News round-up, August 3, 2023
Understanding Poland's Concern
Source: Holocaust EncyclopediaThe ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is intricate and rooted in historical, economic, and political factors. The refusal of the Kremlin to acknowledge Ukraine as an independent nation adds an extra layer of complexity to the situation. This non-recognition is seen as a direct challenge to Western powers and as an attempt by Russia to regain control over Eastern Europe.
One consequence of the occupation of Ukraine is the potential for territorial expansion into neighboring countries, such as Poland, Moldova, and Lithuania. This scenario is not hypothetical; it is crucial to understand its historical context. It is impossible to overlook the influence of Gorbachev on the Soviet Union and the consequent fall of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev's efforts to modernize the Soviet Union ultimately led to its downfall. The collapse of the Soviet Union had far-reaching effects beyond Russia's borders. As a result, the United States emerged as the dominant global power. This power shift forced the US to reevaluate its military strategies and prioritize modernization to maintain its advantage and safeguard its interests.
The negative outcome of the Cold War had a profound impact on the Soviets, fueling their determination to never be militarily inferior again. If the expansion of the Russian Empire were to occur, it would undoubtedly result in the establishment of a new Iron Curtain, reminiscent of the Cold War era ("As Long as It Takes: Biden Adds to Talk of a New Cold War," published on July 13, 2023, subscribed by David E. Sanger, world's media). This possibility raises significant concerns, particularly for Poland, given its history of invasions. The specter of territorial expansion instills reasonable alarm about potential consequences and destabilization in the region.
Finally, China emerges as the big winner in this crisis. Although it has not explicitly voiced full support for the Kremlin's military operations, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the Chinese economy and on economies worldwide. Consequently, a Russian incursion holds the potential for China to exploit the abundant natural resources of Eurasia, including valuable energy sources, oil, and gas reserves.
Quote of the day…
“Censorship is not what it used to be
“The United States has taken freedom of speech further than any other modern democracy, but today it is a contradictory society, embroiled in implausible culture wars where various kinds of prohibition flourish.
"El País, from Spain, is perhaps the most important newspaper in the Spanish language.Translation from Spanish to English by Germán & CoMost read…
What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?
NYT, Aug. 2, 2023 by David BrooksAmerica’s Fiscal Time Bomb Ticks Even Louder
Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S. debt rating only caused a flutter in markets, but fiscal strains will soon get harder to ignore
WSJ by Spencer Jakab, Aug. 2, 2023China's oil and uranium business in Niger
In 2009, the Nigerien government secured a significant loan worth 650 million yuan ($90.93 million) from the Chinese state-owned Eximbank.
REUTERS By Andrew Hayley,/Editing by Germán & Co, July 31, 2023Why China is not as powerful as the West might think
Xi Jinping’s brand of economic policy is less and less convincing to Western companies. Politicians are waking up, too.
POLITICO EU BY STUART LAU AND PHELIM KINE, AUGUST 3, 2023America is heavily reliant on Russia for nuclear fuel. Congress might change that.
WSJ Analysis by Maxine Joselow with research by Vanessa Montalbano, August 3, 2023
At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.
Source: TWP/Editing by Germán & CoWhat if We’re the Bad Guys Here?
NYT, Aug. 2, 2023 by David BrooksOpinion Columnist
Donald Trump seems to get indicted on a weekly basis. Yet he is utterly dominating his Republican rivals in the polls, and he is tied with Joe Biden in the general election surveys. Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020.
What’s going on here? Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s done?
We anti-Trumpers often tell a story to explain that. It was encapsulated in a quote the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington gave to my colleague Thomas B. Edsall recently: “Republicans see a world changing around them uncomfortably fast, and they want it to slow down, maybe even take a step backward. But if you are a person of color, a woman who values gender equality or an L.G.B.T. person, would you want to go back to 1963? I doubt it.”
In this story we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians. Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that’s what matters to them most.
I partly agree with this story; but it’s also a monument to elite self-satisfaction.
So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.
This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam, but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston, but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where they themselves lived.
The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.
The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.
Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.”
The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his presidency Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid.
Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.
Writing in Compact magazine, Michael Lind observes that the upper-middle-class job market looks like a candelabrum: “Those who manage to squeeze through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation.”
Or, as Markovits puts it, “Elite graduates monopolize the best jobs and at the same time invent new technologies that privilege superskilled workers, making the best jobs better and all other jobs worse.”
Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas: San Francisco, D.C., Austin and so on. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Once we find our cliques, we don’t get out much. In the book “Social Class in the 21st Century,” sociologist Mike Savage and his co-researchers found that the members of the highly educated class tend to be the most insular, measured by how often we have contact with those who have jobs unlike our
Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we support policies that help ourselves. Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China. Open immigration makes our service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put downward pressure on our wages.
Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.
We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.
After this social norm was eroded, a funny thing happened. Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that. As Adrian Wooldridge points out in his magisterial 2021 book, “The Aristocracy of Talent,” “Sixty percent of births to women with only a high school certificate occur out of wedlock, compared with only 10 percent to women with a university degree.” That matters, Wooldridge continues, because “The rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility in the country.”
Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No, most of us are earnest, kind and public spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject.
It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Trump understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we rode in on.
If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem as just another skirmish on the class war between the professionals and the workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take down the man who most aggressively stands up to them. Of course, the indictments don’t cause Trump supporters to abandon him. They cause them to become more fiercely loyal. That’s the polling story of the last six months.
Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.
But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.
Media/Editing by Germán & CoAmerica’s Fiscal Time Bomb Ticks Even Louder
Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S. debt rating only caused a flutter in markets, but fiscal strains will soon get harder to ignore
WSJ by Spencer Jakab, Aug. 2, 2023“Everybody who reads the newspaper knows that the United States has a very serious long-term fiscal problem.”
That wasn’t a quote by some financial talking head in the aftermath of Fitch’s downgrade of America’s credit rating on Tuesday. It was a reaction by then chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke the last time a major rating agency took that action back in August 2011. Investors could google hundreds of such warnings over the decades and conclude that the hand-wringing is best ignored or even viewed as a buying opportunity.
For example, a funny thing happened when Standard & Poor’s shocked the financial world 12 years ago: Stocks plunged, getting close to an official bear market, yet investors rushed to buy bonds, the very thing that had supposedly become more risky. Stocks remained unsettled for another couple of months, but an 11-year bull market marched onward.
Investors are drawing false comfort from the past and from the perception that fiscal scolds have cried wolf so often.
True, Treasurys remain the most liquid, coveted asset on earth and the risk-free bedrock off which everything else is priced. And, aside from the temporary plunge in stocks back in 2011, America’s fiscal excess has rarely been an immediate pocketbook issue for its citizens. Fitch’s warning comes at a time when it is getting harder to ignore, though.
Ironically, it was the 2008-09 financial crisis and the emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic that both accelerated that reckoning and also helped to delay the pain. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office projected that federal debt held by the public would fall to about 22% of gross domestic product in a decade. In 2011 it was seen reaching about 76% by this fiscal year. It will soon exceed 100%.
But, because the Federal Reserve helped keep interest rates so unexpectedly low in the interim, even slashing its overnight borrowing rate to zero in 2020, taxpayers’ bill for financing debt accumulated in the past was modest. Net interest as a share of fiscal outlays was higher in the early 1990s. That is because the interest rate on the pile of outstanding debt is still a long way from what it was then.
But it is rising quickly as the Fed has raised rates to counter inflation that reached a four-decade high last year. The CBO predicts net interest will reach $745 billion in the 2024 fiscal year—about three quarters of all discretionary spending excluding defense.
That isn’t an immediate problem, but for what it is worth, the reaction in the bond market Wednesday morning to Fitch’s move was the opposite of what it was back in 2011—yields rose close to their highest of the year. A flood of short-term debt issuance to refill the Treasury’s coffers after the debt-ceiling standoff is another short-term strain.nting press. As rising rates push that financing need higher, though, the ability of the U.S. government to change the fiscal path without politically disastrous measures like cutting entitlements or by overtly printing money is becoming more limited.
If no such radical steps are taken then it almost certainly means paying more to borrow. That rising risk-free-rate will crowd out private investment and dent the value of stocks, all else being equal.
Even worse, losing that room for maneuver could also make responding to the next crisis, whether it is financial, health or military in nature, more than a matter of Uncle Sam whipping out his checkbook. For example, defending our allies against an attack by China, also a major owner of our debt, might require not just putting Americans’ lives in danger but a serious trade-off on the home front in the form of higher taxes, inflation, benefit cuts or some combination of those.
This sort of problem was described by policy analyst Michele Wucker in her 2016 book “The Gray Rhino,” which was an English-language bestseller in China. Unlike an out-of-the-blue crisis dubbed a “black swan,” a gray rhino is a very probable event with plenty of warnings and evidence that is ignored until it is too late.
“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.
Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.
A PetroChina petrol station is pictured in Beijing, China, March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo/Editing by Germán & CoChina's oil and uranium business in Niger
In 2009, the Nigerien government secured a significant loan worth 650 million yuan ($90.93 million) from the Chinese state-owned Eximbank.
REUTERS By Andrew Hayley,/Editing by Germán & Co, July 31, 2023BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) - China, Niger's second-largest foreign investor after former colonial power France, has in the past two decades ploughed billions of dollars into the landlocked West African nation, mainly for the exploration of oil and uranium.
Since last week's coup, in which military leaders detained Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum and established a military government, China says it is closely monitoring the situation, and urges parties in Niger to safeguard stability.
China's total foreign direct investment (FDI) into Niger stood at $2.68 billion as at the end of 2020, according to the U.S. Embassy in Niger.
OIL ASSETS
Niger became an oil producer in 2011 when the Agadem oilfield, a joint venture between the government and PetroChina (601857.SS), started production.
PetroChina entered a production sharing agreement in 2008 with the Nigerien government to develop the field, located some 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of the capital Niamey, with estimated reserves of 650 million barrels.
As part of the deal, PetroChina invested in the construction of the SORAZ refinery, located 460km away in the southern city of Zinder, near the border with Nigeria. PetroChina holds a 60% stake in the refinery, which has a capacity of 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) and mostly supplies the Nigerien domestic fuel market. The remaining share is held by the Nigerien government.
In September 2019, PetroChina entered into another agreement with the Nigerien government to lay a 2,000-km (1,200 miles) pipeline between the Agadem field and the Beninese port city of Cotonou.
The pipeline investment is twinned with a second phase of development of the Agadem field. Taken together, total investment into the pipeline and second phase development is expected to reach $4 billion, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.
The pipeline, the longest of its kind in Africa, is planned to mitigate the security and logistical challenges of exporting crude from the troubled area, and designed to carry 90,000 barrels per day, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.
The project was 63% complete as of February this year, according to a PetroChina statement.
PetroChina did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
In May this year, state oil and gas major Sinopec (600028.SS) entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerien government paving the way for further potential cooperation between Beijing and Niamey in oil and gas.
URANIUM MINE
In 2007, state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) (601985.SS) entered a joint venture with the Nigerien government to develop the Azelik uranium mine in the centre of the country.
CNNC owns 37.2% of the project, with a further 24.8% owned by Chinese investment entity ZXJOY Invest, according to a 2010 filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The Nigerien government received a 650 million yuan ($90.93 million) loan from Chinese state-owned Eximbank to support development of the project in 2009.
The mine has estimated total reserves of 11,227 metric tons, and annual production capacity of 700 tons, according to the filing. The project was halted in 2015 due to unfavourable market conditions.
Niger, which has Africa's highest-grade uranium ores, produced 2,020 metric tons of uranium in 2022, about 5% of world mining output, according to the World Nuclear Association.
CNNC did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Image by Germán & CoWhy China is not as powerful as the West might think
Xi Jinping’s brand of economic policy is less and less convincing to Western companies. Politicians are waking up, too.
POLITICO EU BY STUART LAU AND PHELIM KINE, AUGUST 3, 2023President Xi Jinping wants to project China as a powerful trade partner — or dangerous adversary — to virtually any country hoping to be successful in the 21st century.
“The rise of the East, and the decline of the West” is his motto. As Chinese growth rocketed and Western politicians fretted over how to respond, it became a national catchphrase, too.
But among the Chinese people — and increasingly in the chancelleries and boardrooms of Europe — a different story is beginning to be told: Beijing’s march toward global economic domination may not be invincible after all.
China managed only weak GDP growth after belatedly liberating itself from pandemic restrictions. The property market is in crisis and youth unemployment has risen to hazardous levels, with one estimate putting it at 50 percent. Private entrepreneurs increasingly live in fear of what the state will do to their businesses and consumers have stopped spending the way they did in the pre-COVID good times.
In Shanghai, London and New York, Chinese and foreign businesses alike are now grappling with a new scenario: What if the slowdown is here to stay?
“The risks of a major economic crisis in China, or perhaps more probable an imminent stagnation in sustainable economic growth, are […] rising,” Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute For International Economics, told POLITICO.
What happens to China’s economy matters hugely for the world.
According to the latest statistics, the Chinese economy grew at a weak pace in the second quarter of this year, with GDP just 0.8 percent up in April-June from the previous quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Year-on-year, GDP expanded 6.3 percent in the second quarter — below the 7.3 percent forecast.
These numbers are still far healthier than most Western economies can boast.
But the uncertain outlook adds to doubts over how Beijing will approach the West. For now, the jury is still out on whether Xi will put on a friendlier face or if instead tougher economic times will embolden Communist Party hardliners to seek out flashpoints with the U.S. or Europe to distract public opinion and shore up nationalistic sentiment.
President Xi Jinping wants to project China as a powerful trade partner — or dangerous adversary — to virtually any country hoping to be successful in the 21st century | Pool photo by Leah Millis via AFP/Getty Images
Even the Communist Party leaders aren’t hiding their problem. At their annual pre-summer Politburo meeting, which sets the tone for the economic work for the remainder of the year, party officials judged that the economy “is facing new difficulties and challenges, mainly due to insufficient domestic demand, difficulties in the operation of some enterprises, many risks and hidden dangers in key areas, and a grim and complex external environment,” state news agency Xinhua quoted the Politburo as saying.
Getting out
In Europe, as well as the U.S., governments are reassessing their own economic vulnerabilities radically. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked EU governments into revising their dependence on supply chains controlled by potentially unfriendly regimes.
Europe mostly has decoupled itself from imports of Russian fossil fuels but remains reliant on China for critical raw materials that make up battery components that will be vital for the green energy transition, among other areas.
Western leaders from the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen to U.S. President Joe Biden now routinely talk about economic “de-risking” from China. The peril of linking too closely to the Chinese economy has even hit home with Olaf Scholz, traditionally seen as Europe’s leading dove on China policy.
Behind closed doors in the October summit of the European Council last year, Scholz shared his fears about China’s outlook. Speaking shortly before his first trip as German leader to Beijing, he told his EU counterparts that “a massive financial crisis” could be triggered if Beijing failed to manage its property crisis, according to two diplomats briefed on the conversation, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is preparing to pull out of a deal under which Rome signed up to be part of Xi’s global infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative. And the government of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has in recent weeks taken a more critical line toward Beijing, especially over its stance on Ukraine.
Against that backdrop, the Beijing government is now focused on engaging with the West in a less frosty manner, even when it comes to its arch-rival in Washington. Several U.S. officials — from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen — have visited China in recent months, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is expected to go later this summer. An EU-China summit is also in the pipeline, according to one diplomat speaking anonymously because the plans are yet to be finalized.
Beijing is also keen to reassure private businesses in China, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
“What we saw was actually a decrease in the overall confidence level” among 570 EU companies operating in China who took part in a recent survey, according to Jens Eskelund, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “And a lot of that has to do with an increased level of uncertainty where China is, in particular about the Chinese economy,” said Eskelund, whose chamber represents 1,700 mostly European companies and entities in China.
Xi consistently demonstrated a preference for the state-owned sector. His most radical moves against the private sector have been targeted at tech giants, even though they’re widely considered the best hope for China to compete with the West. On Xi’s watch, the Chinese bureaucracy has cracked down on multinational e-commerce platform Alibaba’s billionaire-founder Jack Ma, restricted the development of online gaming and private tutorial classes, and heavily regulated data even for foreign companies.
Some Western companies are already looking elsewhere. According to Eskelund, the EU chamber chief, 11 percent of businesses surveyed last year said they were weighing up whether to leave China. This year, the exact same share of companies reported they had already taken the decision to go.
“When you’re sitting in an economy that is growing 10 percent per year, it’s good for everyone,” Eskelund said. “If you’re slowing down to 5 percent, 5.5 percent, then there will be sectors of the economy that will not be growing the same way as before.”
Xi has accrued vast personal power at the apex of China’s political system. Whether Xi-conomics works in the end will depend to a large extent on him.
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…
…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
The Plant Vogtle nuclear site in Georgia. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)America is heavily reliant on Russia for nuclear fuel. Congress might change that.
WSJ Analysis by Maxine Joselow with research by Vanessa Montalbano, August 3, 2023Nearly a year-and-a-half after Russia launched a brutal invasion of Ukraine, Congress appears poised to reduce America’s reliance on Moscow for uranium, the main fuel used by nuclear power plants.
Lawmakers took swift action to ban Russian oil and gas imports a month after the February 2022 invasion. But stemming the flow of Russian uranium imports has taken much longer, in part because Moscow provides more than 20 percent of U.S. nuclear fuel.
Yet before leaving town last month, the Senate took a key step toward bolstering domestic uranium supply chains and displacing the Kremlin as a key supplier.
The Senate last week passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes an amendment aimed at boosting U.S. uranium production and enrichment. The amendment passed by a nearly unanimous vote of 96-3, suggesting it could be included in the final version of the Pentagon policy bill that could head to President Biden’s desk this year.
Leaders in the nuclear industry, which provides nearly one-fifth of U.S. electricity without any carbon emissions, cheered the proposal’s passage as a win-win for America’s national security and climate goals.
It was “a kumbaya moment,” said Daniel Poneman, president and CEO of the nuclear fuel supplier Centrus Energy and the former deputy secretary of energy under President Barack Obama.
Jeff Navin, director of external affairs at TerraPower, a Bill Gates-backed nuclear energy firm that has worked with Centrus, said the vote sent a strong statement. “You can’t get 96 senators to agree that the sun is going to come up tomorrow or the color blue exists,” he said.
TerraPower announced in December that an advanced nuclear reactor proposed for southwestern Wyoming would probably be delayed at least two years, given the difficulty of securing fuel from non-Russian sources. The amendment could address this delay and others like it.
Russia ranks as the biggest supplier of enriched uranium in the world. Its state-owned nuclear power conglomerate, Rosatom, has earned billions from U.S. and European customers, even as it works to supply the Russian arms industry with components, technology and raw materials for missile fuel.
The details
The amendment mirrors the Nuclear Fuel Security Act, which was introduced by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and James E. Risch (R-Idaho).
The bipartisan bill directs the Energy Department to establish a program aimed at ensuring a disruption in Russian uranium supplies would not harm the development of advanced nuclear reactors or the operation of the existing nuclear fleet.
The agency would need to acquire at least 20 metric tons per year of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, from at least two U.S. nuclear energy firms by 2028. HALEU is needed to fuel advanced reactors such as small modular reactors.
“We spend nearly $1 billion each year on Russian uranium. Russia uses these revenues to fund its invasion of Ukraine,” Barrasso said on the Senate floor last week. “Here in America we have the resources to fuel our own reactors.”
The three lawmakers who voted against the amendment were Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Sanders has long opposed building new nuclear plants, given the lack of a federal plan for storing nuclear waste, while Markey has raised concerns about contamination from uranium mining on tribal lands.
The Senate approved another nuclear bill, the Advance Act, as an amendment to the NDAA by a vote of 86-11. The bipartisan measure would prohibit U.S. nuclear plants from receiving a license for enriched uranium from Russia or China if the Departments of Energy and State determine that the fuel poses a national security risk.
In the House
The House has not yet passed its version of the NDAA or approved the Nuclear Fuel Security Act as an amendment. But there appears to be some bipartisan support for doing so.
ower announced in December that an advanced nuclear reactor proposed for southwestern Wyoming would probably be delayed at least two years, given the difficulty of securing fuel from non-Russian sources. The amendment could address this delay and others like it.
Russia ranks as the biggest supplier of enriched uranium in the world. Its state-owned nuclear power conglomerate, Rosatom, has earned billions from U.S. and European customers, even as it works to supply the Russian arms industry with components, technology and raw materials for missile fuel.
In the states
New York, long a leader on climate policy, is set to miss a key clean-energy goal unless the state significantly accelerates its efforts, according to a report released this week by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Zack Budryk reports for the Hill.
In 2019, New York passed a landmark climate law that calls for reaching 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040. The report found that to meet the 2030 target, the state would need to add an additional 20 gigawatts of renewables over an eight-year period. For context, the state added 12.9 gigawatts of total generation, including both fossil fuel and renewable sources, over the past 20 years.
DiNapoli cited the length of the permitting process for new projects as a major obstacle, echoing the concerns of many lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Only about 3 percent of renewable generation contracted since 2015 has actually come online, which DiNapoli attributed to the length of the state Public Service Commission’s siting process, local opposition and delays in connecting to the grid.
The state will be able to achieve its 2030 goal if the projects currently under contract speedily pass through the permitting pipeline, but “this is a big ‘if,'” the report says.