April summary

The war in Ukraine dominated the news again last month, with ever worsening reports of atrocities. Boris Johnson visited the capital, Kyiv in the middle of the month, to pledge support, and a few days later was issued a fixed penalty notice, along with Chancellor Rishi Sunak and others, from the Metropolitan Police, for his part in the Downing Street lockdown parties. He thus became the first standing UK Prime Minister to be sanctioned for breaking the law, and despite having lied to Parliament about his partying he still refused to resign, one leading conservative saying that the fine ought to close this matter, as there is a war on and the Prime Minister, supported by the Chancellor, provides the leadership the nation needs. Many would argue about this, as the UK is not at war, and it must be noted that the UK changed its leadership during the first and second world wars, and during the Boer War, the Korean War, the Iraq War, and four times during the war in Afghanistan!

The Times, 29th April

The UK Government unveiled its future energy strategy at the beginning of the month, whereby up to 95% of the UK's electricity could come from low-carbon sources by 2030. The strategy, which aims to increase UK energy independence, includes plans to boost nuclear, wind and hydrogen power. There was no mention of geothermal energy in the mix, despite progress in Cornwall on the United Downs Deep Geothermal Power Project, the first geothermal power plant in the UK. The aim of the project is to produce power and heat from the hot granite rocks beneath Cornwall and two deep, directional wells have successfully been drilled; the production well to a depth of 5275m and the injection well to 2393m. Both wells have intersected the target Porthtowan Fault Zone located approximately 800m to the west of the site.

Nor was there a mention of the potential use of nuclear fusion, which Johnson enthused about at the Conservative Party Conference in October 2019, clarifying his position on this by saying "They (UK scientists) are on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world. "I know they have been on the verge for some time,” he continued, “It is a pretty spacious kind of verge.” But now, he assured his audience, “we are on the verge of the verge."

There is a big focus on offshore wind in the strategy, with a new target of producing up to 50 gigawatts (GW) of energy from this source by 2030 and Boris Johnson has called for a “colossal” floating wind farm in the Irish Sea. Just over 2 years ago he promised that Britain would become the "Saudi Arabia of wind".

A large wind turbine requires around 5 tonnes of copper, and at the recent 2022 CRU World Copper Conference held in Santiago, Chile, attendees heard the latest assessments on supply, demand, prices in the refined copper, concentrates and recycling markets. Erik Heimlich, head of base metals supply at CRU said that the world needs eight projects the size Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine, in the next eight years, the global copper industry needing to spend more than $100 billion to build mines able to close what could be an annual supply deficit of 4.7 million tonnes by 2030. The analyst said the supply gap for the next decade is estimated at six million tonnes per year, as the clean energy and electric vehicles sectors ramp up.

The big news from MEI last month was that Jon and his family are to shortly leave Cornwall for a new life in Luxembourg. Jon's partner, Dr Kathryn Hadler, formerly with Imperial College, London, and a regular at MEI's flotation and other conferences, has been appointed Director of the European Space Resources Innovation Centre at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology as of 1 April 2022. Kathryn is currently commuting back to Cornwall at weekends, before Jon and the two children join her in Luxembourg in July.

Kathryn at Physical Separation '19 with Kristian Waters
Both former editors of IJMP, Kristian is now an editor with Minerals Engineering

And not a mention of Coronavirus this month, for the first time in 2 years. Has the pandemic gone away? It's easy to be fooled into thinking so, as life in UK now goes on as normal. But things have a habit of biting back so maybe we shouldn't be too complacent. I suppose at the moment there are more worrying things globally, such as Putin's escalation of the war in Ukraine and the possibility of it spilling onto a wider stage.

@barrywills