“Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Co. will begin studying plans for a nuclear power reactor, the first step toward constructing a new one since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Nikkei reported.

The regional utility, which currently operates seven reactors in western Japan, will start geological surveys at its Mihama Nuclear Power Plant, Nikkei reported without citing where it got the information. Kansai Electric will announce plans to resume studying new reactor builds in the coming days, the report said, after such surveys had been suspended since the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.”

From Bloomberg.

“Synthetic diamonds currently account for more than a fifth of global diamond jewelry sales, up from less than 1% in 2016, according to Paul Zimnisky, an independent analyst.

For engagement rings, the penetration is even higher. More than half the engagement rings purchased last year in the U.S. had a lab-created diamond, a 40% increase compared with 2019, according to a survey of nearly 17,000 U.S. couples by wedding planning website The Knot. 

‘Diamonds were always seen as expensive, a rich person’s asset,’ says Matt Bick, a third-generation diamond seller with a showroom on the same London block as the De Beers headquarters. ‘Now everyone can wear them.'”

From Wall Street Journal.

“More than 2 billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with global warming and competing demands from farms and industry expected to worsen shortages. But the skies may soon provide relief, not in the form of rain but humidity, sucked out of the air by ‘atmospheric water harvesters.’ The devices have existed for decades but typically are too expensive, energy-hungry, or unproductive to be practical.

Now, however, two classes of materials called hydrogels and metal-organic frameworks have touched off what Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls ‘an explosion of efforts related to atmospheric water harvesting.’ …

In 2023 [University of California, Berkeley chemist Omar Yaghi] and his colleagues reported an aluminum-based MOF that was cheap to make in bulk and that could wring water from desert air. In preliminary, unpublished tests, Yaghi says, prototype devices using a tweaked version of his team’s MOF can produce 200 liters of water per kilogram per day with only small amounts of added heat.

Yaghi has licensed the technology to Atoco, which is exploring using it to generate water to cool data centers, harnessing their waste heat to speed the cycling. Atoco plans to open pilot scale facilities in Texas and Arizona next year to test scaled-up versions.”

From Science.

“Surveys have confirmed the presence of rare-earth-rich mud at depths of 5 000 to 6 000 meters within Japan’s exclusive economic zone near Minamitori Island, Ishii said.

The mud is believed to contain dysprosium and neodymium, which are used in electric vehicle motor magnets, as well as gadolinium and terbium, used in various high-tech products, Ishii said.

Pipes from a deep-sea exploration vessel operated by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology will be used to extract the mud, which will then be transported to the mainland for analysis to determine its rare earth content.

If successful, the project aims to launch trial operations of a system capable of recovering 350 metric tons of mud per day in January 2027.”

From Mining Weekly.