EU Working on E-Bus for Lithium Deal With Latin American Nations


Jorge Valero
Thu, July 13, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- European Union officials are working on a plan that can help provide electric buses to Latin American nations in exchange for lithium supplies, as they seek to curtail the bloc’s reliance on China for this critical raw material.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, is in talks with automakers and governments to create a private sector consortium that can supply e-buses to Latin America, according to people familiar with the plan who did not want to be named as the discussions are private. In return, this will facilitate access to lithium deposits for the EU firms in these resource-rich countries, they said.

The initiative is part of a broader push among western economies to ringfence their core industries and counter China, which has a stronghold over the green energy supply chain. For the Latin American countries, the deal will expedite a switch to cleaner public transport and curb carbon emissions.

The quid pro quo pact is part of the EU’s 300-billion-euro ($335 billion) plan called the Global Gateway, the people said. It aims “to boost smart, clean and secure links in digital, energy and transport sectors” globally, according to the commission’s website.

The EU has been “working intensively with its Latin American and Caribbean partners on an Investment Agenda,” a spokesperson for the commission said in an email, without sharing specific details. “The partnerships allow both sides to advance trade and investments into secure, sustainable and resilient raw materials value chains.”

The 27-nation bloc plans to invest around 10 billion euros in projects across Latin America and the Caribbean, with additional contributions coming from the Member States bilaterally and the private sector.

EU’s ambitious green goals are dependent on obtaining a large amount of minerals, including lithium whose demand is projected to surge 12 times by 2030 and 20 times by 2050.

“We have to act now and with the highest speed,” said Bernd Schäfer, chief executive officer of EIT RawMaterials that is co-funded by the EU. “It’s a make or break moment.”

Largest Reserves

The commission signed a pact with Argentina last month for developing “innovative and sustainable and responsible raw materials value chain projects.” It is expected to sign a similar agreement with Chile next week, two of the people familiar said. Chile and Argentina are among the countries with largest lithium reserves on the planet.

Europe is not the only one racing to tie-in raw materials for key sectors such as electric vehicles and clean energy.

A bill was introduced in the US this week to create a national strategy for securing supply chains of critical minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Another US government program has given a $9.2 billion loan to Ford Motor Co. for building battery factories, in a bid to help local firms catch up to China in green technologies.

The commission is still discussing the details of the plan with member states and the industry, the people said. This includes how the European companies could benefit from being part of the consortium.

While the whole arrangement could take years to be finalized, the demand in the Latin American region — estimated at about 10,000 e-buses over the next few years — is large enough to stoke interest among European automakers, according to the people familiar.

Brussels Meeting

Leaders from the EU, Latin American and Caribbean nations are expected to discuss Global Gateway investment projects in Brussels early next week. Business leaders and officials will also hold a roundtable in the city on critical raw materials and mobility on Monday.

“It is not about buying lithium, but about sharing a resource that is scarce and that is strategic for sustainable mobility,” Xiana Mendez, Spain’s junior trade minister said in an interview.

She added that EU intends to set up manufacturing in these resource-rich countries and not just extract minerals from them.

“The difficulty would be for EU companies to cooperate,” she added. “It would be the first time something like this has been done.”

--With assistance from James Attwood, Jonathan Gilbert and Akshat Rathi.

Bloomberg Businessweek

EU removes post-Fukushima curbs on Japan food imports


Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attends EU-Japan summit in Brussels

Updated Thu, July 13, 2023
By Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union agreed on Thursday to remove restrictions on Japanese food imports, imposed after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, with the hope that Japan will ease its controls on EU farm produce.

The EU has required pre-export testing of food products for radioactivity since an earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant on Japan's east coast.

Since 2021, it has required certificates showing levels of radioactive isotopes in wild mushrooms, some fish species and edible wild plants, such as bamboo shoots, from Fukushima and nine other prefectures.

The European Commission said these restrictions had been fully lifted, while noting Japan continued to monitor for radioactivity and stressing Japan should publish its findings.

"This move will help drive forward the reconstruction of the devastated areas and is one we appreciate and welcome," Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a press conference after an EU-Japan summit.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said both sides had also agreed to work on removing Japanese trade barriers to EU beef, fruit and vegetables, whose access to Japan is limited by food safety rules.

Kishida said Japan would make a judgment based on science, as the EU had done in lifting its restrictions.

At the summit, the EU and Japan also committed to deeper cooperation in green and digital transitions, research and other fields.

"We both need to de-risk our supply chains so one of our objectives is to reduce over reliance on a handful of suppliers, many of them based in China," von der Leyen said, adding cooperation would include critical raw materials.

The European Union and Japan already have a free trade agreement and are united in opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, additional reporting by Sakura Murakami in Tokyo; editing by Conor Humphries and Andrew Heavens)

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. press dinner devolves into 'screaming and polemic farting': NY Post

IN THE FINE TRADITION OF BEN FRANKLIN

Chris Pandolfo
Thu, July 13, 2023

A campaign event for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was reportedly interrupted when two guests got into a screaming match over climate change and one made a noxious gas emission.

The New York Post's Page Six gave a bizarre account of how Tuesday's press dinner for the Democratic presidential candidate "descended into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting." A Post reporter who attended the event witnessed a "gaseous exchange" between two old men after Kennedy, who founded the conservationist group Waterkeeper Alliance, was asked a question about the environment.

According to Page Six, the question posed to Kennedy set off Doug Dechert, a former Post gossip columnist and current PR flack who hosted the dinner for Kennedy.

Dechert, who was reportedly drinking, began screaming, "The climate hoax!" His outburst abruptly awoke elderly art critic Anthony Haden-Guest, who Page Six reported was contentedly napping for most of the dinner.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON HITS AT US POLITICAL SYSTEM: ‘DOING THE BIDDING OF DONORS’

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks during Michael Smerconish's SiriusXM Town Hall at The Centre Theater in Philadelphia on June 5, 2023.

By Page Six's account, Haden-Guest called his friend Dechert a "miserable blob" and implored him to "shut up."

Reportedly undeterred, Dechert "continued to scream wildly about the climate change ‘scam’ while Haden-Guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously ‘f---ing insane’ and ‘insignificant.’"

Dechert then proceeded to "let rip a loud, prolonged fart" while yelling, "I'm farting!"

The other dinner guests, who included journalists and Kennedy's campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, were reportedly left "stunned" by what happened.

RFK JR LECTURES SOCIAL MEDIA SITES ON FIRST AMENDMENT AFTER YOUTUBE MEMORY-HOLED HIS ‘DISSENTING VIEWS’

Former journalist Doug Dechert hosted a press dinner for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Tuesday, where he reportedly called climate change a "hoax" and farted rather loudly.

Kennedy, who is challenging President Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, watched in silence, according to Page Six.

The situation appeared to improve from there — at least until another guest returned to the subject of climate change, which Page Six reported produced "another round of yelling" from Dechert and Haden-Guest.

Dechert reportedly made an apologetic comment to Page Six the next day "for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence." But the dinner host also said he has "zero tolerance for the climate hoax scam nonsense in any venue that I am personally funding."

YOUTUBE SAYS IT REMOVED JORDAN PETERSON INTERVIEW OF RFK JR FOR VIOLATING VACCINE POLICY

Art critic Anthony Haden-Guest appears at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City on Feb. 20, 2022.

Haden-Guest, who says has known Dechert for three decades, told Page Six the two have "had spats before about this and that."

"We are not quite the same politically, but that doesn’t affect relationships in the U.K. But I thought this was pretty ridiculous," Haden-Guest said. "Doug said it was a hoax and scam. A scam for who? Who is benefiting? That’s not a political thing, it’s a human existence thing."

He told Page Six that fighting in public is "unusual" for him, "but when it is preposterous and it’s a life-or-death issue with the planet, to treat it as a zany political thing is foolish."

NASA may have just cracked the code for replacing lithium in batteries: ‘Double or even triple the energy’

Tokollo Matsabu
Fri, July 14, 2023 

NASA believes it has cracked the code in the quest to make electric planes a more viable technology.

Researchers at NASA’s Solid-state Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety (SABERS) have created a high-performing battery that they believe can both hold enough electricity and discharge it fast enough to efficiently power an electric aircraft.

Battle of the batteries

Battery performance has long been a roadblock in the development of more sustainable electric airplanes.

While lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the battery technology space, NASA has used a different type of battery called a “solid-state battery” that is lighter and can store more power than lithium-ion batteries.

The solid-state battery isn’t new, but the technology has not been suitable for use in large electronics until SABER’s recent discovery.

Another key advantage that lithium-ion batteries have long held over solid-state batteries is that they can discharge power much faster than solid-state batteries.

SABER says it has addressed this issue with a new innovation that is able to increase a solid-state battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 — and then by another factor of five.

“We’re starting to approach this new frontier of battery research that could do so much more than lithium-ion batteries can,” said Rocco Viggiano, principal investigator for SABERS at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, in a press release.

“Not only does this design eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the battery’s weight, it also allows us to double or even triple the energy it can store, far exceeding the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries that are considered to be state of the art,” he added.
Is sustainable aviation around the corner?

Safety is a primary concern for aircrafts. You wouldn’t get on an electric plane if there was a possibility it could catch fire mid-air.

Because lithium-ion batteries contain highly flammable liquid that is prone to leakage, each battery cell is kept in its own steel case, which adds weight. And, when damaged, lithium-ion batteries can still catch fire.

Solid-state batteries, on the other hand, can still be used even when they’re damaged. They also don’t contain liquids, so they can be stacked vertically in one casing, which maximizes space and lightens the load of the battery.

Aircrafts operate in varying temperatures and pressures, going from low to high altitudes in short periods of time, and NASA researchers have found that solid-state batteries can operate in temperatures twice as hot as lithium-ion batteries. Solid-state batteries achieve this using less cooling technology than lithium-ion.

This battery technology has caught the eye of the U.S. government and the aviation industry as a promising way to help reduce the air pollution stemming from air travel. It isn’t commercially viable just yet, but NASA researchers are partnering with various academic institutions to continue developing this battery technology.

Engineers invent genius battery solution for storing clean energy without lithium: ‘The first in the world to do something like this’


Kecia Bal
Thu, July 13, 2023 

Providing energy year-round has so far presented one of green power’s most insurmountable challenges — but now the world’s first fully functional sand battery, which can store green power for months, could present a valuable solution.

According to BBC News, engineers working for Finnish company Polar Night Energy have put sand to work. They installed the first sand battery in July 2022 and have seen promising results so far. The sand is stored in a simple silo, a humble innovation that may help provide a path forward for cleaner, cheaper energy as a viable, sustainable part of everyday life.

While green energy sources are often readily available at certain times of the year, a long-running concern has been finding avenues to store that energy for colder months, when more families and businesses need to turn up the heat.
How would sand batteries work?

First, existing solar panels and wind turbines would generate electricity using natural and available sources.

Some of that electricity would be put to use directly and immediately through an electrical grid to meet current demands, but the remaining, unused energy could be stored as heat in a sand battery, which can be warmed up to 500 degrees Celsius (around 932 degrees Fahrenheit) using the same heat-exchange process that fuels electric fires.

Sand is considered very effective at retaining heat, and under the right circumstances, it could hold that 500 degrees Celsius worth of warmth for months at a time.

Finally, the heat that had been stored could be used to provide hot water heating in order to warm up buildings year-round.

Tucked away in a corner of a small power plant in western Finland, the geographic location of this sand battery pilot may prove to be an ideal scenario for testing the results. With rising prices of dirty energy sources like fossil fuel and cold winter months just ahead, interest in renewable energy sources is rising.

Intermittency — energy sources that ebb and flow, such as solar energy’s dependence on sunlight — has remained a concern and has prompted energy providers to continue to rely on energy from dirty and expensive fossil fuels to balance out availability.

Residents of the small town of Kankaanpää, where the pilot is taking place, will have a chance this winter to test out the results of the sand battery, engineered by the founders of Polar Night Energy. The new company installed the device in the Vatajankoski power plant, which operates the town’s heating system.

“It’s really simple, but we liked the idea of trying something new, to be the first in the world to do something like this,” said Pekka Passi, the plant’s managing director.

The next question will be whether it can be scaled for broader use and even more impactful applications, such as providing electricity as well as a heat source for hot water.

Getting energy from renewable sources is ideal in many ways, as clean energy is often cheaper and has less of a negative impact on our overheating planet, but those sources may only provide truly sustainable solutions if the energy becomes reliable and available when people need it.

Sand batteries may provide one answer to help combat climate change and provide a stable, clean source of year-round heat.

Coastal city was mysteriously abandoned 2,000 years ago. Now, archaeologists know why


Photo from Science in Poland

Brendan Rascius
Fri, July 14, 2023

An ancient city on the coast of India was mysteriously abandoned around 2,000 years ago. Now, after a systematic study of the ruins, archaeologists believe they know why the inhabitants left.

The city of Sopara, located about 60 miles north of Mumbai, was once an important trade hub, connecting Asia to Europe, according to a June 27 news release from Science in Poland.

From as early as 1400 B.C., the maritime metropolis — which was also a religious center — facilitated trade between “Greece, Persia and Arabian settlements,” according to a study published in Current Science.

But, the city’s inhabitants appear to have suddenly skipped town, deserting their clay-brick homes around the third century, according to Science in Poland.

In 2020, archaeologists from Poland and India set out to unravel the mystery of Sopara’s downfall. How did a major trade center become a ghost town?

Using noninvasive techniques, archaeologists methodically studied the ruins, which had previously only been explored haphazardly.

Assisted by drones, they created a three-dimensional model of the ruins, which cover an area smaller than 1 square mile.

They also conducted research at the surface, scanning the ground with metal detectors and drilling narrow holes, known as boreholes, which can help assess geological conditions over time.

An analysis of the boreholes revealed that, around 2,000 years ago, the city’s waterways gradually became filled with silt, a fine sediment carried by running water.

Sopara’s residents likely left town because of silt buildups in the waterway that connected the city to the ocean, the lifeblood of the maritime trade center.

Further information, such as about the city’s layout and building sizes, may be learned during already planned future excavations and analyses, researchers say.

Google Translate was used to translate the news release from Science in Poland.

Turns out all we may need to stop climate change is 139 billion gallons of super-duper white paint


Cork Gaines
Thu, July 13, 2023 

This isn't the climate change-fighting paint, it's just a guy painting a road with a very small brush.

Nick Dolding/Getty Images

According to one professor, we can stop global warming if we used a new super white paint.

The problem though, is we would need to cover at least 1% of the earth's surface with the paint.

That won't be easy, especially with all that water everywhere.

I hope Purdue University is ready for this incoming order.

In 2021, researchers at Purdue University announced that they had developed the whitest paint on Earth. The color is so white that it can reflect over 98% of light. This is particularly useful because light generates heat — and we here on Earth are running a bit hot these days.

If used on a building, the researchers say, the paint would reduce the temperature on the surface, lowering the temps inside and decreasing the need for air conditioning. But what if there was an even bigger application, like reducing the temperature of the entire planet?

According to Jeremy Munday, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis, who researches clean technology, if a material like Purdue's paint covered 1-2% of the Earth's surface, the amount of light being bounced back into space would reduce the amount of heat being absorbed by the planet enough to stabilize global temperatures. In other words, it could do a lot to solve climate change. Plus, Munday told the New York Times, the amount of light being bounced back into space wouldn't harm the cosmos very much. "It'd be like pouring a cup of regular water into the ocean," he told the Times.

But just how big is 1-2% of the Earth's surface? The total surface area of the Earth is right around 197 million square miles (and most of that is water), so the paint would need to cover between roughtly 2 million and 4 million square miles. For reference, the total land area of the United States is just over 3.5 million square miles, so we'd need to cover the country in white paint from sea to paint-stained sea.

That would be a lot of paint. A LOT.

If we assume the new paint acts like commerical paint, as the Purdue researchers suggest, a gallon would cover about 400 square feet, we would need roughly 139 billion gallons of the super-duper white paint to cover just 1% of the Earth's surface. Of course, that number doubles if we need to cover 2% of the surface. And none of this takes into account how hard it would be to paint oceans, deserts, and trees.

Painting things white to reduce temperatures is not a new concept. Just drive around my home state of Texas and see how many cars are white. Many places around the world are already painting surfaces white, and Purdue's new paint will help. But it does show that we have a long way to go before the problem is solved.

BEEN TRYING FOR 70 YEARS
The world’s largest nuclear fusion project could change our planet forever — but delays and setbacks keep slowing it down



Sara Klimek
Fri, July 14, 2023

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a collaboration between 35 countries, is the largest nuclear fusion project in the world, Scientific American reports. It’s also set to be one of the most expensive and delayed science projects in history, thanks to defective pieces and numerous costly setbacks.

What’s happening?

The reactor, located in southern France, is designed to raise hydrogen to a temperature so hot that it ionizes and forms plasma instead of gas, according to Scientific American. This chemical transformation, caused by the atoms colliding, generates electricity — via a process called nuclear fusion.

This project sounds expensive because it is. The project began in 2006 and was priced at around $6.3 billion, with an estimated completion in 2016. The most recent scope suggests the price is more like $22 billion, with the finished date around 2025. A report obtained via a lawsuit also reveals that the price could be substantially higher and face several more years of delay.

Besides many of its parts arriving later than expected, the ITER has also faced numerous issues with the quality and durability of its materials. Several thermal shields used to keep the refrigerant cool were corroded and cracked because the welding was insufficient.

The project has also faced many policy barriers, including a production halt in January 2022 via the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN). The ASN did not believe the ITER’s plans were sufficient to stop radiation, thus putting personnel at risk.

Why is this significant?

Nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms, has dominated the atomic energy lexicon. Although it has been assessed since the 1950s, fusion has never before been completed at the scale of the ITER. If successful, the ITER will generate 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of energy heating input — and give scientists more insight into large-scale fusion development.

Fusion has numerous environmental benefits compared to fission or other carbon-pollution-producing energy sources like coal or oil. It can produce four million times more energy than burning coal, oil, or gas and four times as much as nuclear fission, according to the ITER website.

Its only byproduct is helium, an inert clean gas; no “long-lived” nuclear waste is produced. Fusion is also preferable from a safety perspective because the tokamak fusion device can more rapidly cool itself, which prevents meltdowns, and the enriched materials in the reactor can’t be used to create nuclear weapons.

What is being done about this?

A new timetable for the project is set to be completed by the end of 2023, which includes cost modifications and considerations of the ASN’s concerns. The expected full-phase completion date is now as late as 2035.

'Concerning' map reveals where fish caught in the US are full of hazardous 'forever chemicals'


Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Fri, July 14, 2023 

A participant shows her catch during a virtual ice fishing competition on Gull Lake, Brainerd, Minnesota.

Rebecca Fudala/Reuters

Fish in lakes and streams across the US are contaminated with hazardous "forever chemicals."

A map of documented contamination sites shows how PFAS pollution is everywhere.

Eating a fish from a local lake could be equal to drinking PFAS-contaminated water for a month.

Eating fish from a local lake or stream could give you a giant dose of hazardous "forever chemicals," equal to nearly a month of drinking highly contaminated water, researchers have calculated.

Since their invention in the 1930s, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have multiplied and spread. Humans have created thousands of substances in the PFAS class, since their resistance to water and heat makes them useful in everyday products like food packaging and clothing.

But in recent decades, research has revealed that PFAS are harmful to human health. Peer-reviewed studies have linked them to some cancers, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, developmental delays, liver damage, high cholesterol, and reduced immune responses.

What's worse, PFAS only stick around and build up. They're nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they don't really break down. Now they're in soil, food, water, clothing, and even the dust in your home. One analysis found that rainfall across the entire planet contains unsafe levels of PFAS.

So it's no surprise that these substances have filled waterways across the US, where they can accumulate in the bodies of fish. Eating a fish can give you a concentrated dose of its entire lifetime of forever chemicals.

The problem is widespread across the US. The Environmental Working Group assembled a map, below, of the more than 500 samples of PFAS-contaminated fish. The instances span all 48 contiguous states.

Locations where PFAS-contaminated fish have been documented.

Copyright © Environmental Working Group, www.ewg.org. Reproduced with permission.

An interactive version of the map on the EWG website contains details about each site.

The map is based on EPA data from 2013 to 2015, in which the agency tested over 500 samples of fish from freshwater sources across the US.

EWG researchers published their analysis of that data in the journal Environmental Research in January. They found PFOS — one of the most notorious substances — was the largest contributor to PFAS contamination in fish.

An uncle and his nephew fish for salmon with a net on the Trinity River on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California.Stephanie Keith/Reuters

Eating just one freshwater fish could be equal to a month of drinking water contaminated with 48 parts per trillion of PFOS, EWG researchers calculated. Last year, the EPA lowered the level of PFOS in drinking water it considers safe to 0.02 parts per trillion.

"To find this level of contamination in fish across the country, even in areas not close to industry where you might expect heavy contamination, is very concerning. These chemicals are everywhere," Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, told CNN.
PFAS are everywhere, making the planet 'a bit inhospitable'

Some places have even issued advisories about PFAS contamination in fish, like Wisconsin in 2021, when the state warned people not to eat smelt from Lake Superior more than once per month.

But states don't always detect or warn people about PFAS contamination in their fish. So taking your fishing pole to the local river could be riskier than you think.

"When we start to really worry about using our environmental resources, that makes me really angry and annoyed," Ian Cousins, who led the analysis of PFAS levels in rainwater, told Insider in August.

He said he's also seen PFAS contamination advisories for fishing spots in Sweden, where he lives.

"We kind of made the planet a bit inhospitable," he added.

The new EWG study found that the median total PFAS level in freshwater fish was 278 times higher than that of commercially sold fish tested in the last three years.

A fish market in Reading Terminal Market, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Hannah Beier/Reuters

While avoiding PFAS altogether is probably impossible, it can help to know how to cut out little things that pack big doses — like certain fish in certain waterways.

Though the EPA's stringent new guidelines for PFOS and its equally notorious cousin, PFOA, are not currently enforceable, the agency is working to clean up some of the country's most contaminated drinking water.

The 2021 Infrastructure Bill designated $5 billion for that effort.

Correction: January 19, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of samples of PFAS-contaminated fish in the map. There are more than 500 fish samples documented.

This post has been updated. It was originally published on January 19, 2023.

The US wanted to use hundreds of nukes to create an alternative to the Suez Canal

Team Mighty
Fri, July 14, 2023

(Photo by Mahmoud KHALED / AFP)

Israel’s early days were pretty tough. It was the youngest kid in a rough neighborhood and endured endless bullying from its Arab neighbors. After fighting for its independence in 1948, it would face wars for its survival in 1967 and 1973, and nearly launched the world into World War III in 1953. Times were, needless to say, pretty hard. The Suez Canal was one of the keys to Israel’s survival in those early days.

Since its construction in the late 1800s, it’s been a vital strategic waterway, providing the shortest link between the Mediterranean Sea and Asia. In 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser nationalized the canal and threatened to cut off Israel’s access to it.

Israel, with the support of Britain and France, even invaded the Sinai Peninsula in 1952, the event that almost drew in the United States and the Soviet Union. Thankfully, the Suez Crisis was resolved before a larger war could break out, but Israel still needed to ensure its access through the Suez and the Straits of Tiran.

Luckily, just a few years later, the United States happened to be looking for more ways to use atomic energy peacefully while informing the public about the true power and threat of nuclear weapons. Specifically, it was looking to demonstrate the usefulness of atomic explosions in building critical infrastructure projects.

A lot of methods were tested using nuclear explosions, including blasting rock, exploring the Earth’s crust, and developing new methods of mineral prospecting. In Israel specifically, scientists came up with a scheme that would create a new Suez-like canal, linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through Israel’s Negev Desert – some 160 miles – using 520 nuclear bombs.

Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1962.

The Cold War was certainly an insane time. A memorandum written in 1963 was declassified in 1996, revealing the plans to cut a path of (literal) destruction across Israel using hundreds of two-megaton bombs; the conventional methods of creating such a canal would be “prohibitively expensive,” according to the memo. "It appears that nuclear explosives could be profitably applied to this situation."

“Profitably applied,” in this case, means four nuclear devices for every mile of canal, noting that 130 miles of the 160-mile stretch were uninhabited at the time. The only problem for the canal was the “political feasibility, as it is likely that the Arab countries surrounding Israel would strongly object to the construction of such a canal." Not to mention how the Israelis in the 30 miles of populated canal zone might feel about their country being nuked.

Despite the good intentions of using “peaceful” nuclear explosions, numerous tests were conducted that found these explosions, however peaceful they might have been, heavily irradiated the areas in which they were tested.

Other projects considered for use of peaceful nuclear explosions included widening the Panama Canal, creating a new canal through Nicaragua (called the Pan-Atomic Canal), mining projects in Arizona, and water transportation systems in California. Serious consideration was given to creating a harbor in Cape Thompson, Alaska using hydrogen bombs. It was reconsidered after they discovered Cape Thompson didn’t actually need a harbor.

Dozens of tests were conducted over the course of more than a decade, including hundreds of underground tests, but nothing came of the effort, and the funding to use peaceful nuclear blasts for civilian purposes quietly dried up by 1977.

Hunters Capture 19-Foot Python, the Longest Ever Caught in Florida: 'It Was Trying to Wrap Me Up'


Abigail Adams
Thu, July 13, 2023 a

The record-setting snake was found at Big Cypress National Preserve in Naples on July 10, according to The Conservancy of Southwest Florida

An image of the 19-foot python caught in Naples on July 10

A group of snake hunters recently captured the longest Burmese python ever recorded in Florida.

The record-setting snake — which measures in at 19 feet long and 125 lbs. — was found at Big Cypress National Preserve in Naples on July 10, according to a press release from The Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

Jake Waleri, 22, was among “a group of passionate python hunters” who helped wrangle the reptile, which is believed to be over 20 years old, according to CBS affiliate WINK-TV.

Even wilder? Some of his friends had never gone hunting for pythons before their encounter with the enormous snake, per the outlet.

Related: Florida County Quarantined After One of the World's 'Most Damaging Snails' Is Found in Area

The group initially attempted to catch the snake in a net, but when Jake attempted to grab the snake by its head, it put up a fight.

“The snake went absolutely crazy,” Jake told WINK-TV. “It was trying to wrap me up, trying to strangle me and my friends.”

The group then brought the animal to the Conservancy, where they learned that what they found was special.

An image of the 19-foot python caught in Naples on July 10

The previous record for longest python found in Florida was 18 feet and 9 inches, according to the nonprofit organization.

“We had a feeling that these snakes get this big and now we have clear evidence,” said biologist Ian Easterling in the Conservancy’s release. “Her genetic material may prove valuable for an eventual understanding of the founding population of South Florida.”

Meanwhile, Jake is happy to know that he helped “make an impact on South Florida’s environment.”

“We love this ecosystem and try to preserve it as much as possible,” he said.