Nuclear's role in reaching climate targets recognised by G7

The meeting of the G7 ministers (Image: G7 Italia)

The Group of Seven (G7) nations have committed to support the use of nuclear energy in those countries that opt to use it, a communique released at the end of the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Climate, Energy and Environment in Turin, Italy, says.

"Those countries that opt to use nuclear energy or support its use recognise its potential as a clean/zero-emissions energy source that can reduce dependence on fossil fuels to address the climate crises and improve global energy security," the document states.

"These countries recognise nuclear energy as a source of baseload power, providing grid stability and flexibility, and optimising use of grid capacity, while countries that do not use nuclear energy or do not support its use prefer other options to achieve the same goals, taking into account their assessment of associated risks and costs of nuclear energy."

The ministers noted the declaration issued by 25 countries during the COP28 climate conference in Dubai in December last year, setting a goal to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050. The communique said the ministers "recognise that, for countries that opt to use it, nuclear energy will play a role in reducing dependence on fossil fuels, supporting the transition to net-zero and ensuring energy security, while other countries choose other energy sources to achieve these goals".

The ministers also said that new reactor designs - including advanced and small modular reactors - "could bring in the future additional benefits such as improved safety and sustainability, reduced cost of production, reduced project risk, waste management improvement, better social acceptance, opportunities for industry by providing at the same time energy, high temperature heat, hydrogen".

They committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains and to continue the cooperation for building a robust nuclear supply chain in the framework of G7 and of the Nuclear Energy Working Group established in Sapporo.

The ministers noted that G7 leaders remain committed to reducing reliance on civil nuclear-related goods from Russia and the ongoing efforts by countries that operate Russian-designed reactors to make progress in securing alternative nuclear fuel contracts and to reduce dependencies related to spare parts, components and services.

They also said they would promote research and development initiatives on innovative nuclear power technologies "for those countries that opt to use nuclear energy or support its use".

The communique added that the G7 will "promote the responsible deployment of nuclear energy technologies including for advanced and small modular reactors, including microreactors, and work collectively to share national best practices, including for responsible waste management, enable greater access to project financing tools, support sectorial collaboration, designing licensing procedures and strengthening coordination on development of commercial projects among interested G7 members and third markets".

The ministers said: "We underscore the importance for all countries and their respective people of upholding the highest standards of safety, security, and safeguards and non-proliferation, particularly as more countries adopt nuclear power as part of their energy mix."

Speaking at a joint press conference following the ministerial meeting, which he presided over, Italy's Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said: "When it comes to nuclear energy ... our seven countries indicated in the communique that we will proceed together in order to promote further research and ensure that the conditions are in place to promote the use of nuclear energy, which is a clean form of energy."

He added, without naming Germany: "This is something that is not binding. Obviously, we are aware that in the G7 there is a country that currently does not want to pursue the development of nuclear energy."

The ministers' statement came following a call by the nuclear industry for G7 governments to embrace nuclear deployment as a strategic priority, by maximising use of existing nuclear power plants and setting clear plans for further deployment that would fulfil the targets they set at COP28, to triple global nuclear capacity.

The statement was signed by the heads of Associazione Italiana Nucleare, Canadian Nuclear Association, Groupement des Industriels Français de l'Energie Nucléaire (Gifen), Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, Nuclear Energy Institute, Nuclear Industry Association, Nucleareurope and World Nuclear Association.

The G7 is an informal forum that brings together Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. The European Union also participates in the group and is represented at the summits by the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission.Researched and written by World Nuclear News. Nuclear's role in reaching climate targets recognised by G7 : Nuclear Policies - World Nuclear News

Read More........→May 06, 2024

UK and New Zealand partner for subsea cable earthquake

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK’s National Metrology Institute, has partnered with Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL) in New Zealand to carry out earthquake detection tests through subsea cables in the Pacific Ocean.

The duo will carry out the tests in a 3,876km-long section of the Southern Cross NEXT cable (a subsea cable that connects Aukland, Sydney and Los Angeles), that sits on the floor of the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. The area has been chosen as it is highly seismically active –meaning it is vulnerable to earthquakes– which the NPL say is “an ideal test bed for advancing the technology and demonstrating its full potential.”

As part of the trial, scientists will turn the cable section into various sensors for earthquakes and ocean currents, by performing ultra-sensitive optical measurements. It will not need any new hardware or infrastructure, only the cable itself. This technique, which was created NPL in 2021, will mean the cable can gather continuous, real-time environmental data from the ocean floor. This will act as an early warning system for coastal communities in the event of a tsunami. If the trial is successful, the concept could be turned into a worldwide monitoring system.

“This technology, pioneered at NPL, is the perfect example of how our science can create impact, delivering tangible benefits for society which will simultaneously improve our understanding of the world,” said Dr Peter Thompson, CEO of NPL in a press release.

UK Science Minister Andrew Griffith echoed this sentiment, adding that “bringing the UK and New Zealand’s brightest minds together, to overhaul how we give advance warning of tsunamis, could save scores of lives. This work proves the value of breakthrough technologies like quantum, as well as the international teamwork that’s crucial to harnessing them. Source: https://totaltele.com/uk-and-new-zealand-partner-for-subsea-cable-earthquake-detection-trial/: 

Read More........→May 02, 2024

Heat from El Niño can warm oceans off West Antarctica – and melt floating ice shelves from below

AndreAnita/Shutterstock Maurice Huguenin, UNSW Sydney; Matthew England, UNSW Sydney, and Paul Spence, University of Tasmania

As snow falls on Antarctica, layers build up and turn to ice. Over time, this compressed snow has become a continent-sized glacier, or ice sheet. It’s enormous – almost double the size of Australia and far larger than the continental United States.

As the weight of ice builds up, the ice sheet begins to move towards the oceans. When it reaches the sea, the ice floats. These floating extensions are known as ice shelves. The largest is over 800 kilometres wide.

When the ocean water has a temperature close to 0°C, these ice shelves can persist for a long time. But when temperatures rise, even a little, the ice melts from below. Antarctic ice shelves are now losing an alarming 150 billion tons of ice per year, adding more water to the ocean and accelerating global sea level rise by 0.6 mm per year. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are particularly prone to melting from the ocean, as many are close to water masses above 0°C.

While the melting trend is clear and concerning, the amount can vary substantially from year-to-year due to the impact of both natural climate fluctuations and human-made climate change. To figure out what is going on and to prepare for the future, we need to tease apart the different drivers – especially El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the world’s largest year-to-year natural climate driver.

Our new research explores how heat brought by El Niño can warm the ocean around West Antarctica and increase melting of the ice shelves from below.

Antarctic Ice Mass Loss 2002-2023. Credit: NASA Climate Change.

How can El Niño-Southern Oscillation affect Antarctica?

Australians are very familiar with the two phases of this climate driver, El Niño and La Niña, as they tend to bring us hotter, dryer weather and cooler, wetter weather, respectively. But the influence of this cycle is much larger, affecting weather and climate all around the Pacific.

Can it reach through Antarctica’s cold, fast currents of air and water? Yes.

Giant convective thunderstorms in the Pacific’s equatorial regions move east during El Niño and intensify in the West during La Niña. As these storm systems change, they excite ripples in the atmosphere that are able to travel large distances, just as waves can cross oceans. Within two months, these atmospheric waves reach the Antarctic continent, where their energy can affect the coastal atmosphere and ocean circulation. During El Niño, the energy from these waves weakens the easterly winds off West Antarctica (and vice versa for La Niña).

Using satellite data, researchers recently found that West Antarctic ice shelves actually gain height but lose mass during El Niño. That’s because more low-density snow falls at the top of the ice shelves, while at the same time more warm water flows under the ice shelves where it melts compressed high-density ice from underneath.

What we don’t yet know is how this warmer water (above zero) comes up from below. Similarly, we don’t know what happens during La Niña.

Answering these questions with the few observations we have from Antarctica is challenging because this climate driver doesn’t happen in isolation. Storms, tides, large eddy currents and other climate drivers such as the Southern Annual Mode can change the temperatures of the water under ice shelves too, and they can occur at the same time as El Niño.

Finding a needle in the ice stack

So how did we do it? Modelling.

We take a high-resolution global ocean circulation model and added El Niño and La Niña events to the baseline simulation. By doing so, we can examine what these anomalies do to the currents and temperatures around Antarctica.

The energy brought by El Niño’s atmospheric waves to West Antarctica weakens the prevailing easterly winds along the coasts.

Normally, most of the warm water reservoir is located off the continental shelf rather than on the continental shelf. As the winds weaken, more of this warmer water – known as Circumpolar Deep Water – is able to flow onto the continental shelf and near the base of the floating ice shelves.

During El Niño, weaker winds along the coasts push less cold Antarctic surface waters towards the continent, allowing warmer Circumpolar Deep Water to flow to the base of the ice shelves. During La Niña, stronger winds drive a wedge of cold water up towards the continent, reducing the inflow of warm water. Maurice Huguenin, CC BY-SA

We call this water mass “warm”, but that’s relative – it’s only 1–2°C above freezing, and the heat only warms the water on the continental shelf by about 0.5°C. But that’s enough to begin melting ice shelves, which are at or below freezing point.

As you’d expect, the longer the warm water stays on the shelf and the hotter it is, the more melting occurs.

During La Niña, the opposite occurs and the ice rebounds. Winds along the coast strengthen, pushing more cold surface water onto the continental shelf and preventing warm water from flowing under the ice shelves.

What does this mean for the near future?

Researchers have found El Niño and La Niña have already become more frequent and more extreme.

If this trend continues, as climate projections suggest, we can expect warming around West Antarctica to get even stronger during El Niño events, accelerating ice shelf melting and speeding up sea level rise.

More frequent and stronger El Niño events could also push us closer to a tipping point in the West Antarctic ice sheet, after which accelerated melting and mass loss could become self-perpetuating. That means the ice wouldn’t melt and reform but begin to steadily melt.

More bad news? Unfortunately, yes. The only way to stop the worst from happening is to get to net zero carbon emissions as quickly as humanly possible.

Maurice Huguenin, Postdoctoral research associate in Physical Oceanography, UNSW Sydney; Matthew England, Scientia Professor and Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS), UNSW Sydney, and Paul Spence, Associate professor of oceanography, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→April 09, 2024

How global warming is reshaping winter life in Canada

H. Damon Matthews, Concordia University and Mitchell Dickau, Concordia University As we begin to emerge out of yet another mild winter, Canadians are once again being reminded of just how acutely global warming has changed Canada’s winter climate.

The impacts of this mild winter were felt across the country and touched all aspects of winter culture. From melting ice castles at Québec’s winter carnival, to a dismal lack of snow at many Western Canada ski resorts, seemingly no part of Canada was unaffected. But the change that will likely be felt most keenly by many Canadians is the loss of a reliable outdoor skating season.

For the second year running, Ottawa’s Rideau Canal Skateway was closed for what should be the peak of the skating season. In 2022-2023, the Skateway did not open at all for the first time ever. This winter, a portion of the Skateway opened briefly in January, but continuing mild temperatures forced a closure again after only four days of skating. In Montréal, fewer than 40 per cent of the city’s outdoor rinks were open in the middle of February.

There is no obvious upside to this story. Outdoor skating in Canada is fast becoming the latest casualty of our failure to confront the reality of the climate crisis.

On thin ice

More than a decade ago, our research group published our first analysis of how outdoor skating was being affected by warming winter temperatures in Canada. We showed that even as of 2005, there was already evidence of later start dates, and shorter skating seasons across most of the country.

A report on the management of the Rideau Canal Skateway in 2023, produced by the CBC.

These conclusions were echoed by subsequent publications from the RinkWatch project, which has reported consistent declines in skating season length and quality in many Canadian cities.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, skating days on the Rideau Canal Skateway have been trending downwards over the last 20 years. In this time, the typical skating season has decreased by almost 40 per cent, a trend that is clearly correlated with increasing winter temperatures over the same period.

Moving in the wrong direction

Climate mitigation progress continues to be far too slow.

Global CO2 emissions reached their highest level ever recorded in 2023, and average global temperatures have now reached 1.3 C above pre-industrial temperatures. If these trends continue, we are on track to reach 1.5 C — the lower threshold of the Paris Agreement temperature target — in less than seven years.

In our 2012 paper, we estimated that suitable rink flooding days could disappear across most of southern Canada by mid-century. In a more recent analysis of Montréal’s outdoor rinks, we estimated that the number of viable skating days in Montréal could decrease to zero by as early as 2070.

In hindsight, these and other similar projections may have been far too optimistic. In a study of Rideau canal skating days published in 2015, the authors projected declining but sustained skating conditions throughout this century, even in a high future emissions scenario. The reality of the past two seasons shows that skating conditions have deteriorated far more quickly than predicted.

Global temperatures in 2023 were the highest ever recorded, as were winter temperatures in December 2023 and January 2024. Since 1950, winter temperatures in Canada have increased by more than 3 C, which is about three times the rate of global warming over this same period.

Outdoor rinks require at least three consecutive very cold days to establish a foundation of ice, followed by enough cold days to maintain a good ice surface. Temperatures above freezing are poorly tolerated by outdoor rinks, and rain is often disastrous.

A few degrees of warming in January and February temperatures can be the difference between a rink that is skatable and one that is not. As winters continue to warm, the case for building and maintaining outdoor municipal rinks will become harder to justify.

A stark and still changing new reality

As years go by without any real progress on climate mitigation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a future in which outdoor rinks will be widely available without artificial refrigeration. Other winter activities will also be affected by changing snow conditions, but outdoor skating will likely be hit first in direct response to warming winter temperatures.

Wayne Gretzky famously learned to skate and play hockey in Branford, Ont. in the 1960s on an outdoor rink built by his father. Reliable winter skating conditions in southern Ontario are already mostly a thing of the past, and are becoming more and more scarce as global warming progresses. It is increasingly unlikely that current and future generations will be able to follow Gretzky’s path.

This reality is both a tragic injustice for many young Canadians and an existential threat to a core aspect of the Canadian winter identity.

Preserving what remains of Canada’s winter skating culture will require that we rapidly step up our efforts to drive down CO2 emissions and stabilize global temperatures. Otherwise, Joni Mitchell’s “river I could skate away on” will become an increasingly wishful dream that soon will exist only in the lyrics of old songs.

H. Damon Matthews, Professor and Climate Scientist, Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University and Mitchell Dickau, PhD Candidate, Geography, Planning, and Environment Department, Concordia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→March 28, 2024

Volcano on uninhabited Galapagos island spews lava

ECUADOR - A volcano on an uninhabited island of Ecuador's famous Galapagos archipelago is spewing lava, authorities said Sunday, potentially threatening an array of unique animal species. The La Cumbre volcano on the island of Fernandina blew its top late Saturday, the South American country's Geophysical Institute said. La Cumbre, which stands 1,463 meters (4,799 feet) high, has erupted three times previously since 2017. The Galapagos archipelago, some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the mainland of Ecuador, has flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world. Observing its wonders led British scientist Charles Darwin to develop his ground-breaking theory of evolution by natural selection in the 19th century. La Cumbre has the highest eruption rate of all volcanos in the archipelago, which is a favorite with tourists. Fernandina, with no hotels or restaurants, can only be accessed for short visits from a cruise

GALAPAGOS NATIONAL PARK/AFP |

boat. The Institute said La Cumbre blew a gas cloud about three kilometers into the air, dispersed by the wind without passing over other islands with human settlements such as neighboring Isabela. It said the duration of the eruption cannot be predicted, nor whether the lava will reach the shore, but data on the volcano's activity suggested this one was likely to be greater than those in 2017, 2018 and 2020. The Institute advised tourists to stay away if any lava does enter the sea.sp/nn/mlr/mdl. Volcano on uninhabited Galapagos island spews lava

Read More........→March 06, 2024