TheChek News Flow

Oct 14 (Reuters) - California is investigating five possible human cases of bird flu among dairy farm workers, in addition to the six cases previously confirmed in the state, the state health department said on Monday.

Bird flu has spread to 100 dairies in California and 300 nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There have been 19 confirmed human cases this year among farm workers exposed to sick poultry or dairy, including the six confirmed cases in California this month.

The risk to the general public from bird flu remains low and pasteurized dairy products are safe to consume, federal officials have said.

Specimens from the five possible cases are being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for confirmation and are expected to arrive early this week, said the California Department of Public Health.

The possible and confirmed cases originated on nine different dairy farms and the individuals had mild symptoms and were not hospitalized, the state said.

The bull-case scenario is based on the risk of an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran

Crude oil prices could go into triple digits if supplies are disrupted by conflict in the Middle East, despite weak market fundamentals, analysts at Citi Research said Monday in a report.

Citi said its base case is still for international benchmark Brent to average $74 a barrel in the fourth quarter and $65 a barrel in the first quarter of 2025, “owing to weak underlying oil market fundamentals.”

But analysts increased their bull-case estimate to $120 from $80 a barrel for the fourth quarter and first quarter of next year, while assigning such an outcome a probability of 20%, up from 10% previously.

“Our new bull case scenario is based on supply fears and disruptions similar in magnitude and duration to that which occurred during 2022,” Citi said, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine which caused a spike in oil prices. Actual supply losses at that time peaked at less than 1 million barrels a day, well below expectations of losses between 2 million and 3 million barrels a day, Citi said.

Although disruptions from an escalation in the current conflict between Israel and Iran could be higher than at the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, “higher levels of spare capacity and stock levels, and a weakening demand environment, may mean a similar price response,” Citi added.

Citi’s bear-case scenario, which includes OPEC+ starting to raise production in December and a decline in supply risks, sees Brent at $60 a barrel in the fourth quarter and $55 in the first quarter of 2025.

Current risks include an Israeli strike on Iranian oil infrastructure or effects on oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Citi said, adding that it sees the latter event as highly unlikely. “Supply losses might also come from any response by Iran that targets regional energy assets,” Citi added.

The heightened tension with the market awaiting Israel’s response to Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attack has sent crude prices higher, although the increased risk premium has been offset by continuing concerns about weakening global demand, particularly from China. Oil prices were lower Monday after the Chinese government at the weekend offered few details of its economic stimulus plan, and OPEC cut its oil demand growth estimates for this year and 2025.

Tech group signs deal with Kairos Power to build up to seven small facilities to meet its energy needs

Google has ordered six to seven small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) from Kairos Power, becoming the first tech company to commission new nuclear power plants to provide low-carbon electricity for its energy-hungry data centres. 

Google and Kairos said on Monday that the tech company had placed an order for SMRs with a total capacity of 500MW, helping Kairos, a seven-year-old start-up, to bring its first commercial reactor online by 2030 and additional reactors by 2035. 

The agreement was “a landmark for us at Google in our 15-year clean energy journey”, said Michael Terrell, the company’s senior director of energy and climate.

“We feel nuclear can play an important role in helping us to meet our demand, and helping us to meet our demand cleanly and round the clock,” he said.

Asked if the reactors would feed into the grid or be directly connected to data centres, Terrell said Google was considering all options. 

The two companies declined to comment on the agreement’s value, or on whether Google would fund the construction of the SMRs upfront or simply pay for power once they were built. 

Last month, Microsoft announced that it would commit to buying 20 years’ supply of electricity from the mothballed US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island if Constellation Energy restarted the site. Tech companies are increasingly interested in nuclear as a medium-term solution to providing low-carbon electricity to meet their data centres’ energy demands. 

Google’s deal with Kairos is the first in which a tech company is helping to commission the building of a nuclear power plant. The US has brought only three reactors online in the past 20 years. 

Terrell said SMRs offered “a simplified, inherently safe design, faster construction, and flexibility on deployment location” compared with large- scale nuclear plants. “Obviously, this is a bit of a longer-term bet, but it is an incredibly promising bet. If we can get it to scale globally, this will deliver enormous benefits to power grids around the world.”

While Google was leaning “heavily” on renewable energy to power its data centres, Terrell added, its modelling had made clear “that to really get grids to be carbon-free it will take more than just wind, solar and lithium ion storage; you are going to need this next set of advanced technologies”. 

Kairos, based in Alameda, California, has developed a reactor cooled by molten fluoride salt, rather than water. In December, it received a construction permit from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a 50MW demonstration reactor in Tennessee called Hermes. 

This was the first approval for a new type of reactor in the US for half a century. The US Department of Energy is investing about $300mn in Kairos’s Hermes project through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration programme. 

The US has thrown its weight behind companies seeking to build smaller nuclear reactors that can be built in factories and assembled on site, in order to cut costs and speed up the construction of plants. 

Kairos’s molten salt reactor uses ceramic-coated TRISO fuel and operates at close to atmospheric pressure, transferring heat from the salt to generate steam and run a turbine. 

The company began construction on its Hermes project in July and is aiming for it to be operational by 2027. In September, it said it would build a salt-production facility and two fuel labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Mike Laufer, Kairos’s chief executive, said the commercial-scale SMRs that the company planned to build for Google would have a capacity of 75MW and that the company was focusing on the US market.

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