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WEATHER

IN PICTURES: French town hit by freak June hailstorm

A French town has been hit by a freak hailstorm that left locals clearing drifts of ice in the streets with shovels and snow ploughs.

Published: 29 June 2021 16:44 CEST
IN PICTURES: French town hit by freak June hailstorm
Photo: Sapeurs-pompiers des Vosges

The hail struck the town of Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges mountains on Tuesday morning.

Romain Munier, head of communications for the local emergency services, told French media: “There were up to 60 centimetres of accumulated hail” while in the wider area, “up to 10 millimetres of water accumulated in six minutes”.

Locals were pictured clearing the street of ice with shovels and snow ploughs after the storm passed and the fire and rescue crews for the Vosges area said they had received 56 callouts in total.

Large areas of France are on weather alert for storms until Thursday, as a ‘cold drop’ passes over the country leading to extremely unsettled weather.

In most areas, however, the storms will be confined to heavy rain and thunder.

In neighbouring Switzerland, the Swiss news agency ATS reported giant hailstones up to seven centimetres wide in the canton of Lucerne.

In the canton of Fribourg, the police and fire brigade were called 300 times, including to rescue a class of 16 children and two adults caught in the hail.

Six of the children and one adult were taken to hospital.

At least five people were injured in the German-speaking Swiss cantons, including a cyclist who suffered head injuries from hailstones, according to ATS, whilst in Germany severe flooding has hit parts of the country including Stuttgart.

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ENVIRONMENT

Sweden’s SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

The Swedish steel giant SSAB has announced plans to build a new steel plant in Luleå for 52 billion kronor (€4.5 billion), with the new plant expected to produce 2.5 million tons of steel a year from 2028.

Published: 2 April 2024 13:44 CEST
Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa. 

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology. 

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces. 

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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