors instead of regular semi-conductors might safe up to 10% of all western energy reserves according to NWO.

The (im)possibility of applying superconducting
In the 20th century and beyond, no one could tackle the barrier of making superconducting electrons go in just one-direction, which is a fundamental property needed for computing and other modern electronics (consider for example diodes that go one way as well). In normal conduction the electrons fly around as separate particles; in superconductors they move in pairs of twos, without any loss of electrical energy. In the 70s, scientists at IBM tried out the idea of superconducting computing but had to stop their efforts: in their papers on the subject, IBM mentions that without non-reciprocal superconductivity, a computer running on superconductors is impossible.

Interview with corresponding author Mazhar Ali

Q: Why, when one-way direction works with normal semi-conduction, has one-way superconductivity never worked before?

Mazhar Ali: “Electrical conduction in semiconductors, like Si, can be one-way because of a fixed internal electric dipole, so a net built in potential they can have.  The textbook example is the famous "pn junction"; where we slap together two semiconductors: one has extra electrons (-) and the other has extra holes (+). The separation of charge makes a net built in potential that an electron flying through the system will feel. This breaks symmetry and can result in "one-way" properties because forward vs backwards, for example, are no longer the same. There is a difference in going in the same direction as the dipole vs going against it; similar to if you were swimming with the river or swimming up the river.”

“Superconductors never had an analog of this one-directional idea without magnetic field; since they are more related to metals (i.e. conductors, as the name says) than semiconductors, which always conduct in both directions and don't have any built in potential. Similarly, Josephson Junctions (JJs), which are sandwiches of two superconductors with non-superconducting, classical barrier materials in-between the superconductors, also haven't had any particular symmetry-breaking mechanism that resulted in a difference between "forward" and "backwards".

Q: How did you manage to do what first seemed impossible?

Ali: “It was really the result of one of my group's fundamental research directions. In what we call "Quantum Material Josephson Junctions" (QMJJs), we replace the classical barrier material in JJs with a quantum material barrier, where the quantum material's intrinsic properties can modulate the coupling between the two superconductors in novel ways. The Josephson Diode was an example of this: we used the quantum material Nb3Br8, which is a 2D material like graphene that has been theorized to host a net electric dipole, as our quantum material barrier of choice and placed it between two superconductors.”

“We were able to peel off just a couple atomic layers of this Nb3Br8 and make a very, very thin sandwich  - just a few atomic layers thick - which was needed for making the Josephson diode, and was not possible with normal 3D materials. Nb3Br8, is part of a group of new quantum materials being developed by our collaborators, Professor Tyrel McQueen’s and his group at Johns Hopkins University in the USA, and was a key piece in us realizing the Josephson diode for the first time.”   

Q: What does this discovery mean in terms of impact and applications?

Ali: “Many technologies are based on old versions of JJ superconductors, for example MRI technology. Also, quantum computing today is based on Josephson Junctions. Technology which was previously only possible using semi-conductors can now potentially be made with superconductors using this building block. This includes faster computers, as in computers with up to terahertz speed, which is 300 to 400 times faster than the computers we are now using. This will influence all sorts of societal and technological applications. If the 20th century was the century of semi-conductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.”

“The first research direction we have to tackle for commercial application is raising the operating temperature. Here we used a very simple superconductor that limited the operating temperature. Now we want to work with the known so-called "High Tc Superconductors", and see whether we can operate Josephson diodes at temperatures above 77 K, since this will allow for liquid nitrogen cooling. The second thing to tackle is scaling of production. While it’s great that we proved this works in nanodevices, we only made a handful. The next step will be to investigate how to scale production to millions of Josephson diodes on a chip.”

Q: How sure are you of your case?

Ali:  “There are several steps which all scientists need to take to maintain scientific rigor. The first is to make sure their results are repeatable. In this case we made many devices, from scratch, with different batches of materials, and found the same properties every time, even when measured on different machines in different countries by different people. This told us that the Josephson diode result was coming from our combination of materials and not some spurious result of dirt, geometry, machine or user error or interpretation.”

“We also carried out "smoking gun" experiments that dramatically narrows the possibility for interpretation. In this case, to be sure that we had a superconducting diode effect we actually tried "switching" the diode; as in we applied the same magnitude of current in both forward and reverse directions and showed that we actually measured no resistance (superconductivity) in one direction and real resistance (normal conductivity) in the other direction.”

“We also measured this effect while applying magnetic fields of different magnitudes and showed that the effect was clearly present at 0 applied field and gets killed by an applied field. This is also a smoking gun for our claim of having a superconducting diode effect at zero-applied field, a very important point for technological applications. This is because magnetic fields at the nanometer scale are very difficult to control and limit, so for practical applications, it is generally desired to operate without requiring local magnetic fields.”

Q: Is it realistic for ordinary computers (or even the supercomputers of KNMI and IBM) to make use of superconducting?

Ali: “Yes it is! Not for people at home, but for server farms or for supercomputers, it would be smart to implement this. Centralized computation is really how the world works now-a-days. Any and all intensive computation is done at centralized facilities where localization adds huge benefits in terms of power management, heat management, etc. The existing infrastructure could be adapted without too much cost to work with Josephson diode based electronics. There is a very real chance, if the challenges discussed in the other question are overcome, that this will revolutionize centralized and supercomputing!”

Paper
‘The field-free Josephson diode in a van der Waals heterostructure', Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04504-8

Contact
Press officer Elianna Kraan: E.N.Kraan@tudelft.nl
Prof. Dr. Mazhar Ali: M.N.Ali@tudelft.nl

More information
On May 18th – 19th, Professor Mazhar Ali and his collaborators Prof. Valla Fatemi (Cornell University) and Dr. Heng Wu (TU Delft) are hosting a “Superconducting Diode Effects Workshop” on the Virtual Science Forum, in which 12 international experts in the field will be giving recorded talks online (to be published on YouTube) about the current state of the field as well as future research and development directions. 

Associate professor Mazhar Ali studied at UC Berkeley and Princeton and did his postdoc at IBM and won the Sofia Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany before joining the faculty of Applied Sciences in Delft.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-04504-8 

ARTICLE TITLE

The field-free Josephson diode in a van der Waals heterostructure

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

27-Apr-2022

Classifying exoplanet atmospheres opens new field of study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF NATURAL SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: ARTIST’S CONCEPTUAL IMAGE OF THE 25 EXOPLANETS EXAMINED IN THIS STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: ESA/HUBBLE, N. BARTMANN

An international team of researchers examined data for 25 exoplanets and found some links among the properties of the atmospheres, including the thermal profiles and chemical abundances in them. This marks the first time exoplanet atmospheres have been studied as populations, rather than individually. These findings will help establish a generalized theory of planet formation which will improve our understanding of all planets, including the Earth.

Today there are more than 3000 confirmed exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Because they are far away from Earth, it is difficult to study them in detail. Determining the characteristics of even one exoplanet has been a noteworthy accomplishment.

In this research, astronomers used archival data for 25 hot Jupiters, gas giant planets that orbit close to their host stars. The data included 600 hours of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and more than 400 hours of observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

One of the characteristics investigated by the team was the presence or absence of a “thermal inversion.” Planetary atmospheres trap heat, so in general the temperature increases as you probe deeper into the atmosphere. But some planets show a thermal inversion where an upper layer of the atmosphere is warmer than the layer beneath it. On Earth, the presence of ozone causes a thermal inversion. The team found that almost all of the hot Jupiters with a thermal inversion also showed evidence for hydrogen anion (H-) and metallic species such as titanium oxide (TiO), vanadium oxide (VO), or iron hydride (FeH). Conversely, exoplanets without these chemicals almost never had thermal inversions. It is difficult to draw conclusions based on correlation alone, but since these metallic species are efficient absorbers of stellar light, one theory holds that when these chemicals are present in the upper atmosphere, they absorb light from the host star and cause the temperature to increase.

Masahiro Ikoma at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a co-investigator in this study, explains, “The theory of gas giant formation proposed by my students and I predicted diversity in the composition of hot Jupiter atmospheres, and helped to motivate this systematic survey of atmospheric characteristics.”

This new study, identifying populations of similar exoplanet atmospheres, will help refine the theoretical models, bringing us closer to a comprehensive understanding of planet formation. In the coming decade, new data from next-generation space telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Twinkle, and Ariel, will provide data for thousands of exoplanets, both enabling and necessitating new categories for classifying exoplanets beyond the methods explored in this research.

These results appeared as Changeat et al. “Five key exoplanet questions answered via the analysis of 25 hot Jupiter atmospheres in eclipse” in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on April 25, 2022.

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JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

DOI

10.3847/1538-4365/ac5cc2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Five key exoplanet questions answered via the analysis of 25 hot-Jupiter atmospheres in eclipse

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Apr-2022