'Nothing girls can't do:' Ontario's 1st female licensed plumber marks 50 years in the trade

Story by Rebecca Zandbergen • Thursday

Debbie Johnston, Ontario's first licensed female plumber, kept this cutout of a local newspaper article that was written about her in 1974.© Submitted by Debbie Johnston

Deborah Johnston — or Debbie as she prefers to be called — remembers the day in the early 1970s when she was working in the office of her dad's plumbing business in Ingersoll, Ont., and a provincial official walked in.

He wanted to know if anyone was interested in becoming a plumbing apprentice.

"I told him there was nobody there except my dad and me," recalled Johnston, 69. "And he said, 'Well, how about you?'"

When he returned a couple of days later, Johnston signed up to become an apprentice, and by 1977 had become Ontario's first female licensed plumber.

Now retired, Johnston remembers her early days on the job and is encouraging other women to consider a career in the skilled trades.

"I was a good service plumber," said Johnston, who used her maiden name, Davies, on her plumbing licence.

Although she was the only woman in her courses at Fanshawe College, Johnston said she was always treated with respect.

"The guys were very helpful. I was terrible at welding, so they helped me, and when they needed help with writing or spelling, then I'd help them with that, or their math. So it was like a two-way street."

She got the same support out in the community.

"A lot of them knew me because of my dad. Everybody that I talked to in Ingersoll during those years said nothing but good things.

"The only time I ran into any kind of a negative comment was when I got to London for my first course at Fanshawe," said Johnston. "The London Free Press came and did a story on me when I was in Fanshawe in 1974, and they asked other people in the industry their opinion. There was one person who said, 'Oh, that'll be the girl who thinks she can be a plumber.'"

Labour shortage

With Ontario facing a generational labour shortage as many skilled tradespeople approach retirement age, there's a push to get more young people and women to enter the trades.

According to its April report, Build Force Canada projects Ontario will lose 18 per cent of its 2022 construction workforce in the next decade and will need to find 119,000 new workers during that time.

Later this month, Fanshawe College, in partnership with CWB Welding Foundation, will be offering a fully funded welding program for women and women-identifying individuals. Thirteen other institutions across Canada also offer the program.

Last month, the Ford government unveiled a mandatory technological education credit for high school students and is allowing young people to begin apprenticeships full time starting in Grade 11.

Encouraging women's interest in the trades has to begin in high school, said Johnston.

"It needs to start early so that they can know that this type of work is available to them," she said. "There is absolutely nothing out there in any kind of trade, not just plumbing, that girls can't do."

Getting women to join the trades is a longstanding conversation, said Katherine Jacobs, director of research at the Ontario Construction Secretariat (OCS).

"I feel a little more optimistic these days that it's a little more realistic," said Jacobs. "There's been a bit of a changeover in the industry. All the baby boomers are starting to retire and I'm hopeful that this new generation of workers, they've been raised differently, they perceive things differently — it'll be more of a welcoming environment."

According to the OCS, just two per cent of unionized tradespeople are women.

Despite Johnston's positive experience, women face a lot of challenges on the job, and as a result many leave the field even if they were brave enough to get into it, Jacobs said.

For starters, women tradespeople wanting to start a family may have concerns about getting paid maternity leave. But a number of trades unions are now offering leave programs for both men and women.

"I see some of the industry talking about some of these broader challenges that has impacted women staying in the trades," said Jacobs.

Johnston has her own advice for women wanting to enter the field. "Do your work, Do it as well as you can. Keep going, and try your best."

2 more gray whales have washed ashore near San Francisco, raising concerns over strandings

Story by Laura Studley • CNN - Yesterday 

A gray whale that set a record for time spent in San Francisco Bay has died after being found at Point Reyes National Seashore, according to a news release from the Marine Mammal Center.

The whale, who had been spotted in the bay for at least 75 days, a record for its species, died as did another whale that washed ashore last weekend at Agate Beach, about 13 miles from Point Reyes, the release said.

“To respond to two known gray whales on consecutive days, including one that our team has been actively monitoring for months in San Francisco Bay, is challenging and concerning to say the least,” Pádraig Duignan, director of pathology at The Marine Mammal Center, said in a release. “As sentinels for ocean health, gray whales face several human-caused threats including vessel strikes.”

A team of 11 scientists conducted a necropsy on the 39-foot record-breaking whale and determined it died from malnutrition and multiple suspected vessel strikes, according to the center.

The whale had a scar in the middle of its back that occurred in February, the same month it was first observed. The necropsy found multiple rib and spinal fractures with attempted healing beneath the scar. The whale also had skull fractures, muscle damage and a hemorrhage, all injuries consistent with a severe injury caused by whiplash from a motor vehicle, according to the release.

The second whale’s cause of death is unknown. Measured at 37 feet and deemed healthy, the whale had no signs of trauma, according to the release.

This year, four gray whales have been found dead in the bay, the first occurring in March, according to data collected by the Marine Mammal Center.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared an Unusual Mortality Event as a result of increased gray whale strandings and deaths since January 2019.

There have been an estimated 314 whale strandings from 2019 to 2023 in the US so far, according to data from the NOAA. Data from 2022 also shows that gray whale migration has dropped 38%, which includes approximately 16,650 whales. The last population assessment in 2015 and 2016 estimated 26,960 whales, according to the NOAA.

Nursing agencies are staffing hospitals at 'huge cost' to health-care system, experts say

Story by Bethany Lindsay •  CBC - Yesterday

Burned-out nurses who've left Canada's health-care industry in droves are now returning to the job through private agencies, and that transition is costing the public system millions of dollars every year.

Nurses working for these temp agencies can earn more than double the wages of staff nurses doing the same jobs in the same hospitals, with full control over their work schedules, according to those in the industry.

Terri Stuart-McEwan, vice president of clinical programs and chief nursing executive at Oak Valley Health, which operates Markham Stouffville Hospital in Ontario, said she's watched as a steady stream of nurses have quit their jobs out of fatigue and frustration.

"Last year we spent, in this organization, over $4 million [on agency nurses], and we are a medium-size organization," she said. "That's a huge cost to our health-care system."

Long-time nurses say those costs are just going to keep rising unless something is done to address systemic issues in the Canadian health-care system that are driving workers to leave their jobs.

In the meantime, the agency industry is flourishing. Stuart-McEwan said she now has contracts with 13 nursing agencies, compared to just one or two before the pandemic.

She describes these agencies as the Ubers of nursing, and just like ride-hailing companies, some agencies have implemented surge pricing that see costs spike during certain times.

"It would be a Saturday night, we're down by a couple of nurses, it's in the critical care area — we know we cannot survive without another nurse," Stuart-McEwan said.

"As an organization, you're saying I could either put my patients at risk, my staff at risk, or I pay $300 an hour."

In response to CBC's reporting on this issue, NDP MP Jenny Kwan asked the Liberal government during question period on Friday what it planned to do to ensure nurses have the support they need to remain employed in the public system.

Adam van Koeverden, parliamentary secretary to the health minister, responded by touting Ottawa's recent budget commitment of $198.6 billion over 10 years to improve health-care delivery, which he said will improve pay for nurses.

"Nurses deserve fair wages, they deserve a safe environment for work, they deserve better work conditions," he said.

High costs of agencies 'doesn't make sense'

High hourly rates for nursing agencies can add up quickly.

In Toronto, University Health Network's nursing agency expenditures totalled $6.74 million in the fiscal year ending in 2022, a sharp increase from the $775,926 it spent in 2021.

Manitoba spent $3.9 million in one year to fill shortages in Winnipeg alone, according to the provincial NDP, and Global News has reported that the cost provincewide was more than $40 million in 2021/2022.

And in Nova Scotia, the Department of Seniors and Long-term Care allocated $3.1 million in December 2021 for agency nurses, but later had to increase the budgeted amount for that year by $18.4 million.

Related video: Private agency nurses cost much more. Hospitals need them anyway (cbc.ca)  Duration 5:33 View on Watch

cbc.ca  Foreign workers trained for in-demand jobs like nursing are working in N.L. fish plants

2:18

In Quebec, private health-care staffing agencies cost taxpayers $960 million last year, and the province has spent about $3 billion on these agencies since 2016.

Earlier this year, the provincial government passed a bill that will limit the use of health-care staffing agencies, with a goal of banning hospitals from using them by the end of 2025.

"You've seen the cost of that, it doesn't make sense," Health Minister Christian Dubé said.

Robert Handelman, the CEO of Toronto-based Staff Relief Healthcare Services, told CBC News that companies like his play an important role in providing workers when hospital resources are stretched thin.

His business has been around for 25 years and has long-standing relationships with a number of hospitals, Handelman said. But he noted that there are few barriers to entering the industry and no regulation of the sector, which has allowed a number of "predatory" agencies to pop up in recent years, charging high rates and taking a large cut of workers' wages.

'A meat grinder for nurses'

According to Natalie Stake-Doucet, the growing use of agency nurses is a symptom of a much larger problem. She recently quit nursing after a decade working in Québec, and currently teaches at McGill University.

"The private agencies are taking advantage of the fact that our health-care system is a meat grinder for nurses," she said.

She argues that private nursing agencies in Quebec are simply taking advantage of the high turnover within the province's health-care system, caused by poor working conditions, low wages, forced overtime and high patient-to-nurse ratios.

"This has been a crisis that nurses have been warning about for 20 years now, at the very least," Stake-Doucet said.



Emergency room nurse Basil Byfield says it can be disheartening for staff at Markham Stouffville Hospital to work alongside agency nurses who are being paid twice as much.© CBC News

At Markham Stouffville Hospital, emergency room nurse Basil Byfield acknowledges it's been tough to retain staff in recent years.

"Emergency is really — I shouldn't say a beast, but it can be a tough place," he said.

During his 35-year career, he's spent time working for agencies as well, and says there are downsides, like having to quickly learn new procedures and technologies after being placed at a new facility.

But for many, the extra pay is worth it, and that's not easy to swallow for those working regular jobs at the hospital.

"It can be demoralizing for the regular staff having to do the same job but getting less pay," Byfield said.

Ontario nurse Kian Johnson said she originally began picking up shifts with an agency seven years ago to supplement the pay from her full-time hospital job.

"Just the full time employment income would not suffice to take care of the necessities in my life," she said.

Now she's studying to become a nurse practitioner and has left her staff position to exclusively work for the agency, where she can choose her own hours.


Ontario nurse Kian Johnson says she works for a nursing agency because of the higher pay and the ability to plan her shifts around her studies.© CBC News

Johnson says that in her experience, there's always a shortage of staff nurses in Ontario hospitals.

"I've been on shifts where eight agency nurses are working within the facility on the unit and there's perhaps 10 or 12 nurses overall," Johnson said.

"It's necessary to have … adequate staffing, and the actual hospital does not provide it."

She believes the only way to reduce the dependency on agency nurses is to increase the pay in the public system, and allow more flexibility in those jobs.

"We try our very best to care for people," Johnson said. "I feel like we're not respected in the sense that our needs are not being met."

London's 1st magic mushroom store, the latest in Ontario, could test limits of authorities' tolerance

Story by Alessio Donnini • CBC - Yesterday 

Achain of illegal magic mushroom dispensaries is expanding to London, Ont., in a move that is expected to test the limits of what law enforcement in the city will tolerate.

FunGuyz, one of several stores selling psilocybin products in Ontario, will be the first of its kind in London and harkens back to the days when illegal pot shops first opened.

The franchise, which will be located on Richmond Street, describes itself as a "medical mushroom dispensary." The company has nine other locations, in Toronto, Barrie, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines and Wasaga Beach.

"Everyone loves it. Everyone loves us," said Edgar Gurben, a spokesperson for FunGuyz.

He said to buy a bag of magic mushrooms, psilocybin-infused edibles or capsules filled with hallucinogenic mushroom powder, customers need to sign a waiver and show valid photo ID. Psilocybin is a drug that turns into psilocin, a highly hallucinogenic compound known for its euphoric effects, when ingested.


Shroomyz is another example of a chain of illegal mushroom dispensaries. The chain started in Ottawa before eventually expanding to Toronto and beyond.© Sara Jabakhanji/CBC

Psilocybin and psilocin are both classified as Schedule III substances and are illegal to sell or possess in Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The owners of FunGuyz say they aren't particularly concerned about the law.

"When the police do come and raid us, they take the product, and whoever is working there will get a charge. We open back up, we have a good lawyer, and we get our [court] cases dropped," said Gurben.

Other dispensaries, including in Toronto and Hamilton, were raided almost immediately after opening in late 2022 and charges were laid against the sellers.

London police stopped short of saying they would raid the FunGuyz dispensary when it opens. Spokersperson Sandasha Bough said in a statement that law enforcement resources are prioritized within the context of community safety and harm.

"In London, individuals who illegally possess or traffic in substances that are scheduled in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are dealt with by the London Police Service," Bough said.

According to the City of London, there is no recourse that can be taken against illegal dispensaries within the confines of bylaw enforcement.

"Business licences must comply with municipal, provincial and federal laws," said Orest Katolyk, the director of municipal compliance.


Large signage plastered across the side of the building at 256 Richmond advertises the online store that FunGuyz offers.© Alessio Donnini/CBC News

It's clear that despite the law, the company aims to continue operating in all 10 of its locations, with the stated purpose of providing psilocybin for medical use.

"What we're doing here is we're giving people access to psilocybin in a clean, safe manner," said Gurben. "We have clients who use it to overcome addictions or other mental health problems."

The drug is currently showing promising results in clinical trials and being used to treat mental health disorders such as anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and substance abuse issues, according to Health Canada.

Still, the regulatory body says evidence is limited, as few trials have been completed.

Doctors frustrated

The continued trend of mushroom dispensaries operating in defiance of the law has left some doctors seeking to prescribe psilocybin frustrated.

"Why do we live in a country right now where the government is only allowing access to this substance in a less safe manner. How does that all line up with the objectives of the substances act, which are health and public safety?" said Nicholas Pope, an Ottawa-based lawyer who is currently part of a large charter challenge to strike down the law that prohibits psilocybin for medical purposes.

Pope also represents doctors seeking Section 56 exemption requests, which would allow them to use psilocybin for patient care.

Pope said he has personally witnessed people walking out of mushroom dispensaries with police officers in sight and no enforcement action taken, which adds insult to injury.

"I don't have anything against these dispensaries operating. We're in this situation where it's de facto allowed for recreation," said Pope. "It's technically illegal, but the chances are extraordinarily low that you would get prosecuted."

He calls it an "absurd and wrong" situation, where patients who could benefit from the drug are unable to while some enjoy it recreationally. Medicinal use of psilocybin involves a number of highly trained specialists from physicians to psychotherapists, which cannot be achieved by personal use, he added.

Regardless of how judges and lawmakers decide to handle the future of psilocybin in Canada, more regulatory attention and care will be necessary, says Jacob Shelley, an associate professor in the Faculty of Law and School of Health Studies at Western University.

"We see the playbook has already been kind of played out with cannabis, right? We saw how [illegal cannabis] dispensaries evolved and kind of pushed the government to address and deal with them existing in kind of the space before legalization," said Shelley.

"We need to invest more regulatory attention to how we're going to ensure that these products are not being sold to consumers in a way that's harmful without the proper regulatory kind of oversight."

Canadian Armed  Forces Military police have referred nearly 100 sex offence cases to civilian forces
Story by Sean Boynton • Yesterday 

Canadian Forces personnel stand at CFB Kingston in Kingston, Ont., Tuesday, March 7, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick© GAC

Anand unveils military sexual misconduct reforms

The Canadian Armed Forces says military police have referred 93 cases of criminal sexual offences to civilian police forces since December 2021, 64 of which are under investigation.

Friday's update came as the government works to implement an independent recommendation to remove jurisdiction over such cases from military police after a series of sexual misconduct scandals involving high-ranking officers.

Brig.-Gen. Simon Trudeau, the Canadian Forces provost marshal, said the other 29 cases referred to federal, provincial and municipal police had been declined.

He did not give a reason for those cases being dismissed, but some provinces including Ontario and British Columbia have called on Ottawa to fund the additional police resources needed to take on such investigations.

Trudeau said another 97 cases were not referred to civilian police, and cited "various reasons" as to why.

The victims in 20 of those cases, he said, preferred a military police investigation, while others chose not to proceed with a criminal investigation at all.

Defence Minister Anita Anand first directed military police and prosecutors to start handing cases to civilian authorities in November 2021, following a recommendation to that effect from retired Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour.

Arbour made the recommendation while conducting a yearlong review into the Canadian Forces’ handling of sexual misconduct allegations. She said the move was necessary to address widespread mistrust and doubt in the military justice system.

The recommendation was included in her final report, released in May 2022, that described the military as a "broken system" out of sync with the values of Canadian society, and which poses a “liability” to the country.

The review was formally launched a year before that — in May 2021 — in response to exclusive reporting by Global News into allegations of sexual misconduct among the highest ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Global News first brought to light allegations in February 2021 of sexual misconduct against senior leaders in the Armed Forces — the first of dozens of exclusive reports into such allegations and the military’s handling of them over the past 18 months.

Video: Ottawa releases ‘ambitious’ roadmap to reform military culture

On Thursday, officials from the Defence Department and the Canadian Forces provided an update on their efforts to implement the 48 recommendations made in Arbour's report.

Speaking to reporters, Minister Anand said a federal-provincial-territorial committee has been set up to facilitate conversations between deputy ministers about the transfer of cases of criminal sexual offences.

In the meantime, the Armed Forces have agreements in place with the RCMP, Surete du Quebec and now the Ontario Provincial Police to refer cases to police for investigation, officials said.

In her report, Arbour warned that Ottawa and the provinces could end up engaged in "interminable discussions" about the matter if the federal government did not formally make the change.

The NDP has called on the Liberals to introduce legislation to permanently remove such cases from the military's jurisdiction.

Anand also said Thursday that the military's independent sexual misconduct support and resource centre is creating a new fund to help victims pay for legal services.

— with files from Global's Saba Aziz and The Canadian Press

Mysterious rumblings were recorded in Earth’s stratosphere

Story by Ashley Strickland • CNN -Yesterday

Giant solar balloons were sent 70,000 feet up in the air to record sounds of Earth’s stratosphere — and the microphones picked up some unexpected sounds.

The stratosphere is the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere, and its lower level contains the ozone layer that absorbs and scatters the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, according to NASA. The thin, dry air of the stratosphere is where jet aircraft and weather balloons reach their maximum altitude, and the relatively calm atmospheric layer is rarely disturbed by turbulence.

Daniel Bowman, principal scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, was inspired in graduate school to explore the soundscape of the stratosphere after being introduced to the low-frequency sounds that are generated by volcanoes. Known as infrasound, the phenomenon is inaudible to the human ear.

Bowman and his friends had previously flown cameras on weather balloons “to take pictures of the black sky above and the Earth far below” and successfully built their own solar balloon.

He proposed attaching infrasound recorders to balloons to record the sounds of volcanoes. But then he and his adviser Jonathan Lees of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “realized that no one had tried to put microphones on stratospheric balloons for half a century, so we pivoted to exploring what this new platform could do,” Bowman said. Lees is a professor of Earth, marine and environmental sciences who researches seismology and volcanology.

The balloons can take sensors twice as high as commercial jets can fly.

“On our solar balloons, we have recorded surface and buried chemical explosions, thunder, ocean waves colliding, propeller aircraft, city sounds, suborbital rocket launches, earthquakes, and maybe even freight trains and jet aircraft,” Bowman said via email. “We’ve also recorded sounds whose origin is unclear.”

The findings were shared Thursday at the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago.

A recording shared by Bowman from a NASA balloon that circled Antarctica contains infrasound of colliding ocean waves, which sounds like continual sighing. But other crackles and rustling have unknown origins.

In the stratosphere, “there are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour on some flights, but the source of these is completely unknown,” Bowman said.

Building solar balloons

Bowman and his collaborators have conducted research using NASA balloons and other flight providers, but they decided to build their own balloons, each spanning about 19.7 to 23 feet (6 to 7 meters) across.

The supplies can be found at hardware and pyrotechnic supply stores, and the balloons can be assembled on a basketball court.

“Each balloon is made of painter’s plastic, shipping tape, and charcoal dust,” Bowman said via email. “They cost about $50 to make and a team of two can build one in about 3.5 hours. One simply brings it out to a field on a sunny day and fills it up with air, and it will carry a pound of payload to about 70,000 ft.”

The charcoal dust is used inside the balloons to darken them, and when the sun shines on the dark balloons, the air inside them warms up and becomes buoyant. The inexpensive and easy DIY design means the researchers can release multiple balloons to collect as much data as possible.



This view from one of Sandia National Laboratories' solar-powered hot air balloons was taken at a height of about 13 miles (21 kilometers) above Earth's surface. - Guide Star Engineering LLC/Sandia National Laboratories

“Really, a group of high schoolers with access to the school gym could build a solar balloon, and there’s even a cellphone app called RedVox that can record infrasound,” Bowman said.

Bowman estimated that he launched several dozen solar balloons to collect infrasound recordings between 2016 and April of this year. Microbarometers, originally designed to monitor volcanoes, were attached to the balloons to record low-frequency sounds.

The researchers tracked their balloons using GPS, since they can travel for hundreds of miles and land in inconvenient locations.

The longest flight so far was 44 days aboard a NASA helium balloon, which recorded 19 days worth of data before the batteries on the microphone died. Meanwhile, solar balloon flights tend to last about 14 hours during the summer and land once the sun sets.

Unraveling mysterious sounds

The advantage of the high altitude reached by the balloons means that noise levels are lower and the detection range is increased — and the whole Earth is accessible. But the balloons also present challenges for researchers. The stratosphere is a harsh environment with wild temperature fluctuations between heat and cold.

“Solar balloons are a bit sluggish, and we’ve wrecked a few on bushes when trying to launch them,” Bowman said. “We’ve had to hike down into canyons and across mountains to get our payloads. Once, our Oklahoma State colleagues actually had a balloon land in a field, spend the night, and launch itself back in the air to fly another whole day!”

Lessons learned from multiple balloon flights have somewhat eased the process, but now the greatest challenge for researchers is identifying the signals recorded during the flights.

“There are many flights with signals whose origin we do not understand,” Bowman said. “They are almost certainly mundane, maybe a patch of turbulence, a distant severe storm, or some sort of human object like a freight train — but it’s hard to tell what is going on sometimes due to the lack of data up there.”

Sarah Albert, a geophysicist at Sandia National Laboratories, has investigated a “sound channel” — a conduit that carries sounds across great distances through the atmosphere — located at the altitudes Bowman studies. Her recordings have captured rocket launches and other unidentified rumblings.


Sandia National Laboratories geophysicists (from left) Daniel Bowman and Sarah Albert display an infrasound sensor and the box used to protect the sensors from extreme temperatures. - Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories

“It may be that sound gets trapped in the channel and echoes around until it’s completely garbled,” Bowman said. “But whether it is near and fairly quiet (like a patch of turbulence) or distant and loud (like a faraway storm) is not clear yet.”

Bowman and Albert will continue to investigate the aerial sound channel and try to determine where the stratosphere’s rumbles are originating — and why some flights record them while others don’t.

Bowman is eager to understand the soundscape of the stratosphere and unlock key features, like variability across seasons and locations.

It’s possible that helium-filled versions of these balloons could one day be used to explore other planets like Venus, carrying scientific instruments above or within the planet’s clouds for a few days as a test flight for larger, more complex missions.

70 YR OLD SCI FI TECH

This lab achieved a stunning breakthrough on fusion energy

Story by Bill Weir • Yesterday 

After generations of trying to produce the power of a star on Earth, a successful nuclear fusion ignition happened in the middle of a December night and was over in 20-billionths of a second.

That’s more than 100 billion times shorter than the Wright Brothers’ first, 12-second flight — but a brief, shining moment that could have even bigger implications for humanity.

But while the science teams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are still buzzing over their Wright-Brothers moment, we only remember that name because their third flight stayed in the sky for 39 minutes.

The nuclear fusion reaction must be repeated, extended and scaled before the comparison sticks. And the race is on to make it work.

“But that’s what makes it so exciting, right?” lead scientist Tammy Ma told CNN. “The potential is so great for clean, abundant, limitless, affordable energy. It will be tough. It won’t be easy. But it’s worth doing.”

Ma’s office is a giant box of lasers the size of three football fields in the corner of a 7,000-acre lab in Livermore. Running across the soaring white ceilings are miles of square tubes holding 192 of the most energetic lasers in the world, all snaking toward a round room at the center.

The very middle of this target chamber becomes the hottest place in the solar system every time they run a fusion experiment, and it is covered with enough gleaming machinery that J.J. Abrams used it to portray the warp core of the USS Enterprise in “Stark Trek Into Darkness.”

With a legacy of delays and cost overruns, the National Ignition Facility was wryly nicknamed the “National Almost Ignition Facility,” or “NAIF,” by critics in Congress. If not for its work studying nuclear weaponry without the need for test explosions, the program might have lost funding years ago.

But now, for the first time since breaking ground in 1997, the National Ignition Facility can finally live up to its name. In December, 192 of the most energetic lasers in the world heated up a tiny pellet of hydrogen atoms with such force, they fused together to create helium and — most importantly — excess energy.

A little more than 2 megajoules of energy going into the target chamber became 3.15 megajoules coming out — a modest gain of around 50%, but enough to make history and allow scientists to call the experiment a true success.

The five attempts since have all failed to repeat it.

“We’ve learned a lot through those experiments,” Lawrence Livermore Director Kimberly Budil said during a celebration of December’s ignition. “And we’re very confident we’ll get back above that threshold. But it’s still very much an R&D project at this point.”



The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. - CNN

While some of the failed shots used less power than the successful one, others were unable to recreate the precision of the diamond capsules used to hold the hydrogen atoms.

“We made a number of modifications to try to compensate for the fact that the capsules weren’t perfect and some of those worked better than others.” Budil said. “And so the hope is always there. But if you look at the history of experiments that we’ve done, very small changes on the input bring very large changes in yield on the output side.”

“Every time we do a shot, we are the hottest place in the solar system,” Ma said as she pointed at the miles of mirrors which can amplify $14 worth of electricity into a force “a thousand times the power of the entire US electrical grid. But your lights don’t flicker at home when we take a shot because we’re taking a huge amount of energy and compressing it down into nanoseconds.”

The facility was all built with 20-year-old technology and Ma said that if they were to rebuild it today — or build a legitimate nuclear-fusion power plant — “you would use new technology that is a lot more efficient, could shoot at much higher rates, with higher efficiency and very high precision.”



The laser preamplifier module at the National Ignition Facility. - Damien Jemison/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

So far, the nuclear-fusion field has been mainly divided into those that use lasers to spark ignition like a series of firecrackers, and those that deploy magnets strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier to control streams of plasma flowing around a doughnut-shaped machine called a tokamak.

In 2021, scientists working near Oxford used the magnet method to generate a record-breaking amount of sustained energy for five seconds.

“In ten years, they will be where we were ten years ago,” Bruno Van Wonterghem, NIF’s operations manager, said — a sign of how competitive the growing fusion race is becoming.

Even before December’s successful shot, private investment in fusion technology tripled in 2021, with dozens of startups trying to tackle fusion’s infinite challenges in novel ways. One Vancouver startup is attempting to harness a whirlpool of liquid metal to control neutrons, while alumni of the Lawrence Livermore Lab have spun off an idea for small, modular fusion reactors and count Bill Gates and Shell Oil as investors.

Helion Energy is making the boldest promises of the startup lot, and attracting some of the biggest backers in tech, including a $375-million investment from Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI. Helion claims its prototype the shape of huge dumbbell will fire plasma rings at a million miles an hour and demonstrate the ability to produce electricity through fusion by next year.



Tammy Ma speaks at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on May 9. - CNN

After Microsoft announced on Wednesday a commitment to buy 50 megawatts of electricity from it in 2028, Helion says it will build their first plant in Washington state. But this the first-of-its-kind fusion power purchase agreement is a modest one, accounting for just around 0.04% of the clean power Microsoft bought in 2022.

The International Atomic Energy Agency doesn’t expect electricity from fusion to be produced until the second half of the century, and as difficult as it is to control sun-hot plasma, it’s been equally hard to control the cost of making it.

“At the moment, we’re spending a huge amount of time and money for every experiment we do,” Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London, told CNN. “We need to bring the cost down by a huge factor.”

Now that they have their Wright Brothers moment, Ma is convinced the world will eventually fly, work and live on fusion.

“If we, as the US, decide we’re going to do it, we can do it. It’s only a matter of time. It’s a matter of money,” Ma said. “It’s a choice we have to make together. And I do believe we will see it in the next few decades.

“For sure.”

Microsoft bets that a fusion power plant from Helion Energy will be operating this decade

Story by cboudreau@insider.com (Catherine Boudreau) • Yesterday 

Polaris is a prototype fusion reactor from Helion Energy. The startup announced a deal with Microsoft to provide the tech giant with electricity produced from fusion. Helion© Provided by Business Insider
Microsoft agreed to buy electricity from a fusion power plant being developed by Helion Energy.
Helion said the plant will be online by 2028, sooner than scientists thought fusion would be viable.
Fusion energy doesn't produce the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the climate crisis.

The timeline for pumping fusion energy into the power grid might be closer than many believed.

Microsoft on Wednesday agreed to buy 50 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 40,000 homes — from a fusion power plant being developed by Helion Energy. The startup's plant is expected to come online by 2028.

Fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun and stars, is considered the holy grail of energy production because it could be a nearly limitless source of power without creating greenhouse-gas emissions, which are fueling the climate crisis.

Scientists have long been trying to harness fusion energy, with some predicting that it won't be a viable power source for decades. Researchers had a breakthrough in December, when federal scientists in California reported they achieved the first net energy gain — a fusion reaction that produces more energy than it takes to create. But so far, the lab hasn't replicated the results, Bloomberg reported.

David Kirtley, the founder and CEO of Helion, told Insider that he's confident in the startup's 2028 target for several reasons. All six of Helion's fusion prototypes have set records for their energy output and the temperature at which they operate, recently exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius — an ideal threshold for a power plant. The seventh prototype, expected be completed this year, is set to be the first to convert fusion energy into electricity, Kirtley said.

"Helion is focused on doing fusion in a way that gets us close to electricity, rather than just energy in a generic sense," he said.

Related video: Nuclear Fusion Reactor For Cleaner Energy (Live Science)
Duration 3:12  View on Watch

Live Science Nuclear Fusion Reactor For Cleaner Energy
3:12


"One analogy I use is regenerative braking in electric cars," he added. "When you hit the gas, it takes energy from the battery and puts it into the motor. When you hit the brakes, that energy returns to the battery. That's what we do for fusion. We have energy in storage, we put it into the fusion reaction, and then we extract that back out directly."

Helion's novel approach to fusion involves injecting deuterium and helium-3 gas into a cylinder-shaped machine that heats up the gas up to form charged plasma on each side of the machine. These plasmas are then accelerated and compressed by an electromagnetic field until they collide to create a reaction.

Beyond the technology, Kirtley said that as of April, the regulatory environment was more certain. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it would use an existing framework to oversee the safety of fusion reactors and power plants. It opted not to impose the stricter rules applied to nuclear reactors. Fusion, unlike nuclear fission, doesn't come with concerns about radioactive waste or the proliferation of weapons.

"That means we should be able to build fusion systems much quicker, operate them safely — and at a lower cost," Kirtley said.

Still, building a first-of-its-kind power plant in five years is a major challenge.

Kirtley said that's why the deal with Microsoft and the transmission operator Constellation was so important. Constellation is experienced at building power plants quickly, and Microsoft is one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy. The tech giant aims for 100% of its electricity consumption by 2030 to be matched by zero-carbon purchases.

If Helion doesn't deliver Microsoft the 50 MW of electricity from its fusion power plant, there will be financial penalties, Kirtley said. He declined to disclose more specifics about the agreement.

Helion had previously projected that it would start building a commercial fusion power plant by 2022 — if it obtained sufficient funding. That target got pushed back because it took longer to get the funds, a spokesman told Insider.

Helion has since secured what it needs, including a $500 million fundraising round last year led by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and Helion's largest investor.

Alberta Energy Regulator warns Imperial Oil about more wastewater problems at Kearl oilsands mine
Story by Bob Weber • Thursday

The regulator has issued a notice of non-compliance to the company after chemicals associated with oilsands tailings were found at an off-site well at levels that exceed provincial guidelines.

© Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

The Alberta Energy Regulator has warned Imperial Oil about more wastewater problems at its Kearl oilsands mine in northern Alberta.

The regulator has issued a notice of non-compliance to the company after chemicals associated with oilsands tailings were found at an off-site well at levels that exceed provincial guidelines.

"In light of the exceedance of sulphate levels in the off-site well, we have issued a notice of non-compliance to Imperial for failing to control industrial runoff," says a notice from the regulator obtained by The Canadian Press.

"This is not related to a tailings pond or the [environmental protection order] issued against Imperial in February."

The document says sulphates have been detected in a well near a mine overburden disposal area that is 100 metres from the Muskeg River, a tributary of the Athabasca River. Data from the provincial oilsands monitoring program shows sulphates measured in the well suddenly spiked by a factor of roughly 10 in the first three months of 2023.

Related video: Chiefs, Metis nations call for Alberta Energy Regulator to be shut down  (The Canadian Press) Duration 2:35  View on Watch

The chemicals are naturally occurring and are not particularly harmful in themselves. They are tracked because they are often found in high concentrations in tailings, which are toxic.

Imperial is using sulphate measurements to outline how far seepage from one of its tailings ponds at Kearl has spread.

The company is still dealing with issues created by those releases.

In May 2022, workers discovered discoloured water seeping near a tailings ponds on the north of the mine site. That substance was later found to be groundwater mixed with tailings.

The following February, another 5.3 million litres of wastewater escaped from a containment pond, prompting the regulator to issue an environmental protection order.

First Nations in the area and responsible governments were angered they weren't kept informed about the investigation into the first release. Three probes have been launched into that nine-month delay: one by a House of Commons committee, one by Alberta's information commissioner and one by the regulator's board of directors.

Imperial says it has largely cleaned up the containment pond release. It has installed pumps, drainage trenches and monitoring wells to keep the seepage from spreading further, although it still continues.

The regulator has told Imperial it must now provide an plan to delineate the new problem and bring its operations back into compliance.

BC

Another stop-work order issued for Coastal GasLink pipeline over erosion concerns

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 

HOUSTON, B.C. — British Columbia environment enforcement officers have issued another stop-work order for the Coastal GasLink pipeline project over erosion and sediment control, something the company promised it would stay on top of last year.

The latest order covers an 11-kilometre section in the Morice River watershed southwest of Houston, B.C., and comes after the company paused construction on a 20-kilometre stretch near the Little Anzac River over similar concerns.

The enforcement office says a May 4 inspection of the Morice River site found problems related to erosion and sediment control causing impacts to sensitive wetlands.

In both cases, TC Energy says it's stopping so it can implement measures to respond to rapid spring melt due to rising temperatures and high snow pack.

The environmental assessment office and Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. signed an agreement last year that required the company to develop comprehensive, detailed erosion and sediment management plans for all new construction, prioritizing erosion prevention over sediment control.

The company said in a statement that it proactively paused work at the Little Anzac River site north of Prince George two weeks before stop-work orders were issued earlier this week.

The latest order brings the number of stop-work orders currently in effect for the project to six.

The company has said it's bringing in third-party experts to assess additional erosion and sediment control procedures needed during accelerated spring melt.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2023

The Canadian Press

All oil recovered from creek after December's Keystone Kansas pipeline leak

The leak was the worst oil spill in the Keystone pipeline's history.

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday
All oil recovered from creek after December's Keystone pipeline leak
Provided by The Canadian Press

CALGARY — TC Energy Corp. says it has recovered all of the oil that spilled into a Kansas creek as a result of a leak from the Keystone pipeline in December.

The Calgary-based pipeline company says while the oil that spilled into the creek has been recovered, it is still working to remediate and restore the Mill Creek shoreline.

TC Energy said it expects to be on site until the third quarter of this year to complete the cleanup.

Approximately 13,000 barrels of oil spilled from the Keystone pipeline in the December incident, which a third-party investigation concluded was caused by a crack in a weld that occurred at the time of the pipeline's construction and then grew over time.

The leak was the worst oil spill in the Keystone pipeline's history.

In March, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration expressed concern over the risk of additional spills from Keystone, and ordered TC Energy to operate the pipeline at a reduced pressure until it receives written permission from the regulator.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2023.

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The Canadian Press