Reading List 11/15/25
Israel refilling a lake with desalinated seawater, South Korean nuclear subs, ways to make titanium cheap, a “new Bell Labs”, and more.
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at Israel refilling a lake with desalinated seawater, South Korean nuclear subs, ways to make titanium cheap, a “new Bell Labs”, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
Housekeeping items this week:
IFP has started a new substack, Factory Settings, about the CHIPS Act and how it succeeded.
Sea of Galilee
The inaptly named Sea of Galilee is a large lake in Israel, and the supposed location of many of Jesus’ miracles (including him walking on water). The lake supplies around 10% of Israel’s drinking water, but water levels in the lake have declined in recent years.
To try and prevent declining water levels, Israel is now pumping large amounts of desalinated seawater into the lake. Via the Times of Israel:
The Water Authority has started channeling desalinated water to the Sea of Galilee, marking the first ever attempt anywhere in the world to top up a freshwater lake with processed seawater.
The groundbreaking project, years in the making and a sign of both Israel’s success in converting previously unusable water into a vital resource and the rapidly dropping water levels in the country’s largest freshwater reservoir, was quietly inaugurated on October 23.
The desalinated water enters the Sea of Galilee via the seasonal Tsalmon Stream, entering at the Ein Ravid spring, some four kilometers (2.5 miles) northwest of what is Israel’s emergency drinking source.
Firas Talhami, who is in charge of the rehabilitation of water sources in northern Israel for the Water Authority, told The Times of Israel that he expected the project to raise the lake’s level by around 0.5 centimeters (0.2 inches) per month.
The move has also reactivated the previously dried-out spring, allowing visitors to once again paddle down the Tsalmon, which now flows with desalinated water.
Iran drought
Israel isn’t the only middle eastern country facing water problems. The capital of Iran, Tehran, is facing an acute water shortage. This crisis has been brewing for months, and has now gotten so bad that the city may become “uninhabitable” if the current drought continues. Via Reuters:
President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned that if rainfall does not arrive by December, the government must start rationing water in Tehran.
“Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They (citizens) have to evacuate Tehran,” Pezeshkian said on November 6.
The stakes are high for Iran’s clerical rulers. In 2021, water shortages sparked violent protests in the southern Khuzestan province. Sporadic protests also broke out in 2018, with farmers in particular accusing the government of water mismanagement.
The water crisis in Iran after a scorching hot summer is not solely the result of low rainfall.
Decades of mismanagement, including overbuilding of dams, illegal well drilling, and inefficient agricultural practices, have depleted reserves, dozens of critics and water experts have told state media in the past days as the crisis dominates the airwaves with panel discussions and debates.
Pezeshkian’s government has blamed the crisis on various factors such as the “policies of past governments, climate change and over-consumption”.
Colorado River negotiations
In US water news, the Colorado River Compact is an agreement that determines how seven southwest states — California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming — divide up water from the Colorado River. The compact allocates a specific amount of water to each state. However, the total amount allocated to the various states exceeds the typical flow of the Colorado River, possibly because allocations were decided during a period of unusually high flow. New agreements have been needed to determine how water is allocated in these conditions, and states don’t always have an easy time coming to an agreement. From the Colorado Sun:
The rules that govern how key reservoirs store and release water supplies expire Dec. 31. They’ll guide reservoir operations until fall 2026, and federal and state officials plan to use the winter months to nail down a new set of replacement rules. But negotiating those new rules raises questions about everything from when the new agreement will expire to who has to cut back on water use in the basin’s driest years.
And those questions have stymied the seven state negotiators for months. In March 2024, four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — shared their vision for what future management should look like. Three Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — released a competing vision at the same time. The negotiators have suggested and shot down ideas in the time since, but they have made no firm decisions.
…The Department of the Interior is managing the process to replace the set of rules, established in 2007, that guide how key reservoirs — lakes Mead and Powell — store and release water.
The federal agency plans to release a draft of its plans in December and have a final decision signed by May or June. If the seven states can come to agreement by March, the Department of the Interior can parachute it into its planning process, said Scott Cameron, acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, during a meeting in Arizona in June.
If they cannot agree, the feds will decide how the basin’s water is managed.
South Korean nuclear submarines
Given South Korea’s proficiency in shipbuilding, and in nuclear reactor construction, it’s always been somewhat surprising to me that South Korea doesn’t build nuclear submarines. Apparently this is due to non-proliferation restrictions that prevent Korea from producing enriched uranium for submarine reactors, as uranium enrichment could also be used to produce nuclear weapons.
Now though, the Trump administration has approved South Korean nuclear submarine construction, apparently as part of a deal where South Korea will invest in US shipbuilding capabilities. From Naval News:
The announcement came following a meeting with various Asian heads of state including South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung in Gyeongju, South Korea. Additional posts by Trump on Truth Social have detailed that the Submarines will be built on U.S soil at the Philadelphia shipyards, which were acquired by the Korean defense firm Hanwha late in 2024.
Subsequently, the construction of Nuclear submarines marks a departure from past efforts, as previous South Korean submarine construction has focused primarily on conventionally powered submarines. In tandem with this, South Korean Nuclear Submarine construction projects have remained in limbo for sometime as the U.S had not given tacit approval until President Trump’s statement.
However, as the Philadelphia Shipyards where construction will take place is not currently equipped to handle the construction of Nuclear Submarines (only commercial vessels have been produced), Hanwha has reportedly invested an additional $5 billion dollars into modernization and preparation. Despite this, there has been a lack of a concrete agreement regarding the development of the shipyards and a plan for the construction of the submarines with no official signature from the South Korean side.
These agreements are the conclusion of a long standing desire for nuclear powered submarines expressed by the South Korean government and military. Naval News has previously reported that subsequent efforts for a Nuclear Submarines have been born of increasingly intense operational needs for endurance and a deterrent towards neighboring nations such as North Korea, China, and Russia.