Sunday, October 20, 2024

ANCIENT INDIA AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Published October 20, 2024 
DAWN/EOS
This 4th century CE mosaic in Sicily showcases the cultural impact India had on the region. An Indian-looking goddess, apparently copied from an Indian original, is shown flanked by an elephant and tiger with pepper vines hanging behind her | Villa Romana del Casale

In March 2022, a team of archaeologists was excavating a newly discovered temple of the Egyptian goddess Isis at Berenike, on the shores of the Red Sea, when they unearthed a series of remarkable finds.

Berenike is today a bleak and desolate spot. Here, under pale blue skies, the flat, treeless, red-dust wadis of the eastern desert give way to the windy shores of the Red Sea. There is little to see and, though the site contains the foundations of some once impressive structures — a couple of temples, a Roman aromatics distillery and a fine bath house — the broken walls today rarely rise far above the level of the encroaching sand dunes. Nevertheless, these unprepossessing ruins, easily missed as you drive up the Red Sea coast, were the landing point for generations of Indian merchants travelling to the Roman Empire and were once a place where unimaginable fortunes could be made.

The finds which emerged from the storeroom of the Isis temple included the head and torso of a magnificent Buddha, the first ever found to the west of Afghanistan. It was sculpted from the finest Proconnesian marble, from the island of Marmara off the Turkish coast, in a part Indo-Gandharan, part Palmyran, part Romano-Egyptian style, with rays of the sun beaming out from it on all sides, as if the Buddha had transformed into a Roman solar deity like Sol or Mithras.

From the style of the carving, and what the archaeologists described as the “tortellini-like” curls drilled on to the Buddha’s head, they believed that the sculpture must have been made in a workshop in 2nd century CE Alexandria. It was probably commissioned by a wealthy Indian Buddhist sea captain, in gratitude for his safe arrival in the Roman Empire. Its location in a temple of Isis may not be an accident: one Egyptian papyrus of the period refers to Isis as the mother of the Buddha.


In the storerooms of the Isis temple were also found a stone memorial dedicated to a trinity of early proto-Hindu gods, one of whom, Vasudeva, with his club and discus, would soon evolve into the more familiar form of Krishna; also propitiated was Balarama, with a plough; and the goddess Ekanamsha.


Recent archaeological discoveries are leading to a radical revision by scholars of the intensity, scale and importance of maritime trade between the Subcontinent and the world. For example, one estimate is that one third of the Roman empire’s entire revenue was generated by taxes on trade with ancient India. Historian William Dalrymple’s latest book — The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, published by Bloomsbury — presents a fascinating account of this exchange between cultures, civilisations and global wealth. Eos presents, with permission, an excerpt from the book…

There was also a bilingual inscription in Greek and Sanskrit, put up in the 3rd century by a Buddhist devotee from Gujarat: “In the sixth year of King Philip [ie the Roman Emperor Philip the Arab, in 249 CE], the kshatriya [warrior] Vasula gave this image for the welfare and happiness of all beings.”

Out of the sands of Berenike has come pottery from Spain, frankincense and resin from Southern Arabia, beads from Vietnam and Java, statues of the gods of Palmyra and cedar from Lebanon. There have also been letters, receipts and customs passes from Alexandria. But most of all there has been what the excavator described as “just tons” of Indian finds, including gems and pearls, woven mats and baskets, teak from Kerala and even the bones and skulls of elephants and monkeys — specifically, rhesus and bonnet macaques from India.

Indeed a steady stream of finds from the Indian trading community had been emerging from this stretch of Egyptian desert sand for some time. A great many fragments of cotton weave have turned up in Berenike, which the archaeologists believe to be of a variety grown in Gujarat and the Indus delta. A Tamil-Brahmi pottery graffito was written by a Tamil visitor who called himself “the chieftain Korran”, while Prakrit inscriptions recorded the visits of other south Indians.

Deposits of rice, dal, coconuts, coriander and tamarind show that these south Indian merchants preferred their own deliciously peppery cuisine to that of Egypt, much as their successors still do today. Nearby were found huge 22-pound pots containing several thousand imported Indian black peppercorns.

Ever since the first reports of the incredible splendours and riches of India began reaching Europe after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, Europeans had fantasised about the wealth of India. Here, according to Herodotus and the Greek geographers, gold was dug up by gigantic ants and guarded by griffins; here, precious jewels were said to lie scattered on the ground like dust.


It was India, not China, that was the greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. It is also clear that sea travel was the fastest, most economical and safest way to move people and goods in the pre-modern world, costing about a fifth of the price of equivalent land transport.

As the two worlds were gradually brought into regular and direct contact through the ports of the Red Sea in the 1st century BCE, the Romans became increasingly eager consumers of Indian goods and luxuries, particularly the spices of southern India. Indian merchants were only too happy to satisfy these cravings, at considerable profit.

Archaeological evidence for the surprising intensity of contact between early India and Roman Egypt is growing fast. The Indian finds in Berenike have been mirrored by equally striking evidence of Roman trade emerging from excavations in India, particularly the recent dig near the Keralan village of Pattinam, the probable site of Berenike’s Indian counterpart, Muziris.





As a result, the scale and importance of this trade are currently being radically revised by scholars working on both sides of the Indian oceans. Indeed, according to some recent calculations, customs taxes on trade with India may have generated as much as one-third of the entire income of the Roman exchequer. One source for this striking figure is a unique papyrus document of uncertain origin, believed to have been found in an ancient Egyptian rubbish dump.

The debris chucked out by the people of the now-vanished Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus — the ‘City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish’ — has for a century been providing a series of remarkable literary discoveries. These have ranged from previously unknown lesbian erotica by Sappho to fragments of the collected early Christian Sayings of Jesus and pieces of a new gospel, that of the apostle Thomas. The rubbish dumps first came to the attention of the outside world in 1895, when reports reached the British archaeologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt that the area had begun to yield an extraordinary number of papyrus fragments.

What the two men found when they visited the site, however, surpassed their wildest expectations. “The papyri were, as a rule, not very far from the surface,” wrote Grenfell in the Journal of the Egypt Exploration Fund the following year. “In one patch of ground, indeed, merely turning up the soil with one’s boot would frequently disclose a layer of papyri…”

In the first year, the two men found fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles; the earliest papyrus of St Matthew’s Gospel then known; and a leaf of a previously unknown book of New Testament Apocrypha, the Acts of Paul and Thecla. They also unearthed great quantities of historical documents, such as the report of an interview between the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and an Alexandrian magistrate, as well as an entire archive of administrative correspondence and financial documents. Such was the quantity of documents unearthed that many have only recently been properly studied.

A single papyrus, now in Vienna and believed by some scholars to have originated in the rubbish dumps at Oxyrhynchus, turned out to be a fragmentary loan contract and customs assessment that followed the standard template used by Alexandrian importers for such orders. It was taken out by an Alexandria-based Egypto-Roman entrepreneur for the purchase of goods from an Indian merchant in faraway Muziris on the coast of Kerala.

It gave precise details of one cargo that had been sent to Berenike all the way from India, aboard a ship called the Hermapollon. What caught the attention of historians was the jaw-dropping value of the goods in question. It seems that everything that came out of India at the period was unusually expensive by the time it reached the Roman world.

The exports included nearly four tons of ivory, worth seven million sesterces, at a time when a soldier in the Roman army would have earned about 800 sesterces annually, and a would-be senator from the cream of the Roman aristocracy had to demonstrate assets of one million sesterces to stand for office.

The life story of Gautama Buddha, as sculpted in Gandhara, is often accompanied by Roman imagery, such as Corinthian capitals and Diosynian scenes of music, dance and merry-making. There is even a depiction of the Trojan Horse | British Museum

The consignment also included a valuable shipment of 80 boxes of aromatic nard, the precious and much prized aromatic oil of the Himalayan spikenard plant, used in the manufacture of perfume, which makes a brief appearance in the Gospel of John when Lazarus’ sister Martha uses it to anoint the feet of Jesus before wiping them with her hair.

There was, in addition, a consignment of tortoiseshell and 790 pounds of Indian textiles, probably cotton, then considered a luxury product as valuable as silk. The total value of the 150-ton shipment was calculated at 131 talents, “enough to purchase 2,400 acres of the best farmland in Egypt” or “a premium estate in central Italy.”

A single trading ship such as the Hermapollon could possibly carry several such consignments, each worth a small fortune. No wonder then that Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), the plain-speaking naval commander from northern Italy, mentions that cohorts of archers were carried on board the ships sailing to India, to offer protection against pirates, and that the Muziris papyrus carefully factors in the costs of such private security. One successful shipment of this value could turn the merchants behind it into some of the richest men in the Empire.

That was not all. According to the papyrus, the import tax paid on the cargo worth almost nine million sesterces was over two million sesterces. Working up from these figures and other customs receipts from the period, scholars have estimated that, by the first century CE, Indian imports into Egypt were worth over a billion sesterces per annum, from which the tax authorities of the Roman Empire were creaming off no less than 270 million.

These revenues surpassed those of entire subject countries: Julius Caesar imposed tribute of 40 million sesterces after his conquests in Gaul, while the Rhineland frontier was defended by eight legions at an annual cost of 88 million.

The sea trade along the Golden Road between Rome and India was clearly an immense operation, dangerous and complex, but highly profitable, both to the shippers who operated the trade and to the Roman state that taxed it. The implications of the unprecedented scale of the sea trade between India and Rome from the first century onwards are enormous. It is now clear that historians have been looking at entirely the wrong place when they thought about ancient trade routes.

It was India, not China, that was the greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. It is also clear that sea travel was the fastest, most economical and safest way to move people and goods in the pre-modern world, costing about a fifth of the price of equivalent land transport. Shipping routes that cut across political and topographical boundaries were always more important than the slow-moving caravan trails, and the overland trade routes always carried much less trade than the sea roads: ships, after all, could carry vastly larger cargoes — often amounting to several hundred tons — and travel much more quickly than donkeys or camels. They could also sail around wars, instability and ambushes.

This Buddha, the first to be found west of Afghanistan, was discovered in 2022 in Berenike, Egypt | S E Sidebotham



The Golden Road of early East–West commerce, in other words, lay less overland, through a Persia often at war with Rome, and much more across the open oceans, via the choppy waters of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

There is evidence of pioneering Indian merchants making remarkable prehistoric trading voyages as early as the seventh millennium BCE, when Afghan lapis first turns up in beads found in northern Syria. Sumerian clay tablets of the late second millennium BCE are full of references to lapis, which is used as a simile to describe the colour of the sky and certain flowers, even the beards of men.

Etched carnelian beads from Gujarat of the same date also turn up in the Royal Tombs of Ur (modern Iraq). Sumerian texts refer to a fabulously rich eastern trading city, an early Eldorado, named Aratta, which scholars have identified with one of the Indus valley cities; the same name also appears in early Sanskrit sources.

Teak from Malabar, red Indian marble and ivory were reaching Ur and the young city states of ancient Mesopotamia and the wider Persian Gulf region by c.2500 BCE. Some may have come overland, with the goods passed from merchant to merchant in a commercial relay race, but the larger and heavier objects, such as tree trunks and large blocks of precious stone, would have been much easier to move by boat.

These valuable cargoes were probably rafted down the Indus, and then ferried on in the larger seagoing boats of Meluhha, as the people of the Indus Valley Civilisation are now believed to have called themselves. The same Meluhhan boats were reaching the Persian Gulf during the reign of King Sargon of Akkad, in modern Iraq, around 2,300 BCE.

Distinctive Indus valley cooking utensils, shell jewellery and toys that have turned up at presumed Meluhhan ‘colony’ sites in Mesopotamia imply that the merchants from the Indus valley were accompanied by their children and womenfolk. Some even seem to have brought their water buffaloes and zebu-humped cattle to provide them with milk, while Indus valley-style gaming boards and dice indicate how these pioneering traders entertained themselves on the long, hot Mesopotamian summer afternoons.

Further evidence of a very early Indian merchant diaspora lies scattered around the Middle East: one cuneiform tablet mentions an entire village of Meluhhan Indians, settled in what is now Iraq, while another references an Indian woman running a tavern; there is even a legal notice about a drunken Meluhhan who was fined ten silver ingots for breaking a man’s tooth in a brawl.

Indians also worshipped at the local temples: one Meluhhan trader donated a piece of agate to the temple in Larsa, while one of his compatriots gave a wooden throne, a lapis axe and a sedan chair to the god Tishpak, at his temple in central Mesopotamia. Around 2000 BCE, merchants from the Indus valley were sufficiently common in Babylonia for there to be a need for at least one professional translator of their language. One king of Ur, Sulgi, claimed to be able to speak the language of the Meluhhans. Indian DNA also turns up in a surprising number of the bones excavated from this period in Mesopotamia.

A millennium later, Indians began to travel beyond the Land of the Two Rivers. Grains of Indian pepper placed up the mummified nose of the Pharaoh Rameses II in 1213 BCE also presumably came by this same Red Sea route, along with the Indian diamonds used in the tools which are believed to have cut the stones of the pyramids. Indian beads, silks and spices got even further — indeed as far as the Aegean, where cinnamon has been found on the island of Samos.

Indian sailors on the east coast of India were trading with their counterparts in South-east Asia by the second millennium BCE, when plant species cultivated by South-east Asian farmers start to appear in the archaeological record of South Asia. The areca nut and the coconut palm were probably introduced to South Asia around this time, together with other South-east Asian crops later regarded as quintessentially Indian, such as ginger, cinnamon, sandalwood, bananas and rice. Domesticated chickens and pigs may also have been imports from the south-east.

Roman gold coins excavated in Tamil Nadu, India. One coin of Caligula (37-41 CE) and two coins of Nero (54-68 CE) | British Museum



By the 4th century BCE, there is evidence that merchants had already established a regular maritime trading network that stretched from the east coast of India across the Bay of Bengal to the small but affluent city states and cosmopolitan ports that had begun to emerge in Java, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the South China Sea. Gold and spices, sandalwood and eaglewood, and fragrant resins such as camphor, as well as pepper and tin, were among the products which the first Indian traders came to buy.

Sanskrit place names such as Takkola (‘Market of Cardamom’), Karpuradvipa (‘Island of Camphor’), Narikeladvipa (‘Island of Coconut Palms’) give us hints of the other goods that attracted Indian merchants to these ports. In return, they traded the many Indian products found by modern archaeologists scattered in the early sites across the region: glass beads, bronze bowls and precious stones formed into simple jewellery, such as carnelian ornaments, some shaped into tiny tiger figurines or lions of translucent rock crystal. Around this time, there is evidence of Indian glassmakers setting up workshops on the Isthmus of Kra, the narrowest point on the Thai-Malay peninsula.

Around the same time, we get the first evidence of peoples from the Mediterranean world sailing eastwards to India. In 510 BCE, a captain named Scylax from Caryanda, on what is now the coast of Turkey, was commissioned by the Persian Shah Darius to sail down the Kabul river, through the mouth of the Indus and hence, hugging the coastline, through the Arabian and Red seas as far as Egypt.

Along the same route came the Indian gemstones, especially beryls and rubies that were used to decorate the exquisite public rooms of the great Achaemenid palace of Persepolis. One 3rd century BCE Greek historian described how “the gold plane-trees and the gold grape-vine under which the Persian kings commonly sat to conduct their business” were made with “grapes of emeralds as well as of Indian rubies.” Some of these were maybe gifts from the Indian envoys, who regularly brought presents to the Persian kings. The same Greek observer also spotted Indian mahouts riding the Shah’s elephants, and other observers remark on Indian magicians, entertainers and cooks at work in the great Persian palaces.

An early Buddhist Jataka tale of this period tells the story of Indian merchants in Babylon astonishing the citizens with a dancing peacock. Another early Buddhist text talks of the expansive trading world of Indian merchants, stretching from “the Lands of Gold” in South-east Asia to “the country of the distant Greeks [and] Alexandria [in Egypt].” It is probably this network that allowed a 1st century BCE Parthian craftsman sculpting a statuette of a goddess from Babylonia to use Burmese rubies to make her eyes vibrant and alive.

By the 3rd century BCE, Alexander the Great’s successors in Egypt, the Ptolemies, had established the ports of Berenike and Myos Hormos, initially to facilitate the import of elephants for warfare and, for the first time, regular voyages down the Red Sea to and from India became feasible. A now-lost early Buddhist gravestone, dating from the Ptolemaic era of Alexandria, may once have portrayed the Buddhist icons of the triratna and the Wheel of the Law, the dharmachakra. In the 2nd century BCE, Callixeinus of Rhodes reported seeing Indian women, cattle, dogs and carts full of Indian gems on display in a procession in Alexandria.

According to the Greek geographer Strabo, the first European to attempt a regular commercial relationship with India was an Alexandrian merchant named Eudoxus of Cyzicus. Eudoxus was an entrepreneurial Ptolemaic Greek who went into business with an Indian sailor who had been shipwrecked on the shores of the Red Sea. Having given his new friend a lift home around 118 BCE in return for directions, Eudoxus made two further trips to South Asia, bringing back a great haul of aromatics, spices and other luxuries.

He was last seen disappearing through the Pillars of Hercules, past what would become Gibraltar, with a boatload of singing boys and dancing girls, in an attempt to reach India by a new route, circumnavigating Africa via the Canary Islands. He was never heard of again.

Sailings to and from India began to accelerate after sailors got the hang of using the monsoon to cross the open oceans, a feat that Western authors say was first accomplished by a Greek sea captain named Hippalus, in the 1st century BCE. But it was the defeat of the fleets of Cleopatra and Mark Antony by the future Emperor Augustus, at the fateful sea Battle of Actium on September 2, 31 BCE, that changed everything.

Excerpted with permission from The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple, and published recently by Bloomsbury

The author is a writer and historian. Some of his previous books include The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, and Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan. X: @DalrympleWill

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 20th, 2024

 

Japanese data centre seeks nuclear electricity supplies

Friday, 18 October 2024

The head of cloud-based gaming services provider Ubitus KK has said the Tokyo-based company is planning to construct a new data centre in Japan and is specifically looking at areas with nearby nuclear power plants.

Japanese data centre seeks nuclear electricity supplies
(Image: Ubitus)

Ubitus already has two data centres for gaming - located in Tokyo and Osaka to be close to gaming clients - which are operated in partnership with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation.

The company is now looking to build a third data centre to serve generative artificial intelligence. For generative AI, the priority becomes more about the size of energy supply and electricity price, Ubitus CEO Wesley Kuo told Bloomberg.

Kuo said the company is looking to acquire land in Kyoto, Shimane or a prefecture in Japan's southern island of Kyushu, primarily because of the availability of nuclear power in the region. Setting up a data centre in these areas would allow access to a grid with cheap and stable electricity thanks to the nuclear facilities, he said.

Kyoto is close to several nuclear power plants operated by Kansai Electric Power Company, while Kyushu is home to four units managed by Kyushu Electric Power Company. Chugoku Electric Power Company is scheduled to restart unit 2 of its Shimane plant in Shimane Prefecture in December.

"Unless we have other, better, efficient and cheap energy, nuclear is still the most competitive option in terms of cost and the scale of supply," Kuo said. "For industrial use - especially AI - they need a constant, high-capacity supply."

Ubitus expects to select a location for its new data centre in early 2025, Kuo told Bloomberg. The centre will initially have power-receiving capacity of 2-3 MWe, with plans to potentially expand to up to 50 MWe. 

Japanese reactor cleared for use beyond 50 years

Thursday, 17 October 2024

Kansai Electric Power Company has received approval from Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority to operate unit 1 at its Takahama nuclear power plant - the country's oldest operating reactor - beyond 50 years.

Japanese reactor cleared for use beyond 50 years
The four-unit Takahama plant (Image: Kansai)

The utility applied to the NRA in November last year to operate the 780 MWe (net) pressurised water reactor (PWR), which entered commercial operation on 14 November 1974, for a further ten years after conducting an ageing technical evaluation and formulating a long-term facility management policy.

At that time, Kansai said: "As a result of the ageing technical evaluation conducted this time, we have confirmed that the plant can be maintained in a sound manner even 50 years after the start of operation by implementing additional maintenance measures for some equipment and structures as a long-term facility management policy, in addition to the current maintenance activities for equipment and structures that are important for safety."

At a 16 October meeting, the NRA approved Kansai's plan for ageing countermeasures at the unit over the next ten years.

"We will continue to actively incorporate the latest knowledge from Japan and abroad and reflect it in plant design and equipment maintenance, thereby striving to improve the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants," Kansai said.

Under regulations which came into force in July 2013, Japanese reactors had a nominal operating period of 40 years. One extension to this - limited to a maximum of 20 years - could be granted, requiring among other things, a special inspection to verify the integrity of reactor pressure vessels and containment vessels after 35 years of operation.

However, in December 2022, the NRA approved a draft of a new rule that would allow reactors to be operated for more than the current limit of 60 years. Under the amendment, the operators of reactors in use for 30 years or longer must formulate a long-term reactor management plan and gain approval from the regulator at least once every 10 years if they are to continue to operate. The new policy effectively extends the period reactors can remain in operation beyond 60 years by excluding the time they spent offline for inspections from the total service life.

The legislation was approved by Japan's Cabinet in February last year and enacted in May 2023. It comes into full effect in June next year.

Takahama 1 - which was restarted in July 2023 after being offline since January 2011 - becomes the first Japanese unit to be approved for operation beyond 50 years.

In March, Ubitus announced that it had received new investment from California-based software and fabless company Nvidia Corporation, which it said "underscores the immense potential and accelerating demand for generative AI and cloud gaming across Asia and beyond".

Earlier this week, online shopping and web services giant Amazon announced it was investing USD500 million in developing nuclear technologies to power its data centres. That announcement came two days after fellow online giant Google signed a Master Plant Development Agreement with Kairos Power for the development and construction of a series of advanced reactor plants. And last month Microsoft announced it had signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation which would see Three Mile Island unit 1 restarted, five years after it was shut down.

Fukushima Daiichi: How is the decommissioning process going to work?


By Alex Hunt
World Nuclear News
Friday, 4 October 2024

The decommissioning process for the Fukushima Daiichi site and surroundings is scheduled to be completed by 2051. It will require many innovations, and careful planning. Here are some of the details outlined at an event at the International Atomic Energy Agency's General Conference in Vienna.

Fukushima Daiichi: How is the decommissioning process going to work?
(Image: Tepco)

What happened?
 

On 11 March 2011 a major earthquake struck Japan. It was followed by a 15-metre tsunami which disabled the power supply and cooling of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and all three cores largely melted in the first three days. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the area as a precaution because of radioactive releases in the wake of the accident. After two weeks, the three reactors were stable and official ‘cold shutdown condition’ was announced in mid-December. According to World Nuclear Association, there have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident but there have been 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture, which are in addition to the 19,500 killed by the earthquake and tsunami. Since the accident, work has been taking place to safely decommission the reactors and the surrounding areas, with large areas of the evacuated areas now back open for people to live in. The air dose rate is now similar, or lower, than major cities, the Japan-hosted event Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima heard:


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

It has meant that the evacuation area which covered 81,000 people's homes in August 2013 had been cut to 7000 people's homes by April this year and the intention is to lift all the evacuation areas "even if it will take many years to do so".


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

The decommissioning process so far
 

The decommissioning of any nuclear power plant is a long process, so it is no surprise that the timescales for decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi plant are lengthy, with the completion currently scheduled to take place up to 40 years after cold shutdown - so by 2051. The different phases in the decommissioning roadmap start with the post-accident period to achieving cold shutdown in 2011, and then a two-year period to November 2013 when the start of fuel removal began. The third, and final phase, began in September with the start of trial fuel debris removal in unit 2.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

Fuel removal
 

The situation in each reactor is different. Fuel removal from used fuel pools was completed for unit 4 in December 2014 and for unit 3 in 2021. The aim is to start fuel removal from unit 2 this year and for unit 1 from 2027/28.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

There is also the extremely complicated task of removing the fuel debris from the reactors, with a fair amount of uncertainty about the distribution in each of the reactors:


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

A trial process began last month, trying to remove fuel debris in unit 2, using a long narrow grabber tool:


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

The plan is to sample granular fuel debris weighing 3 grams or less by lowering an end effector (gripper) with a camera mounted on it, to the bottom. Before the start of the process in September, the telescopic-arm-type equipment was tested in mock up facilities set up by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in Naraha.

Yasutaka Denda, from Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), explained that a few kilograms a day would be collected - but the process would also provide important information about how the accident progressed, as well as information about the location of the fuel debris.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

Larger scale fuel debris removal
 

Kosuke Ono, Executive Director, Head of the Decommissioning Strategy Office, Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF) explained the options in the selection process for methods to further expand the scale of fuel debris retrieval “that will determine the success or failure to complete longterm decommissioning”.

The government, NDF and Tepco are all involved in the process. Full-scale fuel debris retrieval starts with unit 3 and he said the “property and distribution of fuel debris greatly varied depending on the accident progression” - and comprised a likely mix of fuel rods still in their original form, fallen gravel-like fuel pellets, melted and resolidified metal/ceramic materials and fission products stuck in narrow parts.

He said there were three methods considered - the partial submersion method:


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

He said that this was the easiest method to understand, but stressed that it would need a lot of planning and would need remote operation of equipment.

The second option was the submersion method. He described this method as "like making a big bathtub and sinking the reactor building into it - water is a very effective radiation shield and this method may be faster than the partial submersion method". However there was no engineering confirmation about whether it was possible to build such a huge structure and what would happen if there were leaks, so this option has not been selected - although a method using water as a radiation shield could be required if the partial submersion method does not work.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

The third option considered was the filling and solidification method. This method uses mortar/cement - this has been the least studied and there are on-going studies of which material could be used.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

He said that more information was needed about the situation inside the reactors, but the recommendation at this stage has been to start design studies and research and development utilising the partial submission method. Micro-drones and endoscopic investigations would be used to build up a picture of inside the reactor vessels.

There would need to be a new cover on unit 3 for retrieval to ensure no release of radioactive material during the process and a new building constructed to store the fuel debris. There would also need to be a number of nearby buildings demolished, which would themselves take a long time, to ensure the highest standards of safety.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

A further round of public explanatory sessions is planned to be held in Fukushima Prefecture in November and December to outline the fuel debris retrieval methods and how it would work.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

Among the technological innovations that will be needed, will be a way to investigate the inside of the reactor pressure vessel - how to drill a hole so as to be able to see inside and to improve the environment inside.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

Off-site environmental remediation
 

Yoshitomo Mori, from Japan’s Environment Ministry, said that by March 2018, 100 municipalities in 8 prefectures had had full scale decontamination completed. He said that since 2014, when it started as a small-scale pilot project, approximately 13.76 million cubic metres of soil and waste had been removed and transported to the Interim Storage Facility.

The Interim Storage Facility was built to manage and store removed soil and waste arising from decontamination, until final disposal outside Fukushima Prefecture, which is stipulated in Japanese law to be completed within 30 years (by March 2045). The facility occupies about 1600 hectares:


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

He stressed the importance of recycling the removed soil, which was equivalent to the volume of 11 Tokyo Domes (the baseball stadium). This scale, he said, showed the need for some form of volume reduction. About 75% of the soil has relatively low radioactivity and is to be recycled in lower levels in public works projects. There are a number of different demonstration projects taking place.


(Image: WNN photo of slide in Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima presentation)

There have also been pot plants placed in national ministries using recycled soil as part of the efforts to build public understanding of its safety. Studies have been taking place on selecting technology, and a site, for final disposal, and from 2025 they will “proceed to processes for studies and coordination related to the selection of a final disposal site”.

Water management - the ALPs treated water
 

The highest profile issue in the past few years relating to Fukushima has been the issue of the contaminated water - in part used to cool melted nuclear fuel - treated by the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which removes most of the radioactive contamination, with the exception of tritium. This treated water is currently stored in tanks on site. Japan announced in April 2021 it planned to discharge ALPS-treated water into the sea over a period of about 30 years. It started to discharge the water on 24 August last year and has completed the release of eight batches, a total of 62,400 cubic metres of water, with the ninth release beginning at the end of September.

The process has been overseen and is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose Department of Nuclear Safety and Security's Director, Gustavo Caruso, gave a presentation outlining the work the agency had been doing, and said that the IAEA had concluded ahead of the first release that "the discharge of the ALPs treated water, as currently planned by Japan, will have a negligible impact on people and the environment" and was "consistent with relevant international safety standards". He said that IAEA measurements had confirmed the water release was safe and would continue to corroborate the Japanese data relating to the ALPS treated water discharge, and would continue to carry out independent tests to "help build confidence in Japan and beyond". Read more here on the IAEA's guide to ALPS treated water discharge.

Reconstruction is under way
 

So what about the future? With large areas of the previously evacuated area now decontaminated and open for people and businesses to move to, or return to, initiatives have begun to encourage them to do so, with a plan for "creative reconstruction: not simply reconstruction". The aim is to develop and build on specialist expertise and industries in areas such as robots, drones and decommissioning, as well as agriculture and the environment and research and development:

 

To find out more: Tepco has produced an interactive video guide to the situation at Fukushima Daiichi and the decommissioning process.

 

BRICS members set to increase nuclear energy cooperation


Friday, 18 October 2024
World Nuclear News

The creation of the Nuclear Energy Platform is intended to share experience and support the development of nuclear technologies among BRICS+ member countries.

BRICS members set to increase nuclear energy cooperation
(Image: Rosatom)

The intergovernmental BRICS organisation's members are currently Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the UAE, with more than 20 other countries also expressing an interest in joining the organisation which is widely seen as a counterbalance to the G7 grouping of industrialised nations.

The presidency of what is now sometimes referred to as BRICS+ since its expansion from 5 to 10 members this year, is currently held by Russia, with its annual summit taking place in the city of Kazan next week. But ahead of that event, the BRICS+ Business Forum has been taking place, with the issue of collaboration in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear technology discussed at a meeting at Moscow Atom Museum.

Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom director general, said that nearly all the organisation's members were implementing projects in the field of nuclear energy: "Today, many BRICS members are the technological drivers of the international nuclear market. The common experience can and should be used and replicated throughout the BRICS space and on the planet as a whole. Therefore, we propose to join forces within the framework of the BRICS nuclear platform, a voluntary alliance of companies, professional nuclear communities and NGOs supporting the development and implementation of nuclear technologies."

BRICS member countries currently have 390 GWe of operable nuclear power units with a further 66 MWe under construction. One of the platform's aims is to help companies, if required, with persuading their governments to see nuclear as a clean energy source, and also share assistance for dealing with other issues which may be hampering nuclear energy projects. 

According to Russia's official Tass news agency, Likhachev told reporters that the process of legal formalisation of the Nuclear Energy Platform had started and that its main aim was to develop and implement best practices relating to energy and non-energy use of nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes in BRICS and BRICS+ markets and to develop incentivising mechanisms and models of projects’ implementation in member countries.

It reported him as saying that the platform was intended for companies, nuclear power plants and related organisations - "those capable of contributing to development of the nuclear power sector" - and the plan had been backed unanimously.

Orpet Peixoto, deputy chairman of the Brazilian Association for the Development of the Nuclear Industry, said: "I am very happy with the progress in the formation of the Platform. I believe that it will prove fruitful for BRICS countries and BRICS associate member-states ... we are one of the very few countries in the world with all the elements of nuclear fuel cycle but we need support, we need financing, and we know that we can get them through cooperation with the BRICS countries. So, I see Brazil has a lot to gain from the cooperation within the platform."

Meanwhile, speaking at the BRICS business forum on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that BRICS members now had a bigger share of global gross domestic product than the G7 members, saying its members were "in fact the drivers of global economic growth" and with the development of "communication channels, technological and educational standards, financial systems, payment instruments and, of course, mechanisms for sustainable, long-term investment ... the economic growth of BRICS members in the future will increasingly depend less on outside influence or interference".

 

Nuclear Alliance calls for support from next European Commission


Friday, 18 October 2024
World Nuclear News

Member countries of the European Nuclear Alliance have called upon the next European Commission to recognise the contributions of both nuclear and renewables in Europe's decarbonisation in its upcoming programme, covering the period 2024-2029.

Alliance calls for support from next European Commission
The European Commission (Image: Pixabay)

The Alliance met on 15 October in Luxembourg in the margins of the Energy Council with ministers and high-level representatives from 14 EU member states (including the upcoming Polish presidency) as well as the European Commission.

In a joint statement, the Alliance said: "In a changing global geopolitical context, the upcoming 2024-29 Commission's mandate must ensure the competitiveness and resilience of our economies towards reaching climate-neutrality by 2050 and to address the 'existential challenge' that Europe is facing.

"Nuclear energy, alongside renewable energy, is a cost-competitive solution to meet the growing demand for fossil-free electricity and mitigate climate change, thanks to its low-carbon footprint. Nuclear energy is the ready-available fossil-free technology able to produce consistent baseload dispatchable power, ensuring both our collective security of supply and the necessary flexibility in our electricity market."

In March, the European Nuclear Alliance outlined four pillars of action to set "an enabling European framework to foster a robust European nuclear industry and guarantee the security of supply of nuclear materials, particularly nuclear fuel, for power and non-power uses". These included: developing access to private and public financing, and exploring the possibilities and benefits of European financing instruments; developing a skilled and diverse nuclear workforce for all civil nuclear applications; scaling-up industrial, research and innovation collaboration across a European value chain through concrete projects; and respecting the national choices of all member states with regards to the decarbonisation of their energy mix to strengthen our unity.

"We commit to intensify our cooperation within the Alliance, with all other like-minded EU member states and with the European Commission on these four pillars," the Alliance said in their latest statement.

"The benefits of existing and future nuclear power plants go beyond the borders of member states which opt for nuclear energy," they continue. "Indeed, low-carbon baseload energies such as hydro or nuclear power stabilise our common grid and the entire European electricity market.

"Nuclear energy as well as renewables are true collective assets for the European Union. Due to its baseload profile and low operating costs, nuclear power production creates less volatile market conditions. Without such energies, there is no path for the EU to provide to its citizens affordable, reliable and abundant low-carbon energy while achieving net-zero by 2025."

The 103 nuclear power reactors currently in operation in the EU provide it with about one-quarter of its electricity.

The current Commission's term of office runs until 31 October 2024. Between 6 and 9 June, EU citizens voted to elect the 720 members of the next European Parliament. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was elected for a second mandate.

The European Nuclear Alliance comprises Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden, plus Belgium and Italy as observers.

Brazil to seal $30 billion compensation deal with miners over 2015 dam collapse, sources say

By ReutersOctober 18, 2024

General view from above of a dam owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton Ltd that burst, in Mariana, Brazil, November 10, 2015. 
REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

Agreement set to be officially signed on Oct 25, four sources say

Deal to be for 170 bln reais in total compensation, with 100 bln over 20 years

Samarco to be primary obligor; Vale and BHP to cover 50% each of any unmet obligations

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Miners Vale (VALE3.SA), opens new tab, BHP
(BHP.AX), opens new tab and Samarco are discussing a near $30 billion compensation deal with Brazilian authorities related to the 2015 Mariana dam collapse, they said on Friday, with an agreement set to be signed on Oct. 25, sources said.

The collapse of the dam at an iron ore mine owned by Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and BHP, near the city of Mariana nine years ago unleashed a wave of toxic tailings in a disaster that killed 19 people, left hundreds homeless, flooded forests and polluted the length of the Doce River.

The three mining firms have for years been negotiating a compensation agreement with the country's public attorney and with state and federal authorities, hoping a deal would end several court actions on the matter.
In separate statements and securities filings, Vale, BHP and Samarco said the version of the agreement currently being discussed would include a total compensation of 170 billion reais ($29.9 billion), with 100 billion reais of that to be paid through 20 years directly to public authorities.

The total amount also includes 32 billion reais to be spent by the firms in remediation and compensation measures, and a further 38 billion reais that they have already disbursed, according to the companies.

The agreement is set to be officially signed on Oct. 25, four sources told Reuters on Friday. Local newspaper O Globo had earlier in the day reported the date.

Vale, Samarco and BHP did not say when they expect to sign the agreements. Brazil's solicitor general office, which is part of the negotiations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the date.

Vale and BHP said Samarcwould be the primary obligor for the payments, with both owners each paying 50% of any obligations Samarco cannot fund.

Samarco, which is under bankruptcy proceedings, said a previous plan approved by its creditors ruled that it could only pay up to $1 billion in compensation measures until 2031. Any disbursements exceeding it will be covered by Vale and BHP, it added.

Based on that, Vale on Friday forecast that its third-quarter earnings will reflect 5.3 billion reais in new liabilities related to the dam's collapse.

BHP said the agreement in discussion "is broadly aligned with the existing $6.5 billion provision."
In September, Brazil Energy and Mining Minister Alexandre Silveira said the talks at the time were for a roughly 167 billion reais agreement, three billion reais below the terms released by the firms on Friday.

Brazil rejected a previous 127 billion reais proposal earlier this year.
($1 = 5.6897 reais)

Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Marta Nogueira in Rio de Janeiro; Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and Andre Romani in Sao Paulo; Editing by Sandra Maler, Marguerita Choy and Muralikumar Anantharaman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
AUSTRALIA

Olympic Dam copper mine halted on power outages, severe electrical storms



18th October 2024
By: Reuters

Global miner BHP's Olympic Dam copper mine faces power disruptions after severe electrical storms ravaged transmission infrastructure in the northern regions of South Australia, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

Australia's second-biggest copper mine, which is located 560 km north of Adelaide, has suspended operations and switched its surface infrastructure to minimal maintenance using on-site backup generators, the BHP spokesperson said.


"ElectraNet (electricity transmission infrastructure group) crews are working to restore power as soon as possible and we are working with them to better understand the scale of the impact and recovery timelines," the spokesperson said.

The Australian Financial Review first reported the halt at Olympic Dam and its supporting town Roxby Downs, saying seven 40-50 meter-high transmission towers across two power lines were damaged, crippling the mine's power supply.


This latest disruption at the mine echoes the costly 2016 blackout, which idled the mine for two weeks and slashed daily copper output by 567 t, based on 2015 annual production figures.
Canada firms can request temporary relief from tariffs on China EVs, metals

Reuters | October 18, 2024 |

Aluminum plant. Stock image.

Canadian firms can request a temporary remission of tariffs on the imports of Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum products, the finance ministry said on Friday.


The ministry said in a statement that relief would be granted under specific and exceptional circumstances. The measure is designed to help firms adjust their supply chains to cope with the new tariffs, it said in a statement.

Canada announced the measures in late August, citing China’s intentional, state-directed policy of over-capacity. A 100% surtax on EVs was imposed on Oct. 1 while a 25% surtax on steel and aluminum products comes into effect on Oct. 22.

“To ensure that Canadian industry has sufficient time to adjust supply chains, remission will provide relief … under specific and exceptional circumstances,” the ministry said.

“The federal government will consider the appropriate duration of remission, with intent to provide it on a transitional basis only in most cases,” according to the ministry.

Remission would be considered in the following cases:Situations where goods used as inputs, or substitutes for those goods, cannot be sourced either domestically or reasonably from non-Chinese sources.
Where there are contractual requirements, existing prior to Aug. 26, 2024, requiring businesses to purchase Chinese inputs into their products or projects for a specified period of time.
Other exceptional circumstances, on a case-by-case basis, that could have significant adverse impacts on the economy.

Remission will not be granted for goods intended for resale in the same condition to the United States.

(By David Ljunggren; Editing by Mark Porter)
Newmont Peñasquito, Mexico miners’ union ink new collective bargaining agreement

Staff Writer | October 18, 2024 | 

Peñasquito is the world’s fifth largest silver mine and Mexico’s second biggest. (Image courtesy of Newmont’s suppliers in Mexico.)

Newmont, (NYSE: NEM, TSX: NGT) announced Friday that its Mexican subsidiary, Newmont Peñasquito, has agreed on a new collective bargain agreement with its miners’ union for 2024-2026.


The new agreement, Newmont said, reflects the mutual commitment of all parties and is the outcome of open dialogue and safeguards the rights of all workers and provides a solid foundation for continuing operations at Peñasquito.

In 2023, employees at Peñasquito, Mexico’s largest gold mine, downed tools for over four months.

Newmont pegged the financial impact of the dispute at approximately $1 million a day in maintenance costs and $2.7 million a day in lost revenue.

The work stoppage was the third labour dispute at Peñasquito since the company acquired the mine through its merger with Goldcorp Inc. in 2019.
Left and Right unite against Rio Tinto lithium project in Serbia


Protesters in Serbian capital Belgrade in August. 
Credit: Wikimedia Commons photo by Emilija Knezevic

Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO; LSE: RIO; ASX: RIO) faces a crucial test this month in Serbia as leaders of a small town vote on whether to allow Europe’s largest lithium project, the $2.4 billion capex Jadar.


The council of Loznica, population around 20,000 about 100 km west of Belgrade, is deciding whether to amend its official plan to allow the 250-hectare development. The hard-rock lithium project has sparked massive protests while see-sawing between official support and rejection for years.

Slated to start in 2028, it would produce 58,000 tonnes a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate, about 17% of European demand and enough for one million electric vehicles. The mine might last 40 years. Rio, the world’s second largest miner by stock market value, and the government faced mass rallies again this week, swollen by an unlikely combination of causes.

“Rio Tinto is the hottest issue in the country right now,” Vuk Vuksanovic, an associate at the London School of Economics’ Ideas foreign policy think tank, said by email on Friday.

“The anti-lithium protests and environmentalism are the only things that at least temporarily unite left and right in Serbia. The left perceives it as a resistance against the arbitrary and illiberal governance of the incumbent coalition. The right perceives it as a struggle against Western dominance.”

Court ruling

Loznica council hasn’t set date for its vote, but local Balkan Insights media said on X it’s due this month. In August, Serbia’s Constitutional Court sided with Rio in overturning a 2022 government decision to block the project. Pundits note Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić might have cancelled the project’s permit in January 2022 in a ploy to win re-election that April.

But analysts view Vučić as pro-mining. He said in June he would revive the project, then signed a partnership with the European Union (it’s not a member) in July to supply critical minerals. His administration defeated an opposition-led motion on Oct. 10 to ban lithium exploration.

Vučić’s critics say he’s tightened control over media and rewarded supporters with government jobs. Whether he would allow a local council-level vote to derail the Jadar Valley project remains to be seen. But miners have often benefitted from authoritarian governments’ willingness to push through projects.

And Rio is no stranger to difficult ventures. It’s advancing the Simandou high-grade iron ore deposit in Guinea where it’s helping build a 600-km rail line and port. It’s considered Africa’s largest mining and related infrastructure project. In Arizona, the company is facing opposition to its Resolution copper project from the Apache Stronghold coalition of tribes.

Big M&A

Rio has little experience in lithium, with most of its production in iron ore, aluminum and copper. However, this month it announced the $6.7 billion acquisition of Arcadium Lithium (ASX: LTM; NYSE: ALTM) to become the third-largest lithium miner. It has also been developing the Rincon lithium brine project in Argentina. It expects first lithium from a pilot plant, and a feasibility study and final investment decision on the wider project this quarter.

At Jadar, Rio plans to apply in December for a permit allowing geotechnical work while prepping an environmental impact assessment that could take two years to complete. In third-quarter production results this week, Rio repeated comments about the project:

“We continue to believe that the Jadar project has the potential to be a world-class lithium-borates asset that could act as a catalyst for the development of other industries and thousands of jobs for current and future generations in Serbia.”

Last month, Rio CEO Jakob Stausholm flew to Serbia to participate in public information meetings that were broadcast on television. He was combatting what the company and Serbia’s mining and energy ministry have called disinformation campaigns. Media have reported the spread of online conspiracy theories like the project will trigger sulphuric acid rain, pollute drinking water or even secretly mine uranium.

Even so, Stausholm said locals have pertinent concerns about air quality and soil contamination that he and the company are working to allay. Rio seeks “to encourage an open, fact-based dialogue” in legally mandated public consultations, it said this week.

Environmental opposition


The project, which began after Rio geologists discovered the hard rock deposit in 2004, has fostered strong opposition throughout its history, said Teresa Kramarz, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment. Some studies after exploration showed elevated boron, arsenic, and lithium in nearby rivers, she said.

“These protests and environmental costs highlight the need for wider conversations about trade-offs,” Teresa Kramarz, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment, said by email.

“The idea that there’s only one way to decarbonize, and people will inevitably accept transfers of risk from one population to another or trade one type of risk for another is not going to work – particularly for those who experience disproportionate disadvantages and inequitable outcomes.”

Some analysts cited by The Wall St. Journal say the current opposition since the project’s revival is remarkable for its intensity. The US State Department has said the disinformation resembles Russian campaigns, like those to discourage shale-gas drilling to maintain Russian energy dominance in Europe. Others said it’s an attempt to dissuade Belgrade’s drift to the West and potential EU membership.

Cynical left

Vuksanovic disagreed, while still noting the impact on the West.

“The Russians are not behind it, but they take pleasure in the fact that the nationalist element of this protest is getting stronger,” he told The Northern Miner.

“Moreover, even the left, civic, pro-EU segments of Serbian society are getting increasingly cynical that the West and Europe are willing to engage the incumbent government and tolerate its domestic transgressions for the sake of lithium exploitation, weakening the EU and the US’s prestige in the country even further.”

Mikhail Korostikov, a visiting fellow at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, said vast numbers of Serbians oppose the project because they don’t believe the government is capable of enforcing environmental regulations. Even if they could, the rules aren’t strong enough, Korostikov said in a report last month for the centre.

He suggested importing EU environmental structure to oversee the project and trying to create as many jobs linked to the mine as possible in areas of procurement and mineral processing. Defeating the opposition requires making the project’s benefits more significant than any environmental consequences, he said.

“This will require serious courage and strategic vision on the part of all those involved in the political process, but it is essential,” Korostikov said. “There may not be another opportunity like this to integrate into the new economy and gain a bargaining leverage with the EU in the coming decades.”