IAEA's Grossi 'learned a lot' from Zaporizhzhia visit

16 June 2023

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said it was important to "see with my own eyes" the water supply situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after leading the latest rotation of agency experts to the plant where they will be stationed.

There is sufficient water at the plant for cooling for months (Image: IAEA)

The IAEA team had to cross the frontline between Russian and Ukraine controlled areas on foot to reach, and later return from, what is Ukraine's and Europe's largest nuclear power plant. Grossi said his visit, which lasted a matter of hours was "compact, but was important for me because it concentrated on the situation as a consequence of the destruction of the dam".

He was able to see the water levels of the reservoir, the canal and inlets and the cooling ponds at the plant itself and discuss with plant managers the "contradictory" readings there appeared to have been at times since the Nova Kakhovka dam was damaged earlier this month.

(Image: IAEA)

Grossi also said he was able to visit the nearby Zaporizhzhia thermal power plant, which the IAEA has been seeking to visit for a number of weeks, to see the switchyard which could help improve the security of power supplies to the plant, which is currently relying on one external high voltage line.

Speaking during the visit on Thursday, he said: "What is essential for the safety of this plant is that the water that you see behind me stays at that level ... with the water that is here the plant can be kept safe for some time. The plant is going to be working to replenish the water so that safety functions can continue normally."

Answering media questions, he said that it was not realistic in the current conflict to expect the two sides to sign a formal agreement on nuclear safety measures for Zaporizhzhia, but said that there had been political agreement at the United Nations Security Council - including from Russia and Ukraine - on the five basic safety principles he outlined, which include not firing on the nuclear plant, not firing from the nuclear plant and not using it as a military base.

He said that the expanded IAEA team of experts stationed at Zaporizhzhia will be monitoring compliance with those principles, adding: "The IAEA is not going anywhere, we are staying and I will be back here."

In a message on Twitter posted after he left the plant, Grossi added that "we believe we have gathered a good amount of information for an assessment of the situation".

A destroyed bridge means part of the journey was on foot (Image: IAEA)

The team climbing up a slope (Image: IAEA)

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been under the control of Russian forces since the start of March 2022. Five of the six reactors are in cold shutdown and one is in "hot shutdown" which means it can continue to produce heating for the plant and the nearby homes in Energodar. The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has said that the last reactor should also be put into cold shutdown for safety reasons, but Russia's Tass news agency quoted Renat Karchaa, advisor to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, as saying "these demands cannot be justified from a legal or technological point of view".

The news agency also quoted Rosatom Director General Alexei Likachev as saying that in-person talks "with the IAEA are planned next week, the date and venue are being agreed".

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

How Nuclear Power Can Dethrone King Coal

By Robert Rapier - Jun 17, 2023

• The report from the U.S. Department of Energy suggests that about 80% of retired or active coal plant sites in the United States could be converted to host advanced, small-scale nuclear reactors.
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• Conversion from coal plants to nuclear power could result in savings up to $1 billion over the plant's lifetime and reduce emissions by up to 90%.
• 
  
• Despite challenges related to cost, construction time, and regulatory issues, conversion from coal to nuclear power has the potential to retain workforces, stabilize the economy, and help the United States achieve its climate goals.

Over the past 15 years, the United States has undergone a significant transition away from coal-fired power plants. This transition is being driven by several factors, including environmental regulations, competition from natural gas, and the declining cost of renewable energy.

As coal-fired power plants are retired, there is a need for reliable and affordable zero-emission power replacements. To date, a large fraction of coal’s displacement has come from natural gas. Although it is cleaner than coal, natural gas is still a fossil fuel and therefore has associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Renewables sources like wind and solar power are scaling rapidly, but there are several challenges in using them to displace coal-fired power.

First, these sources tend to be decentralized, and require a lot of area for the power they produce. Second, these sources are intermittent, and therefore will require a lot more nameplate capacity to displace the same capacity from a coal-fired power plant. Certainly, these renewable sources will continue to grow in importance, but in the short-term, we can’t expect coal-fired power plants to be replaced with intermittent renewables.

However, nuclear power is a viable option for meeting this need. Nuclear power is a clean, dispatchable source of energy that can provide baseload power to the grid.

The report “Investigating Benefits and Challenges of Converting Retiring Coal Plants into Nuclear Plants” was released in 2022 by the U.S. Department of Energy. The report estimated that approximately 80% of retired or active coal plant sites in the United States are suitable to host advanced reactors smaller than the gigawatt scale.Related: Russia’s Year-Round Arctic Trade Route Initiative

The authors noted that converting coal plants to nuclear power could save money and reduce emissions. The report estimates that converting a coal plant to nuclear power could save the plant owner up to $1 billion over the lifetime of the plant, and that converting a coal plant to nuclear power could reduce emissions by up to 90%.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) published its own report on the potential for the displacement of coal-fired power in November 2022. The report, Coal in Net Zero Transitions, examines the role of coal in the global energy transition and identifies strategies for reducing coal-related emissions in a way that is rapid, secure, and people-centered.

The IEA report finds that coal is the largest emitter of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for 15 billion metric tons in 2021. Coal is also the largest source of electricity generation, accounting for 36% in 2021.

The report identifies three main pathways for reducing coal-related emissions:

• Rapid phase-out of unabated coal power: This pathway involves phasing out all coal power plants that do not capture and store their emissions by 2030. This pathway would require significant investment in clean energy technologies, but it would also deliver the largest emissions reductions in the shortest time.
• Gradual phase-out of unabated coal power: This pathway involves phasing out unabated coal power plants over a longer period, such as by 2040. This pathway would require less investment in clean energy technologies than the rapid phase-out pathway, but it would also deliver smaller emissions reductions.
• Continued use of coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS): This pathway involves using CCS technology to capture and store the emissions from coal power plants. CCS technology is still under development, but it has the potential to significantly reduce coal-related emissions.

The report finds that the rapid phase-out of unabated coal power is the most effective way to reduce coal-related emissions. Nuclear power is expected to play a key role in replacing coal-fired electricity generation. In the IEA’s Announced Pledges Scenario (APS), over 30 countries have shown interest in expanding nuclear capacity, with global capacity additions expected to average 18 GW annually from 2026 to 2030 triple the recent average of 6 GW from 2017 to 2021.

While China leads the market – accounting for almost 40% of all new nuclear capacity to 2030 — other countries such as France, India, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States have announced support or plans to invest in new nuclear projects. The APS expects an average of 20 GW of nuclear capacity to be added each year from 2030 through 2050, including small modular reactors that offer lower upfront costs and improved safety and waste management features.

There are certainly challenges and opportunities associated with converting coal plants to nuclear power. The biggest challenge is the cost and time to build new nuclear power plants. Some regulatory hurdles need to be overcome to convert coal plants to nuclear power. However, converting coal plants to nuclear power could help retain work forces at coal plants, stabilize the economy, while helping the United States meet its climate goals.

By Robert Rapier

US regulators conclude Hermes safety review

16 June 2023

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued its Final Safety Evaluation Report (FSER) for Kairos Power's application to build the Hermes molten salt test reactor at a site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company says it expects to receive a construction permit for the first-of-a-kind reactor later this year.

How the KP-FHR could look (Image: Kairos)

NRC's evaluation concludes that there are no safety aspects that would preclude issuing a construction permit for the reactor and comes after the agency's independent Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards provided the results of its review, recommending that the construction permit for the Hermes demonstration reactor be approved.

Kairos submitted its permit application in two parts, in September and October 2021, but the company began extensive pre-application engagement with the NRC in 2018. The NRC accepted the Hermes CPA for review in November 2021, committing to an accelerated 21-month review timeline, and has completed it in 18 months - well ahead of schedule, according to Andrea Veil, director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. "This reflects the NRC's commitment to maintaining safety, by applying risk-informed approaches, while improving efficiency," she said.

"We are pleased to have worked closely with the NRC staff to complete a thorough, efficient, and innovative review, which is encouraging for future deployment of advanced nuclear reactors," said Kairos Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Peter Hastings. "We look forward to continuing our close collaboration with the staff and the Commission to support the Final Environmental Impact Statement and complete the mandatory hearing."

Kairos is taking a "rapid iterative" approach to development, which the company says reduces risk on the path to commercialisation and establishes confidence for build and construction. The company will have to submit a separate application in the future for an operating licence. It said the Hermes construction permit application is laying the groundwork for this application which will, in its turn, generate lessons to inform the license applications for future commercial deployments.

Hermes will be a 35 MW (thermal) non-power version of the company's fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactor - the KP-FHR, which uses TRISO (TRI-structural ISOtropic) fuel pebbles with a low-pressure fluoride salt coolant. The demonstration reactor has been selected by the US Department of Energy to receive USD629 million in cost-shared risk reduction funding over seven years under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, and is intended to provide operational data to support the development of a larger version for commercial deployment.

A site at the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge has been selected for the demonstration reactor, and TRISO fuel pebbles will be produced at the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Low Enriched Fuel Fabrication Facility under an agreement announced in late 2022. The company has also commissioned a plant to produce high-purity fluoride salt coolant - known as Flibe - in partnership with Materion Corporation. The Molten Salt Purification Plant, in Elmore, Ohio, has now shipped its first batch of the coolant to Kairos Power’s testing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to support Engineering Test Unit (ETU) operations, the company said in a separate announcement.

Centrus HALEU plant receives regulatory clearance

15 June 2023

The US nuclear fuel and services company Centrus has completed its operational readiness reviews and received regulatory approval to possess uranium at its Piketon, Ohio site and introduce uranium into the cascade of centrifuges it has constructed there. The company said it remains on track to begin production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) at the plant before the end of the year.

The Piketon centrifuge cascade (Image: Centrus)

Centrus began construction of the demonstration cascade of 16 centrifuges in 2019 under contract with the US Department of Energy (DOE), and last year secured a further USD150 million of cost-shared funding to finish the cascade, complete final regulatory steps, begin operating the cascade, and produce up to 20 kg of HALEU by the end of this year. The operational readiness reviews were required under the Centrus licence from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which was amended in 2021 to allow the Piketon facility to produce HALEU.

HALEU fuel contains uranium enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235 - higher than the uranium fuel used in light-water reactors currently in operation, which typically contains up to 5% uranium-235. It will be needed by most of the advanced reactor designs being developed under the DOE's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. But the lack of a commercial supply chain to support these reactors has prompted the DOE to launch a programme to stimulate the development of a domestic source of HALEU.

"Centrus continues to meet every contract milestone on time and on budget, putting us in position to pioneer US HALEU production to meet the needs of the department and the nuclear industry," said Centrus President and CEO Daniel Poneman. "By establishing a secure, reliable American source of HALEU, we can help enable the commercialisation of a whole new generation of US-designed advanced nuclear reactors to supply the carbon-free energy the world needs."

Construction of the cascade and most of the support systems is now complete, and initial testing has been completed, Centrus said. Next steps will be the construction of the on-site HALEU storage area and final testing activities prior to operation, with initial HALEU production set to begin by the end of the year.

Centrus has previously said it could scale up the Piketon facility for expanded HALEU production, subject to sufficient funding or offtake contracts. A full cascade of 120 individual centrifuge machines, with a combined capacity of approximately 6,000 kilograms of HALEU per year, could be brought online within about 42 months of securing funding, according to the company.

USA plants continue to rely on foreign sources of uranium supply

15 June 2023

US nuclear plant owners and operators purchased less uranium in 2022 than in 2021, and at a higher price, according to the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) latest annual uranium marketing report. Most of the uranium delivered in 2022 was of foreign origin, with Canada and Kazakhstan together providing more than half the total.

US uranium purchases continue to be dominated by foreign suppliers (amounts are thousands of pounds U3O8e) (Image: EIA)

The EIA's 2022 Uranium Marketing Annual Report, published on 13 June, provides detailed data on uranium marketing activities in the USA from 2017 to 2022, and summary data back to 2001. The information is based on data collected through the EIA's Uranium Marketing Annual Survey - known as Form EIA-858 - which collects data on contracts, deliveries, enrichment services purchased, inventories, use in fuel assemblies, feed deliveries to enrichers, and unfilled market requirements for the next 10 years.

The 40.5 million pounds U3O8 equivalent (15,578 tU) total uranium purchased by the owners and operators of the USA's civilian nuclear power reactors in 2022 was 13% down on 2021's total of 46.7 million pounds U3O8e. The weighted average price of USD39.08 per pound for 2022's purchases was 15% higher than the 2021's weighted average price of USD33.91 per pound, and the highest since 2016.

Most of 2022's uranium deliveries were of foreign origin, with Canada the top source at 27% of total deliveries, followed by Kazakhstan (25%), Uzbekistan (11%) and Australia (9%). US -origin material accounted for 5% of the total. Some 15% of the uranium delivered was purchased under spot contracts at a weighted average price of USD40.70 per pound, with the rest under long-term contracts at a weighted average price of USD38.81 per pound.

A total of 35 million pounds U3O8e of natural uranium feed was delivered to enrichers, with 41% of the feed going to US enrichment suppliers, and some 14.2 million SWU of enrichment services purchased by US plant owners and operators in 2022. Nearly three-quarters of this - 73% - was from foreign-origin SWU. Some 3.4 million SWU was supplied by Russia - only slightly less than the 3.9 million of US-origin SWU purchased in the year.

At the end of the year, total US commercial uranium inventories (including inventories owned by plant owners and operators, brokers, converters, enrichers, fabricators, producers and traders) stood at 140 million pounds U3O8e, down 1% from the 141.7 million pounds total at the end of 2021. Contracted deliveries and unfilled market requirements represent maximum anticipated market requirements of 402 million pounds U3O8e over the next 10 years for plant owners and operators, the report found.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Pass the salt: This space rock holds clues as to how Earth got its water

Date: June 13, 2023

Source: University of Arizona

Summary:

The discovery of tiny salt grains in a sample from an asteroid provides strong evidence that liquid water may be more common in the solar system than previously thought.

Sodium chloride, better known as table salt, isn't exactly the type of mineral that captures the imagination of scientists. However, a smattering of tiny salt crystals discovered in a sample from an asteroid has researchers at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory excited, because these crystals can only have formed in the presence of liquid water.

Even more intriguing, according to the research team, is the fact that the sample comes from an S-type asteroid, a category known to mostly lack hydrated, or water-bearing, minerals. The discovery strongly suggests that a large population of asteroids hurtling through the solar system may not be as dry as previously thought. The finding, published in Nature Astronomy, gives renewed push to the hypothesis that most, if not all, water on Earth may have arrived by way of asteroids during the planet's tumultuous infancy.

Tom Zega, the study's senior author and a professor of planetary sciences at the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and Shaofan Che, lead study author and a postdoctoral fellow at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, performed a detailed analysis of samples collected from asteroid Itokawa in 2005 by the Japanese Hayabusa mission and brought to Earth in 2010.

The study is the first to demonstrate that the salt crystals originated on the asteroid's parent body, ruling out any possibility they might have formed as a consequence of contamination after the sample reached Earth, a question that had plagued previous studies that found sodium chloride in meteorites of a similar origin.

"The grains look exactly like what you would see if you took table salt at home and placed it under an electron microscope," Zega said. "They're these nice, square crystals. It was funny, too, because we had many spirited group meeting conversations about them, because it was just so unreal."

Zega said the samples represent a type of extraterrestrial rock known as an ordinary chondrite. Derived from so-called S-type asteroids such as Itokawa, this type makes up about 87% of meteorites collected on Earth. Very few of them have been found to contain water-bearing minerals.

"It has long been thought that ordinary chondrites are an unlikely source of water on Earth," said Zega who is the director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory's Kuiper Materials Imaging & Characterization Facility. "Our discovery of sodium chloride tells us this asteroid population could harbor much more water than we thought."

Today, scientists largely agree that Earth, along with other rocky planets such as Venus and Mars, formed in the inner region of the roiling, swirling cloud of gas and dust around the young sun, known as the solar nebula, where temperatures were very high -- too high for water vapor to condense from the gas, according to Che.

"In other words, the water here on Earth had to be delivered from the outer reaches of the solar nebula, where temperatures were much colder and allowed water to exist, most likely in the form of ice," Che said. "The most likely scenario is that comets or another type of asteroid known as C-type asteroids, which resided farther out in the solar nebula, migrated inward and delivered their watery cargo by impacting the young Earth."

The discovery that water could have been present in ordinary chondrites, and therefore been sourced from much closer to the sun than their "wetter" kin, has implications for any scenario attempting to explain the delivery of water to the early Earth.

The sample used in the study is a tiny dust particle spanning about 150 micrometers, or roughly twice the diameter of a human hair, from which the team cut a small section about 5 microns wide -- just large enough to cover a single yeast cell -- for the analysis.

Using a variety of techniques, Che was able to rule out that the sodium chloride was the result of contamination from sources such as human sweat, the sample preparation process or exposure to laboratory moisture.

Because the sample had been stored for five years, the team took before and after photos and compared them. The photos showed that the distribution of sodium chloride grains inside the sample had not changed, ruling out the possibility that any of the grains were deposited into the sample during that time. In addition, Che performed a control experiment by treating a set of terrestrial rock samples the same as the Itokawa sample and examining them with an electron microscope.

"The terrestrial samples did not contain any sodium chloride, so that convinced us the salt in our sample is native to the asteroid Itokawa," he said. "We ruled out every possible source of contamination."

Zega said tons of extraterrestrial matter is raining down on Earth every day, but most of it burns up in the atmosphere and never makes it to the surface.

"You need a large enough rock to survive entry and deliver that water," he said.

Previous work led by the late Michael Drake, a former director of the Lunar and Planetary Lab, in the 1990s proposed a mechanism by which water molecules in the early solar system could become trapped in asteroid minerals and even survive an impact on Earth.

"Those studies suggest several oceans worth of water could be delivered just by this mechanism," Zega said. "If it now turns out that the most common asteroids may be much 'wetter' than we thought, that will make the water delivery hypothesis by asteroids even more plausible."

Itokawa is a peanut-shaped near-Earth asteroid about 2,000 feet long and 750 feet in diameter and is believed to have broken off from a much larger parent body. According to Che and Zega, it is conceivable that frozen water and frozen hydrogen chloride could have accumulated there, and that naturally occurring decay of radioactive elements and frequent bombardment by meteorites during the solar system's early days could have provided enough heat to sustain hydrothermal processes involving liquid water. Ultimately, the parent body would have succumbed to the pummeling and broken up into smaller fragments, leading to the formation of Itokawa.

"Once these ingredients come together to form asteroids, there is a potential for liquid water to form," Zega said. "And once you have liquids form, you can think of them as occupying cavities in the asteroid, and potentially do water chemistry."

The evidence pointing at the salt crystals in the Itokawa sample as being there since the beginning of the solar system does not end here, however. The researchers found a vein of plagioclase, a sodium-rich silicate mineral, running through the sample, enriched with sodium chloride.

"When we see such alteration veins in terrestrial samples, we know they formed by aqueous alteration, which means it must involve water," Che said. "The fact that we see that texture associated with sodium and chlorine is another strong piece of evidence that this happened on the asteroid as water was coursing through this sodium-bearing silicate."

A Deep Dive Into The World’s Leading Lithium Producers

By ZeroHedge - Jun 16, 2023

• Australia, the leading producer, and Chile together contribute almost 77% of the world's lithium, extracted from hard rock mines and brine, respectively.
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• While the United States was the largest producer of lithium in the 1990s, Australia and Chile have since taken over, with China securing a significant position by acquiring $5.6 billion worth of lithium assets globally.
• 
  
• Due to the boom in battery and electric vehicle production, the global demand for lithium is set to skyrocket, with projections reaching over 3 million tonnes of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE) by 2030.

Lithium has become essential in recent years, primarily due to the boom in electric vehicles and other clean technologies that rely on lithium batteries.

The global lithium-ion battery market was valued at $52 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach $194 billion in 2030.

In the infographic below, using data from the United States Geological Survey Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti explores the world’s largest lithium producing countries.

Australia and Chile: Dominating Global Lithium Supply

Australia and Chile stand out as the top producers of lithium, accounting for almost 77% of the global production in 2022.

*U.S. production data was withheld to avoid disclosing proprietary company data

Australia, the world’s leading producer, extracts lithium directly from hard rock mines, specifically the mineral spodumene.

Chile, along with Argentina, China, and other top producers, extracts lithium from brine.

Hard rock provides greater flexibility as lithium hosted in spodumene can be processed into either lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate. It also offers faster processing and higher quality as spodumene typically contains higher lithium content.

Extracting lithium from brine, on the other hand, offers the advantage of lower production costs and a smaller impact on the environment. The following visual from Benchmark Minerals helps break down the carbon impact of different types of lithium extraction.

With that said, brine extraction can also face challenges related to water availability and environmental impacts on local ecosystems.

Historical Shifts in the Lithium Supply Chain

In the 1990s, the United States held the title of the largest lithium producer, producing over one-third of the global production in 1995.

However, Chile eventually overtook the U.S., experiencing a production boom in the Salar de Atacama, one of the world’s richest lithium brine deposits. Since then, Australia’s lithium production has also skyrocketed, now accounting for 47% of the world’s lithium production.

China, the world’s third-largest producer, not only focuses on developing domestic mines but has also strategically acquired approximately $5.6 billion worth of lithium assets in countries like Chile, Canada, and Australia over the past decade.

Furthermore, China currently hosts nearly 60% of the world’s lithium refining capacity for batteries, underlining its dominant position in the lithium supply chain.

Meeting Lithium Demand: The Need for New Production

As the world increases its production of batteries and electric vehicles, the demand for lithium is projected to soar.

In 2021, global lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) production sat at 540,000 tonnes.

By 2025, demand is expected to reach 1.5 million tonnes of LCE. By 2030, this number is estimated to exceed 3 million tonnes.

By Zerohedge.com

Argentina’s growing lithium industry hits export records
Bloomberg News | June 17, 2023 |

The Olaroz salt flat, in northwestern Argentina, hosts reserves estimated at 6.4 million tons of lithium carbonate. (Image by Butterfly austral, Wikimedia Commons.)

Argentina’s growing lithium industry hit a record high with exports rising to $60 million in May, up 17% from the same month a year ago, according to the country’s mining authority.

Lithium represented 19% of mining exports during May, Argentina’s mining secretariat said Saturday in a press release.

Argentina has become the world’s fastest-growing lithium producer. It has three active lithium mines and 38 under development. Argentina’s push into the industry comes amid a global tug-of-war for key EV minerals between the US and China.

Between January and May, lithium exports rose to $369m, up 84% from last year’s same period and also a record for those five months, according to the mining secretariat.

By February, Argentina’s lithium industry employed 3,788 people, up 59% from a year before by adding 1,406 posts, the Argentina secretariat said.

(Reporting by Andreina Itriago Acosta).

Ghana plans to process its first lithium locally

Bloomberg News | June 14, 2023

Image courtesy of Atlantic Lithium.

Ghana plans to process its first lithium locally to ensure it maximizes its revenue from the metal, a key component of electric vehicle batteries, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources Samuel Jinapor said.


“We will not export our green minerals in their raw form,” Jinapor said on the sidelines of the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Africa forum in Morocco on Wednesday.

“At the very least, we must participate at some level of the value chain” even if producing EVs may not be realistic in the short term, he said.

Australian miner Atlantic Lithium expects to start production at Ghana’s first lithium mine in the second half of 2024, and the government is developing consistent policies on green minerals to attract investors, according to Jinapor.

Ghana mined 116 tons of gold in 2022, restoring it to its place as Africa’s top producer, and new investments may make that lead “unassailable,” he said.

(By Aisha S Gani and Janice Kew)

Norsk Hydro produces world’s first aluminum using green hydrogen

Bloomberg News | June 15, 2023 

The Norwegian producer replaced natural gas with green hydrogen during a test at its extrusion plant in Navarra, Spain (Image: Norsk Hydro)

Norsk Hydro ASA has made the world’s first batch of aluminum using green hydrogen in a step toward decarbonizing the production of the metal.


The Norwegian producer replaced natural gas with green hydrogen during a test at its extrusion plant in Navarra, Spain, it said in a statement on Thursday. Hydro’s renewable hydrogen company, Hydro Havrand, conducted the trial in partnership with Fives North America Combustion, an engineering firm with expertise in hydrogen burner technology.

For more than a century, Hydro has been searching for new uses for the vast amounts of hydroelectric power that Norway generates each year. The company first found success making artificial fertilizers via a pioneering electrochemical process, and later focused its attention on aluminum, which is one of the world’s most energy-intensive industrial commodities to make. Now, it’s betting that hydrogen could prove even more lucrative.

“Green hydrogen can remove hard to abate emissions from fossil fuels in processes where electricity is not an alternative, both in the aluminum industry and in other heavy industries,” Per Christian Eriksen, head of Hydro Havrand, said. “This test is part of developing commercial fuel switch solutions and to demonstrate that hydrogen can be used in aluminum production.”

Hydro will publish a final report from the test in the fall. The aluminum produced in the test will be utilized to make the world’s first extruded profiles using hydrogen.

“It’s a very powerful message to our customers rather than a powerpoint on net zero 2050 which everyone has,” Paul Warton, executive vice president for Hydro Extrusions, said in an interview. “We can say this is how we will do it.”

(By Jonas Cho Walsgard and Mark Burton)

JV Article: Ericsson’s NEXGEN SIMS EU project brings 5G collaboration to Europe’s biggest underground mines

MINING.COM and Ericsson | June 16, 2023 | 

Mission critical private network. Image submitted by Ericsson.

A European Union (EU) backed NEXGEN SIMS project with a global sustainability focus is making strides in communications networks in some of Europe’s biggest underground mines.

Funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, the $16 million next-generation carbon-neutral pilots for Smart Intelligent Mining Systems project is being coordinated by mining and infrastructure equipment manufacturer Epiroc, in cooperation with Ericsson, K+S, Boliden, Agnico Eagle, OZ Minerals, KGHM Polska, AFRY, LTU Business, Mobilaris, RWTHAACHEN University and Luleå University of Technology.

Kicked off in May 2021, the three year project is helping mining companies automate and digitalize their operations for improved efficiency and sustainability as an enabler for the global green energy transition.

The project envisions more sustainable and efficient production of raw material with minimized environmental impact for economic growth. NexGen SIMS can support the next production paradigm shift in the global mining industry through deployment in North American markets.

The Canadian government has awarded C$364 million to fund digitalization of operations to reduce carbon emissions as it aims to become a leader in the greener production of critical minerals. Canadian Natural Resources recognizes this and is already deploying enterprise cellular networks.

NexGen SIMS focus areas include improved production efficiency; lowered energy consumption; reduced environmental impact and improved worker safety.

Now in year three, the collaboration has led to the development of a robust and reliable cellular-based communication concept for the mining industry.

The Smart Intelligent Mining Systems project’s eight demonstration sites in Europe include Agnico Eagle’s Kittilä mine in northern Finland, the largest primary gold producer in Europe, KGHM’s copper mines in Poland: Lubin, the oldest mine in the Polish copper belt, and Rudna, one of the largest deep copper ore mines in the world.

Tests of the latest products for industrial private networks are also being performed at Boliden’s Kankberg and Kristineberg gold-copper mines in Sweden, at LTU Luleå facilities, Epirocs’ Kvarntorp test mine and K+S-operated Werra room-and-pillar potash plant in Germany.

In NEXGEN SIMS, Ericsson is taking the next step in the mining collaboration journey, using its Private 5G solution for the pilot demonstrations of autonomous loading and hauling.

Ericsson Private 5G networks solutions are providing improved versatile on-site connectivity infrastructure and supporting battery powered machines, autonomous material handling, and cross-machine fleet control on these sites.

Next level communication for the mining industry

With networks all over the world, Ericsson’s research and demonstrations have reached the next level with NEXGEN SIMS through discoveries and advancements for the mining industry.

Work in underground tunnels. Image submitted by Ericsson.

“We have deployed the Ericsson private 5G network (EP5G) first at Epiroc’s Kvarntorp test mine, where they are evaluating 3GPP communication devices for mining machines,” says Anders Nordenson, Ericsson’s project manager for NEXGEN SIMS.

“In Germany, we tested and demonstrated ease of installation of our new EP5G product and performed exhaustive tests of support for sensors and long-range communication,” says Nordenson.

Nordenson says the team is investigating how deep within underground tunnels devices can reach Ericsson networks, and are testing 4G and 5G throughput, signal strength and behavior.

“The goal of the project will be realized in different pilot demonstrations, and we are entering into that phase where we will start these demos.”

This fall, the team will start demonstrating autonomous bucket loading, hauling, and dumping for operations at Kittilä mine in Finland.

“Mines are a bit of unknown territory when it comes to radio propagation, but we are very good at deploying macro networks all over the world – we have special tools for planning radio networks,” Nordenson notes.

“Private network connectivity for autonomous vehicles can significantly improve efficiency through increased scheduling of optimized routes, reduce emissions and enhance safety.”

The communication infrastructure is one of the critical pillars needed for digitalized mining, where autonomous machines and traffic management can reduce emissions and energy consumption by enhancing the working schedule of the machines, reducing idle times and even the number of machines needed.

Improved communications networks also further enable more advanced sensor networks, enabling the optimization of ventilation, which can greatly reduce energy consumption in underground mines, notes Tomas Jönsson, Ericsson’s research and development lead for radio performance.

“A big part of the energy spending for a mine is ventilation even to the extent that it's a significant part of the overall whole country's energy spend,” says Jönsson. “And that means that even small savings for a mine is big savings in energy.”

“The backbone of digitalising a mining site is to have good communication,” says Jönsson. “Companies clearly see that in the long run, they need a very stable backbone in communication, and they need to start working with 3GPP telecom communication, which hasn’t been available for industries due to the business models. But with the digitalization of industries, a journey for us is to supply products in a scalable and affordable way for industry sites.”

“Miners very clearly know the value of reliable infrastructure and they know very well how to put the price on reliability and efficiency,” he says.

“Mining companies that are leading in efficiency like Boliden, need to be investing in something that will hold for the continuation of the digitization process because if they are not on top in efficiency, they will be out of business because those low fractions on metals and minerals won't be profitable.”

Jönsson says that with increased communications network efficiency, underground mines will be able to target deposits that are not profitable today – but could be in the future with this technology investment.

The preceding Joint Venture Article is PROMOTED CONTENT sponsored by Ericsson and produced in cooperation with Mining.com. Visit www.ericsson.com for more information.

Ivanhoe Mines invests in pulsed-power tech firm

Cecilia Jamasmie | June 16, 2023 |

Ivanhoe will start testing pulsed power technology at Kamoa-Kakula copper mine. 

(Image courtesy of Ivanhoe Mines.)

Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) has reached a deal to convert a loan balance of $76 million owed to the company by High Power Exploration (HPX) into an equity investment in I-Pulse, HPX’s parent company.


HPX, an exploration firm backed by billionaire Robert Friedland, who is Ivanhoe’s founder and executive co-chairman, is developing the high-grade Nimba iron ore project in Guinea.

Its parent company, I-Pulse, is an American firm headquartered in France, which develops pulsed power technologies. Pulsed power has commercial application in high-speed metal forming and welding, as well as in mineral exploration.

As part of the deal, Ivanhoe will receive certain investor rights, including a pre-emptive right to maintain its percentage ownership in I-Pulse in the event of an equity financing, which ceases upon an initial public offering of I-Pulse securities, the company said.

With the equity, Ivanhoe Mines joins mining giant BHP (ASX, NYSE: BHP) as an investor in I-Pulse. The Vancouver-based copper miner said it intended to secure a collaboration agreement with I-Pulse subsidiary, I-ROX, to investigate and develop applications for pulsed power technology in the mining sector.

Ivanhoe noted that its Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be the first of its assets to test I-ROX technology aimed at improving copper recoveries.

I-Rox uses high-voltage pulses of power to disintegrate rock, an approach that has been trialled in laboratories for years but has yet to be applied in commercial mining operations.

Crushing and grinding mined rock into small particles to extract valuable metals and minerals consumes more than 4% of the world’s electricity and are a major source of miners’ direct emissions.

The application of greener technologies to these processes would help miners curb their carbon emissions.

CHARTS: Copper mining profits top $100 billion a year, but where are the new mines?

Frik Els | June 8, 2023 | 

Copper demand coming in waves now. Stock image.

A recent presentation by S&P Global Market Intelligence mining and metals team featured a couple of graphs that crystalize the fundamental challenges facing copper mine supply.


Mitzi Sumangil, associate analyst at the US-based research firm, presented a graph showing the yawning gap between copper mining companies’ profits and capital spending.

Despite two consecutive years of bumper topline earnings north of $100 billion, expansion budgets haven’t budged, hovering in the early double digit billions. Barely more than 12% of ebitda, versus a long term average of more than double that.

Expansion capital is also focused on brownfield projects, with the number of new mines over the last four years adding up to 15 compared to 32 over the same period a decade ago when profits were below $60 and on a clear downward trend.

In 2015, when copper mining profits barely reached above $30 billion across the industry 12 mines went into production thanks to robust spending in the years preceding the bottom of the cycle.



Sumangil says miners have become more conservative when it comes to investing in new projects and the trend continues to hold true:

“Companies have been recently focusing on extending the life of mines, especially of those high-grade ones and already profitable projects because, let’s be honest, it takes a lot of time to develop something new and it takes a lot of administrative effort.”

On the last point, Sumangil showed another graph detailing the lead time from discovery to production for the average copper mine. Which is 16.2 years. Stumble upon a turquoise outcropping today and you’ll start seeing the money roll in in 2040.

Sumangil says even when accounting for concentrate capacity from uncommitted projects raw copper will still fall short of demand in scarcely two years:

“This is a very ominous broader view of copper supply, and we expect it to be only worsened by stunted major discoveries, tight copper exploration budgets and of course, time-consuming exploration work.”

As a result, S&P Global believes despite fairly substantial estimated surpluses for the next three years, the copper price will hold up well through 2026 before scaling $10,000 a tonne again in 2027 when market deficits begin to appear.