New Study Indicates North Atlantic Is Close to a “Tipping Point”

By UNIVERSITY OF EXETER OCTOBER 20, 2022

The findings indicate that, before the Little Ice Age, the North Atlantic climate system lost resilience and destabilized, potentially forcing it to “tip” into a new, colder state.

A Little Ice Age study reveals new information about the North Atlantic climate system.

Scientists have examined centuries-old clam shells to determine how the North Atlantic climate system reached a “tipping point” before the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age, a period of regional cooling that was particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic, lasted for many centuries and came to an end in about 1850.

A long-standing theory contends that the period’s initial cooling was maintained by “sea-ice to ocean feedbacks”; as the sea ice expanded, ocean currents slowed, which in turn decreased the flow of warm water from the south.

The University of Exeter conducted a new study that examined how the ocean has changed and responded to external changes over the last few centuries using the shells of quahog clams, which can survive for several hundred years.

Ocean quahog clam. Credit: Paul Kay

The results demonstrate that the North Atlantic climate system lost resilience (the ability to recover from external changes) and destabilized before the Little Ice Age, which may have caused it to “tip” into a new, colder state. Additionally, according to the experts, a new tipping point in the North Atlantic may be near, which has major consequences for the climate of the region.

The work aids in our understanding of how and when tipping points are triggered, which is important given that scientists have warned that many tipping points may now be approaching worldwide due to human-driven climate change.

“One way to tell that a system is approaching a sudden transition is that it becomes slow to respond to perturbations (external changes),” said lead author Beatriz Arellano-Nava, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. “In other words, a system loses the ability to return to its average state, and can instead ‘tip’ into a new state.”

“In the case of the North Atlantic prior to the Little Ice Age, this loss of resilience made the system vulnerable to an abrupt switch, potentially heralding the transition to Little Ice Age conditions,” said Dr. Paul Halloran, who co-led the research.

The new study warns that the vulnerability of the North Atlantic system is a critical issue today, with recent analysis suggesting it has destabilized during the last century and might be approaching a tipping point.

“Our latest analysis suggests that the system of ocean currents in the northern North Atlantic could be at risk of a tipping point again now due to global warming, leading once again to abrupt climate change over Europe,” said Professor Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute.

Analysis of clam shells focussed on oxygen and carbon isotopes and shell growth – all of which can be used as measures of environmental variability.

Reference: “Destabilisation of the Subpolar North Atlantic prior to the Little Ice Age” by Beatriz Arellano-Nava, Paul R. Halloran, Chris A. Boulton, James Scourse, Paul G. Butler, David J. Reynolds, and Timothy M. Lenton, 25 August 2022, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32653-x

The study was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

GEMOLOGY/GEOLOGY 

An Underground Ocean? Scientists Discover Water Deep Within Earth

By GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT OCTOBER 19, 2022

The scientists discovered evidence of water hundreds of kilometers deep.

An international research team led by a Goethe University professor analyzes diamond inclusions.

The boundary layer between the upper and lower mantles of the Earth is known as the transition zone (TZ). It is located between 410 and 660 kilometers (between 255 and 410 miles) under the surface. The olive-green mineral olivine, commonly known as peridot, which makes up around 70% of the Earth’s upper mantle, changes its crystalline structure at the extreme pressure of up to 23,000 bar in the TZ. At a depth of around 410 kilometers (255 miles), at the upper edge of the transition zone, it changes into denser wadsleyite, and at a depth of 520 kilometers (323 miles), it transforms into even denser ringwoodite.

“These mineral transformations greatly hinder the movements of rock in the mantle,” explains Professor Frank Brenker from the Institute for Geosciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt. For example, mantle plumes – rising columns of hot rock from the deep mantle – sometimes stop directly below the transition zone. The movement of mass in the opposite direction also comes to standstill. Brenker says, “Subducting plates often have difficulty in breaking through the entire transition zone. So there is a whole graveyard of such plates in this zone underneath Europe.”

The diamond from Botswana revealed to scientists that considerable amounts of water are stored in the rock at a depth of more than 600 kilometers. Credit: Tingting Gu, Gemological Institute of America, New York, NY, USA

However, until now it was not known what the long-term effects of “sucking” material into the transition zone were on its geochemical composition and whether larger quantities of water existed there. Brenker explains: “The subducting slabs also carry deep-sea sediments piggyback into the Earth’s interior. These sediments can hold large quantities of water and CO2. But until now it was unclear just how much enters the transition zone in the form of more stable, hydrous minerals and carbonates – and it was therefore also unclear whether large quantities of water really are stored there.”

The current circumstances would undoubtedly favor this. The thick minerals wadsleyite and ringwoodite can hold significant amounts of water (unlike olivine at lower depths), so much so that the transition zone could hypothetically absorb six times the quantity of water in our oceans. “So we knew that the boundary layer has an enormous capacity for storing water,” Brenker says. “However, we didn’t know whether it actually did so.”

The answer has now been provided by an international study. The research team analyzed a diamond from Botswana, Africa. It originated at a depth of 660 kilometers, directly at the interface between the transition zone and the lower mantle, where the dominant mineral is ringwoodite. Diamonds from this location are very rare, even among the extremely rare diamonds of super-deep origin, which account for just 1% of all diamonds. The studies found that the stone had a high water content due to the presence of many ringwoodite inclusions. The study team was also able to establish the chemical composition of the stone.

It was almost exactly the same as that of virtually every fragment of mantle rock found in basalts anywhere in the world. This showed that the diamond definitely came from a normal piece of the Earth’s mantle. “In this study, we have demonstrated that the transition zone is not a dry sponge, but holds considerable quantities of water,” Brenker says, adding: “This also brings us one step closer to Jules Verne’s idea of an ocean inside the Earth.” The difference is that there is no ocean down there, but hydrous rock which, according to Brenker, would neither feel wet nor drip water.

Hydrous ringwoodite was first detected in a diamond from the transition zone as early as 2014. Brenker was involved in that study, too. However, it was not possible to determine the precise chemical composition of the stone because it was too small. It, therefore, remained unclear how representative the first study was of the mantle in general, as the water content of that diamond could also have resulted from an exotic chemical environment. By contrast, the inclusions in the 1.5-centimeter (0.6 inches) diamond from Botswana, which the research team investigated in the present study, were large enough to allow the precise chemical composition to be determined, and this supplied final confirmation of the preliminary results from 2014.

The transition zone’s high water content has far-reaching consequences for the dynamic situation inside the Earth. What this leads to can be seen, for example, in the hot mantle plumes coming from below, which get stuck in the transition zone. There, they heat up the water-rich transition zone, which in turn leads to the formation of new smaller mantle plumes that absorb the water stored in the transition zone.

If these smaller water-rich mantle plumes now migrate further upwards and break through the boundary to the upper mantle, the following happens: The water contained in the mantle plumes is released, which lowers the melting point of the emerging material. It, therefore, melts immediately and not just before it reaches the surface, as usually happens. As a result, the rock masses in this part of the Earth’s mantle are no longer as tough overall, which gives the mass movements more dynamism. The transition zone, which otherwise acts as a barrier to the dynamics there, suddenly becomes a driver of global material circulation.

Reference: “Hydrous peridotitic fragments of Earth’s mantle 660 km discontinuity sampled by a diamond” by Tingting Gu, Martha G. Pamato, Davide Novella, Matteo Alvaro, John Fournelle, Frank E. Brenker, Wuyi Wang and Fabrizio Nestola, 26 September 2022, Nature Geoscience.
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-01024-y

Study Finds That Children Don’t Actually Believe Everything They Are Told

By  SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT OCTOBER 20, 2022

The study discovered that most kids, regardless of their age, engaged in testing surprising claims.

Older children are more likely to effectively test surprising claims made by adults.

Children learn by observing and experimenting on their own. They also gain knowledge from what others teach them, particularly adults and authoritative figures like parents and teachers. When children discover something surprising, they probe for further details by asking questions or verifying claims.

Previous studies have shown that children’s willingness to investigate adults’ surprising claims varies with age, with six-year-olds being more inclined than four- and five-year-olds to do so. However, little is known about the reasons why children ask questions after hearing something surprising from adults. Researchers from the University of Toronto and Harvard University have just released a new study in the journal Child Development that tries to provide an answer to this question.

“The research shows that as children age, they become more skeptical of what adults tell them,” said Samantha Cottrell, senior lab member from the Childhood Learning and Development (ChiLD) Lab at the University of Toronto.“This explains why older children are more likely to try to verify claims and are more intentional about their exploration of objects.”

Across two preregistered studies, researchers set out to clarify whether and why children explore surprising claims.

109 children aged four to six participated in the first study, which was carried out in person between September 2019 and March 2020 in the Greater Toronto Area of Canada. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the facility was closed for in-person testing in March 2020, resulting in fewer tests than expected. Of the 108 parents who provided information about their child’s ethnicity, 49% identified their child as White, 21% as Mixed Ethnicity or Race, and 19% as Southeast Asian. Almost all parents provided information regarding their educational history, with 18% of children having parents who did not attend university, 34% having one parent who attended university, and 48% having two parents who attended =.

Children were presented with three familiar objects: a rock, a piece of sponge-like material, and a hacky sack. An experimenter began by asking the children, “Do you think this rock is hard or soft?” All children stated that the rock was hard. Children were then randomly assigned to be told something that contradicted their beliefs about the world (“Actually, this rock is soft, not hard”) or told something that confirmed their intuition (“That’s right, this rock is hard”).

Following these statements, all children were again asked, “So, do you think this rock is hard or soft?” Almost all children who heard claims that aligned with their beliefs continued to make the same judgment as before: that the rock was hard. In contrast, few of the children who were told that the rock was soft continued to make the same judgment as before. The experimenter then told the children that they had to leave the room for a phone call and left the children to explore the object on their own. Children’s behavior was video-recorded. The study found that most children regardless of age engaged in testing surprising claims.

The authors hypothesized that previously reported age differences in children’s exploration of surprising claims might reflect developments in children’s ability to use exploration to test more complex claims. It could also be that with increasing age, the motivation behind children’s exploration changes, with younger children exploring because they believed what they had been told and wanted to see the surprising event, and older children exploring because they were skeptical of what they had been told.

In the second study, which was conducted between September and December 2020, 154 4- to 7-year-old children were recruited from the same area as in the first study. Parents of 132 of the 154 children reported their ethnicity as 50% White, 20% Mixed Ethnicity or Race, and 17% Southeast Asian. Nearly all parents answered questions about their educational background with 20% of children having parents who did not attend university, 35% having one parent who attended university, and 45% having two parents who attended university.

Over Zoom (due to Covid-19 restrictions), an experimenter shared their screen and presented each participating child with eight vignettes. For each vignette, children were told that the adult made a surprising claim (for example, “The rock is soft” or “The sponge is harder than the rock”) and was asked what another child should do in response to that claim and why they should do that. The results indicate that older children (six- and seven-year-olds) were more likely than younger children to suggest an exploration strategy tailored to the claim they heard (that is, touching the rock in the first example but touching the rock and the sponge in the second example). The results also show that with increasing age, children are increasingly justifying exploration as a means of verifying the adult’s surprising claim. These findings suggest that as children age, even when they are equally likely to engage in an exploration of surprising claims, they become more aware of their doubts about what adults tell them, and as a result, their exploration becomes more intentional, targeted, and efficient.

“There is still a lot we don’t know,” said Samuel Ronfard, assistant professor at the University of Toronto and lab director at the Childhood Learning and Development (ChiLD) Lab. “But, what’s clear is that children don’t believe everything they are told. They think about what they’ve been told and if they’re skeptical, they seek out additional information that could confirm or disconfirm it.”

Reference: “Older children verify adult claims because they are skeptical of those claims” by Samantha Cottrell, Eric Torres, Paul L. Harris and Samuel Ronfard, 12 September 2022, Child Development.
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13847

The study was funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Common Weed Discovered To Be a “Super Plant”

By YALE UNIVERSITY OCTOBER 18, 2022

Scientists may come up with new strategies to engineer crops like corn to help endure prolonged drought by better understanding the novel plant metabolic pathway in the plant.

The weed could also hold the key to drought-resistant crops.

In a world troubled by climate change, a common weed provides crucial hints about how to develop drought-resistant crops.

Purslane, also known as Portulaca oleracea, combines two different metabolic pathways to produce a unique sort of photosynthesis that allows the plant to withstand drought while remaining extremely productive, according to Yale University scientists. The researchers recently published their findings in the journal Science Advances.

“This is a very rare combination of traits and has created a kind of ‘super plant’ — one that could be potentially useful in endeavors such as crop engineering,” said Yale’s Erika Edwards, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author of the paper.

Plants have developed a diverse set of processes to enhance photosynthesis, the process by which green plants utilize sunlight to synthesize nutrients from carbon dioxide and water. Corn and sugarcane, for example, evolved C4 photosynthesis, which allows the plant to stay productive at high temperatures. Succulents, such as cacti and agaves, have another kind of photosynthesis known as CAM photosynthesis, which allows them to live in deserts and other dry regions. C4 and CAM have different functions, yet they both use the same biochemical pathway to act as “add-ons” to conventional photosynthesis.

Purslane is unique in that it exhibits both of these evolutionary adaptations, allowing it to be both highly productive and drought tolerant, an unusual combination for a plant. Most scientists assumed that C4 and CAM operated independently inside purslane leaves.

But the Yale team, led by co-corresponding authors and postdoctoral scholars Jose Moreno-Villena and Haoran Zhou, conducted a spatial analysis of gene expression within the leaves of purslane and found that C4 and CAM activity is totally integrated. They operate in the same cells, with products of CAM reactions being processed by the C4 pathway. This system provides unusual levels of protection for a C4 plant in times of drought.

The researchers also built metabolic flux models that predicted the emergence of an integrated C4+CAM system that mirrors their experimental results.

Understanding this novel metabolic pathway could help scientists devise new ways to engineer crops such as corn to help withstand prolonged drought, the authors say.

“In terms of engineering a CAM cycle into a C4 crop, such as maize, there is still a lot of work to do before that could become a reality,” said Edwards. “But what we’ve shown is that the two pathways can be efficiently integrated and share products. C4 and CAM are more compatible than we had thought, which leads us to suspect that there are many more C4+CAM species out there, waiting to be discovered.”

Reference: “Spatial resolution of an integrated C4+CAM photosynthetic metabolism” by Jose J. Moreno-Villena, Haoran Zhou, Ian S. Gilman, S. Lori Tausta, C. Y. Maurice Cheung and Erika J. Edwards, 5 August 2022, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2349

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Threat to sue New Zealand bird of the year competition if it doesn’t include extinct species

A bird lover wants Forest & Bird to include the huia, a songbird that was sacred to Māori that hasn’t been seen since 1907

A painting of the extinct huia, which a New Zealand bird lover wants added to the country’s bird of the year competition. Photograph: Science History Images/Alamy

Eva Corlett in Wellington
@evacorlettWed 19 Oct 2022

A passionate New Zealand bird lover has threatened the country’s popular bird of the year competition with legal action if it fails to include a bird that has been extinct for more than 100 years.

In a phone call and follow-up email to Forest & Bird, which runs the competition, now in its 17th year, a man said he was calling upon the group to “urgently include” the extinct huia as a 2022 candidate.


The huia – a striking songbird that was sacred to Māori and prized for its black and white tail feathers – was last sighted in 1907. Introduced pests, habitat destruction and, to a lesser extent, hunting devastated the population.

Poem of the week: Huia by Bill Manhire

In his letter, which Forest & Bird posted to social media, the man wrote: “It is time for New Zealanders to be given the opportunity to recognise the existential damage inflicted upon so many of our feathered friends as a result of our obsession with pasture and plantation,” adding that it was an opportunity to “mourn so sad and desolate a loss”.

“There is currently in circulation the insane assertion that New Zealand is the most efficient producer of beef in the world and that we should intensify production to prevent less efficient nations from taking up any shortfall,” he wrote.

“We need to be urgently reminded of what we have already lost, if we are to minimise further loss.”

He went on to describe the legal actions he may take, including an injunction to suspend voting until the huia is made a candidate, or failing that, a class action “on behalf of all the extinct birds of New Zealand, which will allege discrimination on the basis of conservation status”.



A Forest & Bird spokesperson, Ellen Rykers said the competition always “inspires such passion in New Zealanders” but the team had not yet heard from the man’s lawyers.

Adding extinct birds to the competition was not a new idea and had been floated before, Rykers said. “This year, we have gone with the ‘under-birds’, but maybe we’ll look at it in future years.”

Roughly 50 birds have become extinct since humans arrived in New Zealand.

“Highlighting what we’ve lost and connecting it to the fact that about 80% of our native bird species are threatened, or at risk of extinction, could be an interesting thing,” Rykers said.

Greenpeace Wants To Ban Private Jet Flights From Dutch Airports

October 20, 2022 by Admin

In the first nine months of 2022, some 16,147 private flights were operated to and from Schiphol and Rotterdam airports, more private flights than in the whole of 2019, before the pandemic. In a study published on Thursday, the environmental organization Greenpeace denounced the climate impact of the sharp increase in the number of private jet flights from Dutch airports, arguing for their ban.


This increasingly frequent use of this luxury transport is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of nearly 40,000 cars per year.

“We are shocked that in times of climate crisis, a certain group has started flying not less but more in private jets which are the most polluting,” said Dewi Zloch, climate and energy expert at Greenpeace Netherlands. . “We have to stop this, so we are advocating for a ban on private flights.”

Majorca, Ibiza and Cannes, popular destinations

The study by Dutch environmental think tank CE Delft also showed that one in three private flights departing from Schiphol or The Hague-Rotterdam airport were used for journeys of less than 500 kilometres.

“Popular destinations include Paris and even Antwerp, cities easily accessible by train,” Greenpeace added in a statement. “The most popular flights are to destinations like Mallorca, Ibiza and Cannes.”

Greenpeace pointed out that private flights are not included in the climate targets set by the Dutch government and are not included in the maximum of 440,000 flights per year set for 2023 at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. “This exception for private jets shows exactly what is wrong with the aviation industry,” added Dewi Zloch. “We want the aviation industry to stop polluting and finally have climate goals. The first step is to cut short flights and luxury private jets for the wealthy.”

Business class passengers also take up a lot of space on planes. According to the study, if business class were replaced by regular seats, many more passengers could fit in the aircraft.

America's new nuclear power industry has a Russian problem

By Sarah Mcfarlane, Timothy Gardner and Susanna Twidale
October 20, 2022

REUTERS

WASHINGTON/LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - U.S. firms developing a new generation of small nuclear power plants to help cut carbon emissions have a big problem: only one company sells the fuel they need, and it's Russian.

That's why the U.S. government is urgently looking to use some of its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium to help fuel the new advanced reactors and kick-start an industry it sees as crucial for countries to meet global net-zero emissions goals.

"Production of HALEU is a critical mission and all efforts to increase its production are being evaluated," a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said.

The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has renewed interest in nuclear power. Backers of smaller, next-generation reactors say they are more efficient, quicker to build, and could turbocharge the shift away from fossil fuels.

But without a reliable source of the high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) the reactors need, developers worry they won't receive orders for their plants. And without orders, potential producers of the fuel are unlikely to get commercial supply chains up and running to replace the Russian uranium.

"We understand the need for urgent action to incentivize the establishment of a sustainable, market-driven supply of HALEU," the DOE spokesperson said.

The U.S. government is in the final stages of evaluating how much of its inventory of 585.6 tonnes of highly enriched uranium to allocate to reactors, the spokesperson said.

The fact that Russia has a monopoly on HALEU has long been a concern for Washington but the war in Ukraine has changed the game, as neither the government nor the companies developing the new advanced reactors want to rely on Moscow.

HALEU is enriched to levels of up to 20%, rather than around 5% for the uranium that powers most nuclear plants. But only TENEX, which is part of Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, sells HALEU commercially at the moment.

While no Western countries have sanctioned Rosatom over Ukraine, mainly because of its importance to the global nuclear industry, U.S. power plant developers such as X-energy and TerraPower don't want to be dependent on a Russian supply chain.

"We didn't have a fuel problem until a few months ago," said Jeff Navin, director of external affairs at TerraPower, whose chairman is billionaire Bill Gates. "After the invasion of Ukraine, we were not comfortable doing business with Russia."

CHICKEN AND EGG

Nuclear power currently generates about 10% of the world's electricity and many countries are now exploring new nuclear projects to improve their energy supply and energy security, as well as to help meet goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

But with large-scale projects still challenging for reasons including huge up-front costs, project delays, cost overruns and competition from cheaper energy sources such as wind, several developers have proposed so-called small modular reactors (SMR).

While the SMRs on offer from companies such as EDF (EDF.PA) and Rolls-Royce (RR.L) use existing technology and the same fuel as traditional reactors, nine out of 10 of the advanced reactors funded by Washington are designed to use HALEU.

Proponents say these advanced plants need less frequent refuelling and are three times as efficient as traditional models. Some analysts say this means they will ultimately overtake conventional nuclear technology, though the designs have yet to be tested on a commercial scale.

The average levelised cost of electricity - the price needed for advanced projects to break even - is $60 per megawatt-hour compared with $97 for conventional plants, according to data from research group the Energy Innovation Reform Project.

Some analysts say the price difference might be narrower at the moment, because the smaller advanced reactors using HALEU don't yet have economies of scale from mass production.

Companies in the United States and Europe have plans to produce HALEU on a commercial scale but even in the most optimistic scenarios, they say it would take at least five years from the point they decide to proceed.

And this chicken and egg conundrum is complicating the smooth development of HALEU supply.

"Nobody wants to order 10 reactors without a fuel source, and nobody wants to invest in a fuel source without 10 reactor orders," said Daniel Poneman, chief executive of U.S. nuclear fuel supplier Centrus Energy Corp (LEU.A).

For firms interested in new advanced reactors, such as Washington state's public utility Energy Northwest, fuel supplies are certainly an issue in the decision making process.

"A reliable HALEU supply is one of many factors under consideration," the company said in an emailed statement.

ALTERNATIVE SUPPLIES

The U.S. government recognised years ago that Russia's monopoly on HALEU could hamper the development of the advanced reactors it hopes will provide low-carbon energy at home and also be exported to markets in Europe and Asia.

The government awarded a shared-cost contract in 2019 to Centrus, the only company outside Russia which currently has a licence to make HALEU, to build a demonstration facility.

While the facility was due to start making HALEU this year, production has been put back to 2023, partly because of delays in getting hold of storage containers due to supply chain issues during the global pandemic, Centrus said.

Once the facility gets up and running, it will take five years before Centrus can start producing 13 tonnes of HALEU a year. But that's only a third of the amount the DOE projects will be needed for U.S. reactors by 2030.

TerraPower, for example, said it will need 15 tonnes of HALEU for the first fuel load of its advanced reactor.

Other potential HALEU producers are further behind.

French state-owned uranium mining and enrichment company Orano says it could start producing HALEU in five to eight years, but will only apply for a production licence once it has customers with long-term contracts.

In a response to a DOE request for information about how to establish a programme to support HALEU production, Orano said it would be down to the U.S. government to kick-start the industry.

"Orano's assessment shows that the single most important factor enabling success is the DOE guaranteeing a certain volume of demand," the company said in a statement on its website.

European uranium enrichment company Urenco, meanwhile, says it is considering sites in the United States and Britain for HALEU production but has yet to apply for licences.

CLOCK IS TICKING

For TerraPower and X-energy, which have projects planned in the U.S. states of Wyoming and Washington respectively, the clock is ticking.

Washington awarded them contracts to build two demonstration rectors by 2028 and shared the costs. But without Russian fuel, that deadline will fall well before any alternative commercial suppliers would be up and running.

While the 20% enrichment levels for HALEU are well below the roughly 90% level needed for weapons, companies need special licences to produce it. Additional security and certification requirements are also required for production sites, packaging and transportation of the fuel.

To speed up the process and break the deadlock, the U.S. government is looking to "downblend" weapons-grade highly enriched uranium sitting in its stockpile, though that will also take time.

The U.S. government said in 2016 it had downblended 7.1 tonnes between Sept. 30, 2013 and March 31, 2016. Asked this month whether the process had become any faster, the DOE said: "Downblending rates are consistently evaluated for acceleration opportunities."

The Inflation Reduction Act U.S. President Joe Biden signed in August contained $700 million to secure HALEU supplies from the government and a consortium partnered with the DOE for use in advanced reactors and research.

In September, the White House asked Congress for another $1.5 billion in a temporary government funding bill to boost domestic supply of low enriched uranium and HALEU, to address potential difficulties in accessing Russian fuel.

Lawmakers took the measure out of the bill over concerns about costs, though it remains a priority for some Biden officials, including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

Last year, nuclear power stations in the United States imported about 14% of their uranium from Russia, along with 28% of their enrichment services, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

How sanctions on Russia are hurting U.S firms developing nuclear plants | Details

 

American firms developing a new generation of small nuclear power plants to cut carbon emissions have run into a big problem. Only one company sells the fuel they need and that is Russian. U.S government, in search of an alternative, is now looking to use some of its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium for the reactors. The government hopes to kick-start an industry that it sees as important to meet its emissions goals.

German cabinet approves extended reactor operations

20 October 2022

The German federal cabinet has approved an executive decision by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to allow the country's three remaining nuclear power plants to continue operating beyond the end of this year. It approved a draft amendment to the Atomic Energy Act which enables the Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 plants to operate until 15 April 2023 at the latest.

Robert Habeck (left) and Steffi Lemke announcing the cabinet decision on the amendment to the Atomic Energy Act (Image: BMUV / Sascha Hilgers)

On 17 October, Scholz took the decision to allow all three of to continue generating electricity until 15 April next year. His decision followed disagreement among the governing coalition parties over their continued operation beyond the 31 December 2022 nuclear phase-out date set by the previous Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The amendment approved by the cabinet on 19 October creates the nuclear law requirements for a limited extended operation of the Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 until 15 April at the latest. The draft law stipulates that only the fuel elements still available in the respective plants are to be used for their further operation. The use of new fuel elements is not permitted. Therefore, the power output from the reactors will gradually be decreased. Due to the short period of a maximum of three-and-a-half months of additional power operation, no periodic safety review will be required.

The legislative amendment does not require the approval of the German parliament's upper house, the Bundesrat. "With the amendment to the Atomic Energy Act, the mandate from the Federal Chancellor's executive decision is implemented," the government said.

The Green Party - one of three coalition parties governing at federal level - agreed to support keeping the Isar II and Neckarwestheim II nuclear power plants in operation as emergency reserves until April next year. However, it opposed the procurement of new nuclear fuel. The liberal Free Democratic Party had called for all three plants to remain in operation until 2024.

"The phase-out of nuclear power will remain the same," said Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke of the Green Party. "Germany will finally phase out nuclear power on 15 April 2023. There will be no extension of the service life and no procurement of new fuel rods - and therefore no additional highly radioactive waste. The draft law will contribute to the stability of the power grid, which is compatible with nuclear safety because it limits the duration of nuclear power plant operation to a short period this winter. Even in the current energy supply crisis, we must keep an eye on the risks of nuclear power."

Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck also of the Green Party, added: "Today's cabinet decision creates clarity. The Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 nuclear power plants can continue to generate electricity in extended operation until 15 April 2023. After that it's over. There are no new fuel rods.

"In winter 2023/24 we will have different and better starting conditions. We will be able to import significantly more gas, also via our own LNG terminals. The power grids will be strengthened, the transport capacities will be increased. There will also be additional generation capacities on the grid, especially for the use of renewable energies. There is still hard work ahead of us, but the direction is clear: In this crisis, we must increase power generation capacities in the short term, but at the same time create the conditions for a long-term secure and climate-friendly power supply."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

 

Key nuclear tests to get underway in the US bringing shipping a step closer to adopting atomic propulsion

 October 20, 2022

 CORE-POWER

Southern Company Services (SCS) and TerraPower have built and installed a new test facility at TerraPower’s laboratory in Everett, Washington, a development maritime backers of atomic propulsion believe will hasten the uptake of the energy at sea.

The integrated effects test, or IET, is the largest chloride salt system in the world and will be instrumental in helping to develop the team’s molten chloride fast reactor (MCFR) technology.

The installation of the IET was part of a seven-year, $76m cost-shared project with the US Department of Energy to further develop the MCFR system.

TerraPower and SCS, a subsidiary of Southern Company, plan to demonstrate the reactor in the early 2030s.

A new nuclear renaissance is coming, and a very strong momentum is building across the maritime sector

The non-nuclear system is heated by an external power source and will be used to help validate the thermal hydraulics and safety analysis codes needed to demonstrate molten salt reactor systems.

The IET also supports the development of the molten chloride reactor experiment at Idaho National Laboratory, which will be the world’s first fast spectrum salt reactor.

The MCRE is being funded through DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program and will help inform the design, licensing and operation of the MCFR demonstration.

Jeff Latkowski, TerraPower’s senior vice president of innovation programs, said: “The MCFR will play a pivotal role in decarbonizing heavy industries, and we are proud to work with Southern Company, CORE POWER, and other partners to develop the systems necessary to bring new reactors to market.”

Southern Company and TerraPower are working together to develop a molten chloride fast reactor that uses liquid salts as both a coolant and fuel. This allows the reactor to operate at high temperatures to produce heat or clean power more efficiently than today’s reactors.

Also heavily involved in the project is Mikal Boe-led CORE POWER, which has attracted the interest of more than 50 shipowners who are keen to get atomic reactors installed on future vessels.

“Shipping needs a new energy source, for synthetic fuels and for future power systems. No amount of weather dependent energy will be able to meet the demands of our industry, so if we’re going to replace fossil fuels, we need new nuclear,” Boe told Splash.

For new nuclear to work for shipping Boe said it was vital to bring it up “close and personal”.

“To do this we need to shrink the emergency zone around each reactor to within the boundary of a floating power plant or a ship so it can call in ports and work on the coast without safety concerns,” Boe explained, insisting the MCFR will do this “beautifully”, and the new IET facility would be a “major milestone” on the road to make that happen by 2030.

“A new nuclear renaissance is coming, and a very strong momentum is building across the maritime sector,” Boe said.

According to the US Nuclear Maritime Applications Group, new nuclear for maritime will be focused on the US, UK and Japan initially, combining US reactor innovation with British maritime regulations and Japanese shipbuilding expertise, a potential fillip for the Asian nation which has seen its leading shipyard position usurped by rivals in South Korea and China this century.

World's largest chloride salt system in place

19 October 2022

Southern Company and TerraPower have completed construction and installation of a new test facility at TerraPower's laboratory in Everett, Washington. The Integrated Effects Test will be used in the development of the Molten Chloride Fast Reactor (MCFR).

The Integrated Effects Test (Image: Southern Co)

"The test is the world's largest chloride salt system developed by the nuclear sector," Southern and TerraPower said in a joint statement. "The project culminates years of separate effects testing and is expected to demonstrate how the MCFR technology will perform in delivering a commercial-scale, cost-effective, carbon-free molten salt reactor energy source by 2035."

The Integrated Effects Test (IET) is a multi-loop test facility that builds off a series of smaller testing campaigns to inform its design. The non-nuclear system is heated by an external power source. Data from operation of the test will be used to help validate the thermal hydraulics and safety analysis codes needed to demonstrate molten salt reactor systems.

The IET also supports the development and operation of the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a proof-of-concept critical fast-spectrum salt reactor. At less than 200 kW, the reactor will provide experimental and operational data.

Both the IET and the MCRE will inform the design, licensing and operation of an approximately 180 MW MCFR demonstration planned for the early 2030s time frame.

The IET project continues work initiated in 2015 by Southern subsidiary Southern Company Services and TerraPower under the US Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Reactor Concepts (ARC-15) award, a multi-year effort to promote the design, construction and operation of Generation-IV nuclear reactors. The project team also includes Core Power, EPRI, INL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University. The programme represents a USD76 million total project investment with a 60%-40% public-private cost share.

"The completion and installation of the Integrated Effects Test is an important step to advancing TerraPower's Molten Chloride Fast Reactor technology," said Jeff Latkowski, TerraPower's senior vice president of innovation programmes. "The MCFR will play a pivotal role in decarbonising heavy industries, and we are proud to work with Southern Company, Core Power and other partners to develop the systems necessary to bring new reactors to market."

The IET will be used to help train a new crop of molten salt project personnel. Southern's research and development organisation and TerraPower will work with US universities to submit research proposals through the DOE's Nuclear Energy University Program to train students and research the additional instruments, equipment and components that would be compatible with molten salt systems.

TerraPower's MCFR technology uses molten chloride salt as both reactor coolant and fuel, allowing for so-called fast spectrum operation which the company says makes the fission reaction more efficient. It operates at higher temperatures than conventional reactors, generating electricity more efficiently, and also offers potential for process heat applications and thermal storage. An iteration of the MCFR - known as the m-MSR - intended for marine use is being developed.

TerraPower is also developing Natrium technology - featuring a sodium fast reactor combined with a molten salt energy storage system - a demonstration plant for which is to be built at Kemmerer in Wyoming.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Southern Company Services and TerraPower Build World’s Largest Chloride Salt System

Oct 19, 2022

U.S. Department of Energy

Southern Company Services (SCS) and TerraPower recently built and installed a new test facility at TerraPower’s laboratory in Everett, Washington.  

The Integrated Effects Test, or IET, is the largest chloride salt system in the world and will be instrumental in helping to develop the project team's Molten Chloride Fast Reactor (MCFR) technology.  

The installation of the IET was part of a seven-year, $76 million cost-shared project with the U.S. Department of Energy to further develop the MCFR system. 

TerraPower and SCS, a subsidiary of Southern Company, plan to demonstrate the reactor in the early 2030s. 

The Integrated Effects Test is a multiloop test facility that builds off of a series of smaller testing campaigns to inform its design. The non-nuclear system is heated by an external power source and will be used to help validate the thermal hydraulics and safety analysis codes needed to demonstrate molten salt reactor systems. 

The IET also supports the development of the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment at Idaho National Laboratory, which will be the world’s first fast spectrum salt reactor. The MCRE is being funded through DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program and will help inform the design, licensing and operation of the MCFR demonstration.