It was meant to sound devastating, and likely felt so to the pro-Iranian militias on the receiving end. But Friday night’s airstrikes against over 80 targets inside Iraq and Syria were — so far — a comparatively limited response to the worst loss of US military life in the region in nearly three years.

Friday night tried to sound loud, but will likely not echo for long. US Central Command said the US deployed heavy bombers — the B-1B Lancer — to hit 85 targets in seven locations. The strikes may be determined to have caused more damage when the sun rises. But it was far from the most pain the Pentagon was capable of delivering.

There might be more; US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin suggested this was the beginning. But on Friday, the US response lasted just 30 minutes, the White House said. It was short, perhaps sharp, but not a shock.

That was a clear and calculated choice. The Biden administration faced a near-impossible task: Hit hard enough to show you mean it, but also ensure your opponent can absorb the blow without lashing out in return. The US had telegraphed its response for over five days, with senior US officials briefing about its nature, its severity, and even hinting at its targets.

This warning was likely designed to reduce the risk of misunderstanding, and perhaps enable the militias targeted to shift locations, and lessen the loss of life. It may have also been intended to ensure US strikes were not mistaken for the work of Israel, which could have sparked retaliation against the Israelis and risked another cycle of escalation.

This volatility reduced Biden’s options to a sliver of US capabilities. When his predecessor Donald Trump had Iran’s most senior military figure, Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, killed in 2020, the region was far from the brink. But the risk of conflagration in 2024 is the highest it has been in decades. Mistakes, or unanticipated successes, can lead to spirals, and that can lead to unavoidable, wider conflict.

It is almost miraculous that wider conflict has not already erupted in the Middle East four months after Palestinian militant group Hamas’ attack on Israel, and the ongoing assault on Gaza it sparked. (Indeed, you might be left asking, if recent months have not been enough for the Palestinians’ prima facie allies to intervene, what would be?) Yet as of Friday, despite a continuing slow boil of tensions between the US, its allies, and Iran’s many proxies, a wider war still remains unlikely.

Wars normally happen in the rare event that both sides want them, or in the more common occasion when parties determine open conflict is unavoidable, or sometimes when they have run out of diplomatic space. Or they stumble into them through a wild spiral of escalation.

Neither Iran nor the United States want a war. The Biden administration has elections looming, in which it does not need another costly foreign adventure, trouble over its Israel policy, or rising oil prices. Iran’s economy is still shaky, internal unrest is a not-yet distant memory, and it has wider goals of outsized regional influence, milking its technical relationship with Moscow, and the apparent pacy pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

It is for this crisis — seldom spoken of, but loud in the background noise — that perhaps Tehran and Washington are happy to save their direct confrontation. Since October 7, Iran increased its enrichment of uranium to over 83%, bolstering fears it was closing in on the nuclear bomb capability it insists it does not want.

The UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency has suggested that Iranian uranium enrichment may have slowed in recent weeks, but the prospect of nuclear proliferation is again closer. In the meantime, Washington is happy to leave this looming crisis off its talking points. And Tehran is content with needling its main adversaries, fixing its internal woes, and avoiding broader conflict.

There will likely follow criticism of the Biden administration for not using the same blunt and forceful approach of Trump in 2020. Yet the perception that might is the only means of projecting strength is dangerous. The US can inflict a lot of damage, anywhere it seeks, at any time. Biden’s decision so far to not send many other Americans to die in a wider conflict, in the name of avenging the deaths of three of their comrades, is not weakness, but the recognition that power is defined by its measured use. His critics would do well to remember that Trump’s bold killing of Soleimani did not stop us getting to this point.

Trees are believed to have originated hundreds of millions of years ago. Ever since, evidence of these ancient plant sentinels has been in short supply.

Now, a new discovery of uniquely 3D tree fossils has opened a window into what the world was like when the planet’s early forests were beginning to evolve, expanding our understanding of the architecture of trees throughout Earth’s history.

Five tree fossils buried alive by an earthquake 350 million years ago were found in a quarry in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, according to a study published Friday in the journal Current Biology. The authors said these new and unusual fossil trees not only bear a surprising shape reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss illustration, they reveal clues about a period of life on Earth of which we know little.

“They are time capsules,” said Robert Gastaldo, a paleontologist and sedimentologist who led the study, “literally little windows into deep-time landscapes and ecosystems.”

Coauthors Olivia King and Matthew Stimson unearthed the first of the ancient trees in 2017 while doing fieldwork in a rock quarry in New Brunswick. One of the specimens they discovered is among a handful of cases in the entire plant fossil record — spanning more than 400 million years — in which a tree’s branches and crown leaves are still attached to its trunk.

Few tree fossils that date back to Earth’s earliest forests have ever been found, according to Gastaldo. Their discovery helps fill in some missing pieces of an incomplete fossil record.

“There are only five or six trees that we can document, at least in the Paleozoic, that were preserved with its crown intact,” said Gastaldo, a professor of geology at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Most ancient tree specimens are relatively small, he noted, and often discovered in the form of a fossilized trunk with a stump or root system attached. For his colleagues to find a preserved tree that could have been 15 feet tall in its maturity with an 18-foot diameter crown left the paleontologist “gobsmacked.”

Ancient earthquake burial

The researchers excavated the first fossil tree about seven years ago, but it took another few years before four more specimens of the same plant were found in close proximity to one another. Dubbed “Sanfordiacaulis,” the newly identified species was named in honor of Laurie Sanford, the owner of the quarry where the trees were unearthed.

The forms taken by these previously unknown 350 million-year-old plants look somewhat like a modern-day fern or palm, per the study, despite the fact that those tree species didn’t appear until 300 million years later. But while the tops of ferns or palms as we know them boast few leaves, the most complete specimen of the newly discovered fossils has more than 250 leaves preserved around its trunk, with each partially preserved leaf extending around 5.7 feet (1.7 meters).

That fossil is encased in a sandstone boulder and roughly the size of a small car, according to Stimson, an assistant curator of geology and paleontology at the New Brunswick Museum.

The unique fossilization of the cluster of trees is likely due to a “catastrophic” earthquake-induced landslide that took place in an ancient rift lake, he said.

“These trees were alive when the earthquake happened. They were buried very quickly, very rapidly after that, at the bottom of the lake, and then the lake (went) back to normal,” Stimson said.

Finding complete fossil trees is rare and much less common than finding a complete dinosaur, according to Peter Wilf, a professor of geosciences and paleobotanist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved with the study. Wilf noted via email that the “unusual” new fossil tree was a relic of a time period from which there are almost no tree fossils.

“The new fossils are a milestone in our understanding of how early forest structure evolved, eventually leading to the complex rainforest architectures that support most of Earth’s living biodiversity,” Wilf added.

‘Very Dr. Seuss’

To King, a research associate at the New Brunswick Museum who found the group of fossils, the Sanfordiacaulis would have looked like something plucked straight out of Dr. Seuss’ most popular works.

“You know in ‘The Lorax,’ the trees have these big pom-poms at the top and narrow trunks? These probably have a similar structure. You have this massive crown at the top, and then it does narrow and paper into this very small trunk,” King said. “It’s a very Dr. Seuss-looking tree. It’s a weird and wonderful idea of what this thing could look like.”

Much of evolution is experimental, with success often measured by a species’ versatility, or ability to adapt to many different places and conditions. The peculiar set of tree fossils presents proof of a “failed experiment of science and evolution,” Stimson added. “We’re really starting to paint that picture as to what life was like 350 million years ago.”

Looking forward

Fossils such as the Sanfordiacaulis are not just useful in helping humans understand how life changed in the past, they can help scientists figure out where life on our planet might be headed next.

The existence of this particular species suggests that trees of the period were starting to occupy different ecological niches beyond what was previously understood, according to the researchers behind its discovery.

Gastaldo sees this as an indication that plants — much like early invertebrates — were experimenting with how they adapted to the environment. The earthquake that likely led to the trees’ fossilization also offers new geological evidence of what may have been occurring in Earth’s systems at the same moment in time.

“This is really the first evidence we have of (a tree) that would be between what grows on the ground and what would tower way above the ground,” Gastaldo said. “What else was there?”

More than 800 officials from the United States and Europe have signed a scathing criticism of Western policy towards Israel and Gaza, accusing their governments of possible complicity in war crimes.

They accuse their governments of failing to hold Israel to the same standards they apply to other countries and weakening their own “moral standing” in the world.

In an unprecedented display of coordinated dissent since Israel’s war against Hamas began nearly four months ago, the signatories call on their governments to “use all leverage” to secure a ceasefire and to stop saying that there is a “a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation.”

The public letter, released Friday, comes a week after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to be “plausible,” and ordered Israel to “take all measures” to limit the death and destruction caused by its military campaign, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and ensure access to humanitarian aid.

“The talking points that keep being delivered day after day are not cutting it.”

The official added that the ICJ’s decision to hear a genocide case lodged against Israel was validation for the authors’ concerns. Israel has strenuously denied accusations of genocide in Gaza.

“What was really important for those of us on the US side was to link arms with the people in Europe who believe their governments are following the US lead, and feel constrained by that,” the official said. “So we thought it was important that US officials continue to make clear their concerns with government policy on this.”

The statement, which does not list its signatories, says that it was “coordinated” by civil servants in European Union institutions, The Netherlands, and the United States, and endorsed by civil servants in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

“It is only natural that the debate in society about the conflict between Israel and Hamas also exists within our ministry. We feel that there should be scope for this debate and we encourage staff to enter into dialogues internally. And these dialogues are taking place.”

‘We are obliged to do everything in our power’

In the letter, the officials say that they raised concerns internally within their governments and institutions, but their professional concerns have often been overruled “by political and ideological considerations.”

“We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century,” they write.

Israel’s policies, they argue, are counterproductive to its own national security goals.

“Israel’s military operations have disregarded all important counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11; and that the operation has not contributed to Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and instead has strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative actors.”

They say that Western support for Israel has come “without real conditions or accountability.”

“Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally and weaken our efforts to rally international support for Ukraine and to counter malign actions by Russia, China and Iran,” they say.

Finally, they call on their governments to “develop a strategy for lasting peace that includes a secure Palestinian state and guarantees for Israel’s security, so that an attack like 7 October and an offensive on Gaza never happen again.”

The United Nations’ top court on Friday said that it will move forward with a case brought by Ukraine over Russia’s justification of its February 2022 invasion.

Kyiv had asked the court to declare it did not commit genocide in eastern Ukraine – a claim made by Russia as a pretext for launching its attack.

Ukraine filed the the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) just days after Russia launched its invasion on February 24, 2022, citing Moscow’s invocation of the Genocide Convention to justify its assault.

Russia has objected to the proceedings and said it is legally flawed. During hearings in September last year, lawyers representing Moscow urged judges to throw out the entire case.

Ukraine is asking the court to rule “that there is no credible evidence that Ukraine is responsible for committing genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine.”

However, the court said it did not have the jurisdiction to rule on all submissions put forward by Ukraine, including the claim Russia’s invasion itself violated the Genocide Convention and that Russia’s recognition os separatist territories in eastern Ukraine also breached the convention.

The ICJ’s decisions are binding but it has no power to enforce its rulings.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A US warship’s destruction of an incoming Houthi missile in the Red Sea this week marks the first use in this conflict of an advanced weapons system dubbed the Navy’s “last line of defense.”

The Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) was deployed by Navy destroyer the USS Gravely Tuesday night against what US officials said was a cruise missile that got as near as 1 mile to the ship – and therefore seconds from impact.

The automated Phalanx system features Gatling guns that can fire up to 4,500 20-millimeter rounds a minute, engaging projectiles or other targets at extremely close range.

“The Phalanx weapon system is a rapid-fire, computer-controlled, radar-guided gun that can defeat anti-ship missiles and other close-in threats on land and at sea,” manufacturer Raytheon says on its website page titled, “Last line of defense.”

US warships have defeated dozens of previous Houthi missile attacks using longer-range defenses, likely the Standard SM-2, Standard SM-6 and Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles, analysts say. Those defensive missiles engage their targets at ranges of 8 miles (about 12 kilometers) or more.

But on Tuesday night that didn’t happen for reasons that have not been revealed.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was “concerning” that the Houthi missile got so close to a US warship.

“If it’s going at a pretty good clip, 1 mile translates to not very long in terms of time,” Karako said.

Analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, said the Houthi missile, traveling at about 600 mph (965 kph), was likely about 4 seconds from hitting the US warship when it was destroyed by what was likely a 2- to 3-second burst of machine gun fire by the Gravely’s Phalanx system.

He noted that destroying an incoming missile at a 1-mile distance doesn’t necessarily prevent warships from being hit with debris.

“The missiles don’t evaporate when destroyed, they send out thousands of fragments and missile frame parts,” Schuster said. “The good news is that the lighter parts decelerate quickly, but large chunks can fly up to 500 meters (more than 500 yards).”

The closer the incoming missile is to the ship when destroyed, the more danger there is to the vessel, with larger chunks able to penetrate unarmored parts of the hull and superstructure from about 200 meters (more than 200 yards) out, Schuster said.

In a case of a subsonic cruise missile like that encountered by the Gravely on Tuesday, “depending on if the warhead detonates, debris size, missile flight angle and altitude at the time of missile destruction, about 2% of the debris might reach the ship,” he said.

Up to 70% of debris from missiles that travel at a faster speed, such as supersonic cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, would likely hit a warship after being engaged by the Phalanx, he said.

The Phalanx has a limited height range, so it may not even be able to engage ballistic missiles falling from above a warship, Schuster added.

Even with those caveats, the Phalanx is an important armament for the US Navy.

Since its introduction in 1980, it is now installed on all US Navy surface ships, and at least 24 US allies also use it, according to Raytheon, which notes the land-based version has seen combat before.

Whether it comes into further use in the current hostilities in the Red Sea remains to be seen. But the Iran-backed Houthis show no signs of slowing their attacks on commercial shipping and warships in the waters around their base in Yemen, which they claim are retaliation against Israel for its war in Gaza.

A day after the attack on the Gravely, US Central Command reported another US destroyer, the USS Carney, had shot down incoming anti-ship missiles and drones. And on Thursday, US forces shot down a Houthi drone over the Gulf of Aden and destroyed a surface drone in the Red Sea, it said.

Meanwhile, two ballistic missiles launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen missed targets in the Red Sea, Central Command said.

Regional conflict

The attacks on Red Sea shipping are just some of the dozens that have been made by Iranian proxy groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq since the war in Gaza erupted last October.

The deadliest of those for the US military occurred last Sunday, when a drone strike on a US outpost in Jordan killed three American soldiers. The US believes an umbrella group of militants called Islamic Resistance in Iraq was behind the attack.

President Joe Biden told reporters Tuesday he had made a decision about the US response to the strike, but declined to provide further details.

Options for the Biden administration could involve strikes on Iranian assets in the region — but striking inside Iran itself is highly unlikely, officials said, since Washington is not seeking a direct war with Tehran.

But some current and former US officials are skeptical that Iran will substantively change its tactics. One US military official based in the Middle East said Iran is “quite happy with how things are going.”

An Italian mafia boss who escaped from a maximum security prison last year by using bed sheets to scale the walls has been captured in France, authorities say.

Marco Raduano, the 40-year-old boss of the Gargano Mafia in the southern Italian region of Puglia, was caught Thursday outside a luxury restaurant in Bastia, Corsica, where he was dining with a female companion.

He was apprehended by the same anti-mafia unit that captured Matteo Messina Denaro, another criminal boss who spent nearly three decades on the run.

Rauduona was listed as one of Europol’s top 10 most dangerous fugitives.

Also apprehended was his right-hand man, Gianluigi Troiano, who fled house arrest in 2021 after detaching his electronic bracelet. He was arrested on Thursday in Granada, Spain while picking up a parcel from a service point.

The joint operation was ordered by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Bari, Puglia and carried out by the Carabinieri of the ROS and the provincial command of Foggia, Puglia. The Spanish Guardia Civil and the French Gendarmerie Nationale also cooperated in the arrest, according to the Carabinieri statement.

Raduano’s escape by tying bed sheets from his prison window just under a year ago was caught on the penitentiary’s surveillance cameras. The escape lasted 16 seconds and he fled on foot with no guards noticing or giving chase, which led to an internal investigation of the maximum security prison.

Raduano was serving a 24-year sentence in prison for drug trafficking when he escaped, and sentenced to life in prison in absentia after his escape for instigating the murder of mobster Omar Trott in a bruschetta bar in Vieste, Italy, in 2017.

A gas explosion at an unlicensed cooking gas filling plant in Kenya’s capital on Thursday night killed at least three people and injured 280 others, according to authorities in the East African country.

The blaze started when a truck carrying gas blew up in Nairobi’s Embakasi district at about 11:30 p.m. local time, “igniting a huge ball of fire that spread widely,” government spokesperson Isaac Maigua Mwaura said in a social media post.

Residential buildings, businesses and cars were damaged in the blast and subsequent inferno, Mwaura said.

“As a result, three fellow Kenyans […] have regrettably lost their lives while being attended [to] at the Nairobi West Hospital,” Mwaura said.

“In addition, by now, 280 other fellow Kenyans were injured by the fire and have since been rushed to various hospitals,” he added.

“Psychosocial counselling is being offered to victims who have experienced trauma.”

One survivor described how he fled desperately from the scene. “The fire caught up with me from almost one kilometer away as I was escaping,” Edwin Machio told Reuters.

“The flames from the explosion knocked me down and burnt me on my neck,” he added, showing the Reuters reporter his injuries.

The Kenya Red Cross said it had evacuated 271 people to hospitals around Nairobi and was “tirelessly battling the flames” alongside other agencies.

A command center has been set up at the scene to coordinate rescue operations and other intervention efforts, spokesperson Mwaura said, adding the scene was now secured.

“Kenyans are hereby advised to keep off the cordoned area in order to allow the rescue mission to be carried out (with) minimal disruptions,” he said.

Kenya’s Energy and Petroleum Regulation Authority (EPRA) said Friday that the explosion occurred at an unlicensed cooking gas filling plant.

The EPRA said it had received applications for construction permits for a Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) storage and filling plant at the site in March, June and July in 2023, but all applications were rejected as they did not meet the criteria for a plant in that area.

The applications were rejected due to a “failure of the designs to meet the safety distances stipulated in the Kenya Standard,” it said in a statement adding that it had noted the high population density around the proposed site.

About six million people in more than 200 towns, villages and cities in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia will be banned from washing their cars or filling swimming pools as the regional government on Thursday declared a state of emergency due to a water shortage caused by drought.

Water consumption in the affected municipalities will also be limited to 200 liters per person per day, the Catalan government announced, with the measures including the Catalan capital of Barcelona.

Catalonia has been facing increased water shortages in recent years. The current drought, the “worst in history,” has been ongoing for more than three years, according to the Catalan government.

The emergency measures announced Thursday also limit water usage for agricultural, industrial, and recreational use and were announced as water supplies for the regions continued to drop.

Farmers will have to reduce their water usage for irrigation by 80%, while the amount of water used for livestock is to be halved, according to the Catalan government.

Reserves in the Ter-Llobregat water system, made up of Catalonia’s two biggest rivers, fell to 16% Thursday, triggering the emergency announcement, the president of the Catalan government, Pere Aragonès, said.

Catalonia has several emergency levels with different restrictions on the use of water. The current emergency level declared for the 200 municipalities affected is at tier one of three. The ban affects regions previously in pre-emergency, with less harsh restrictions. A separate 36 municipalities had already been in the highest state of emergency, according to Spanish public service broadcaster RTVE.

Authorities in the region have previously attempted to overcome the below-average rainfall with various measures, including increasing the use of desalination plants that turn seawater into freshwater. More than half of the water used in Catalan homes now comes from such plants, according to Aragonès.

Other areas of Spain are also facing water shortages, with some localities in the southern region of Andalucia experiencing drought conditions and restricting water use following two years of little rainfall and extreme heat.

New reality

These conditions point to a new reality for parts of Europe, which is warming twice as fast as the global average.

While it will take time to pin down the exact role climate change is playing, scientists are clear that human-caused global heating is making droughts and heat waves more common and more extreme — putting colossal pressure on water resources.

Last summer, heat gripped patches of the Mediterranean region, bringing a “heat hell” scientists say would have been virtually impossible without climate change.

That same year, global warming hit 1.48 degrees Celsius, according to data published by Copernicus — the EU’s climate and weather monitoring agency. Record temperatures pushed the world just hundredths of a degree away from a critical climate threshold.

In March, average water levels in Catalonia’s reservoirs were at about 27% and there are already some water restrictions in place. At the time, the Sau Reservoir, about 60 miles north of Barcelona, was only around 9% full, according to Catalan Water Agency data.

Tarch, the Catalan Water Agency, started removing fish in an attempt to save some of them and protect the water quality in what remains of the reservoir, which more than five million people rely on for drinking water. Water was so scarce, some farmers in the region turned to prayer.

Malaysia has cut former Prime Minister Najib Razak’s 12-year prison sentence for corruption in half, according to authorities in the Southeast Asian country.

Najib, who served as prime minister from 2009 to 2018, was found guilty of money laundering, abuse of power and other charges in 2020 related to the 1MDB scandal, which saw billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money embezzled out of Malaysia.

In a statement Friday, the country’s Federal Territories Pardon Board said the former leader’s application to shorten his prison sentence to six years had been approved.

Najib’s fine has also been reduced to 50 million ringgit ($10.6 million), but his sentence will be extended by a year if he does not pay it in full before his new scheduled release date of August 23, 2028, the board added.

Najib has consistently denied wrongdoing, but Malaysia’s High Court rejected multiple appeals against his convictions on charges related to the onetime sovereign wealth fund, which prosecutors alleged he and his allies used as a personal piggybank to support luxurious lifestyles and fund electioneering.

The 1MDB fund was created soon after Najib took office in 2009. The government pumped billions in public money into it, with the stated purpose of leading “market-driven initiatives to assist the government in propelling Malaysia towards becoming a developed nation that is highly competitive, sustainable and inclusive.”

Instead, according to United States prosecutors, 1MDB was used as a slush fund by Najib and other high-ranking officials at the fund.

Goldman Sachs, which underwrote much of the 1MDB fund and was facing a host of criminal and regulatory proceedings in Malaysia, agreed to a $3.9 billion settlement with the country’s government in 2020.

Off the Siberian coast, not far from Alaska, a Russian ship has been docked at port for four years. The Akademik Lomonosov, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, sends energy to around 200,000 people on land using next-wave nuclear technology: small modular reactors.

This technology is also being used below sea level. Dozens of US submarines lurking in the depths of the world’s oceans are propelled by SMRs, as the compact reactors are known.

SMRs — which are smaller and less costly to build than traditional, large-scale reactors — are fast becoming the next great hope for a nuclear renaissance as the world scrambles to cut fossil fuels. And the US, Russia and China are battling for dominance to build and sell them.

The Biden administration and American companies are plowing billions of dollars into SMRs in a bid for business and global influence. China is leading in nuclear technology and construction, and Russia is making almost all the world’s SMR fuel. The US is playing catch-up on both.

There’s no mystery behind why the US wants in on the market. It already lost the wind and solar energy race to China, which now provides most of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines. The big problem: The US hasn’t managed to get an SMR working commercially on land.

SMRs are potentially an enormous global market that could bring money and jobs to the US, which is trying to sell entire fleets of reactors to countries, rather than the bespoke, large-scale power plants that notoriously go over budget and way past deadline.

While SMRs provide less energy — typically a third of a traditional plant — they require less space and can be built in more places. They are made up of small parts that can be easily delivered and assembled on site, like a nuclear plant flatpack.

Most countries are trying to rapidly decarbonize their energy systems to address the climate crisis. Wind and solar now provide at least 12% of the world’s power, and in some places, like the European Union, they provide more than fossil fuels. But there’s an increasing sense of urgency to clean up our energy systems as extreme weather events wreak havoc on the planet and as challenges with renewables remain.

For some experts, nuclear energy — in all forms, large or small — has an important role to play in that transition. The International Energy Agency, which outlined what many experts say is the world’s most realistic plan to decarbonize, sees a need to more than double nuclear energy by 2050.

“There’s definitely a huge race on,” said Josh Freed, who leads the Climate and Energy Program at the think tank Third Way. “China and Russia have more agreements to build all sorts of reactors overseas than the US does. That’s what the US needs to catch up on.”

US targets Russia’s and China’s neighbors

The US is trying to sell SMR technology to countries that have never used nuclear power in their histories. To convince them that SMRs are a good option, they’ll need to pitch hard on safety.

Globally, the construction of conventional nuclear power plants dipped following the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, and fell again after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011, data from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report shows. They started to tick up soon after, but new projects were heavily concentrated in China.

Most of the world has been cold on nuclear for the past decade or so.

But a nuclear renaissance is coming, the IEA says. The organization predicts nuclear power generation globally will reach an all-time high in 2025. That’s because several traditional nuclear plants in Japan that were put on pause after Fukushima will soon be restarted, and new reactors in China, India, South Korea and Europe will start operating.

It seems that decades-old fears over the safety of nuclear are starting to fade, and people — or their governments at least — are weighing the benefits against the risks, including the problem of storing radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for thousands of years. That could create a more hospitable market for countries looking to export SMRs.

If SMRs help boost the popularity of nuclear energy, they could become a powerful way to address climate change. Nuclear power, generally, doesn’t emit planet-warming carbon pollution when used and generates more energy per square meter of land use than any fossil fuel or renewable, according to an analysis by Our World in Data.

At the COP28 climate talks in Dubai in December, the US led a pledge to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity, which 25 nations have now signed onto. And the US government has earmarked $72 million to its international SMR program, known as FIRST, to provide countries with a whole suite of tools — from workshops to engineering and feasibility studies — to provide them with everything they need to buy an SMR fleet made in America.

But bigger money is coming in the form of loans from state financial institutions, like the US Export-Import Bank and its International Development Finance Corporation, which have offered up $3 billion and $1 billion, respectively. Those have gone to two SMRs in Poland designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a US-Japanese partnership headquartered in North Carolina.

The US and American companies are also finding success in Southeast Asia — a region where many countries are seeking to loosen their ties with China — as well as central and eastern Europe, where some nations that depend on Russian gas are trying to cut their reliance on Vladimir Putin’s increasingly hostile nation.

These efforts could threaten Russia’s ambitions abroad. Russia has already built or designed nuclear plants — the traditional type — for China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Slovakia, Egypt and Iran. Russia is also courting countries with the Akademik Lomonosov in Siberia: The CEO of Russia’s state-owned nuclear company said last year that dozens of countries had expressed interest in Russian-made floating SMRs.

Russia has another edge: its state nuclear company supplies almost all the world’s demand for SMR fuel — enriched uranium known as HALEU.

But the US and UK, among others, are investing in their own fuel production at home. That’s essential — two SMR demonstration projects, one by X-energy in Texas and another by Bill Gates’ TerraPower in Wyoming, were awarded government support to get up and running by 2028. They will need fuel to do so.

China isn’t building many nuclear plants abroad but as the only country to have an SMR in operation on land, it’s in a good position to win a large share of the market.

It’s very difficult for American nuclear energy companies to compete with those from countries like Russia and China, which have state-run utilities that don’t have to prove their power is economical.

“Our nuclear vendors are competing against cheap, natural gas in the US,” said Kirsten Cutler, a Senior Strategist for Nuclear Energy Innovation at the US State Department. “Abroad, they’re competing against authoritarian-backed entities who are throwing in a lot of political pressure and package deals.”

But Cutler points out that nuclear deals create decades-long relationships with other countries that require trust and benefit from stability.

“Who are you going to have that relationship with? Countries recognize the risks of working with authoritarian-backed suppliers and seek partners that will strengthen their independence and their energy security,” Cutler said. “These are not trivial decisions. They’re really important 50 to 100-year decisions, and they seek the United States.”

Flexing diplomatic muscle

If the US intends to prove it can deliver an SMR, it’s not unreasonable to expect the technology to be economically viable — something the country is struggling to show.

In 2020, Oregon-based NuScale’s SMR design was the first in the country to win regulatory approval. But it announced in November 2023 it was pulling the plug on an Idaho-based demonstration project that could have ushered in the next wave of SMRs. Its costs had nearly doubled, which meant the project wouldn’t have been able to generate power at a price people would pay.

Much like large-scale nuclear plants, NuScale’s primary issue was high costs, as already expensive building supplies converged with tight supply chains, inflation and high interest rates.

It was a major blow to the argument that SMRs would be cheaper and faster to build than traditional reactors.

“It certainly dampens the excitement abroad,” said John Parsons, a senior lecturer at MIT and a financial economist focused on nuclear energy. “It makes a big difference in the marketing if the US is out there making it happen. Then people who are interested in nuclear have an easier case in their country.”

In a November statement, NuScale expressed confidence it could keep and find other customers for its power domestically and abroad.

The US is trying to flex its muscle in diplomatic circles to win this race, too.

US climate envoy John Kerry was among the most vocal supporters of nuclear energy at the COP28 climate summit. And according to an analysis by climate consultancy InfluenceMap, the US was the only foreign country to lobby the European Union to include nuclear power in its official list of energy sources the bloc considers “green,” and therefore eligible for central funding. The State Department said it does not comment on diplomatic activities when asked to confirm its lobbying.

While the US nuclear industry struggles with budgets and timelines, its rigorous approach to projects may have some payoff.

European allies, for example, trust the US’ Nuclear Regulatory Commission, particularly on safety standards, the Third Way’s Freed said. If an SMR is licensed by the NRC and built in the US, then it “gets the gold seal” of approval from other countries, he added.

But if the US wants to really make nuclear energy from SMRs more economically viable, it will have to take a look at its fossil fuel production.

“The target here is to produce electricity cheaper than coal and gas plants,” Parsons said. These fossil fuel plants are “terribly simple and cheap to run — they’re just dirty,” he added.

Even if there can be a dramatic takeoff in the US’ SMR industry, it will still take years to scale up. It will probably take until the end of this decade to even glean whether it’s viable, said Mohammed Hamdaoui, vice president of renewables and power at research firm Rystad Energy.

And that’s a problem — the scientific consensus is that the world needs to make deep sustained cuts to carbon pollution this decade to ward off catastrophic climate change.

“I don’t see it being a big player in the energy mix until the second part of the next decade,” Hamdaoui said. “It’s going to take time.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified where X-energy intends to demonstrate its SMR. It is Texas. This story has been updated.