How Africa Can Save the World From 

a Never-Ending Pandemic

Antony Sguazzin, Bloomberg News

BC-How-Africa-Can-Save-the-World-From-a-Never-Ending-Pandemic , Antony Sguazzin

(Bloomberg) -- As the rest of the world prepares for a vaccine-driven return to normal over the next few months, at her community health center in a poor, working class neighborhood of Cape Town, Andrea Mendelsohn is dreading the arrival of April and May—that’s when the weather will get cooler in the southern hemisphere and bring a surge in coronavirus cases.

Few people in South Africa—aside from medical staff like Mendelsohn—will be vaccinated by then. Elsewhere on the continent even health workers won’t be inoculated, making Africa a large reservoir of the virus that has infected almost 117 million people across the globe and killed more than 2.5 million.

“The arrival of vaccines is going to have zero impact on the third wave but at least I can be confident that when I go to work I won’t die,” Mendelsohn, a senior medical officer in the Western Cape Province’s Department of Health, said in an interview. “I am sure health workers in Malawi and Tanzania want to have the same relief.”

Most countries in Africa have yet to start inoculating their citizens. While developed countries have rushed to vaccinate their populations against Covid-19,  fewer than half a million people have received shots in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region of 1.1 billion people. In contrast, the U.S., with a population of about 330 million, has administered over 90 million vaccine doses, while more than a third of the U.K.’s 67 million people have gotten at least one shot.

But anyone in the developed world who thinks they are unaffected by large swaths of un-vaccinated people in Africa, needs to think again, says Phionah Atuhebwe, the New Vaccines Introduction Medical Officer on the continent for the World Health Organization. As long as the pandemic continues to rage among un-vaccinated populations, spawning new, more virulent, vaccine-resistant strains, no one is safe, she said.

“The virus will definitely mutate and will keep mutating; the longer we keep the virus around the more mutations we’ll see,” Atuhebwe said in an interview from Brazzaville, in the Republic of Congo. “If Africa is not vaccinated and we are a source of mutations, we put the whole world at risk.”

Already the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford has proved largely ineffective in preventing mild disease from infections with a strain of the virus first identified in South Africa. That mutation has spread to at least 48 countries, including the U.K. and the U.S.

Rich nations pre-paid for their vaccines and also got organized quicker and earlier, leaving countries in Africa scrambling for scraps. The affluent world’s vaccine grab was characterized in January by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as a “catastrophic moral failure.” Just 10 countries administered 75% of all vaccinations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in February, calling it “wildly uneven and unfair.”

A report by anti-poverty group One said last month that the world’s richest countries are on track to accumulate over 1 billion more doses than they need to fully vaccinate their populations, adding that the excess shots alone would be sufficient to inoculate the entire adult population of Africa.

“It’ll be a fatal mistake if the developed world sees this as a case where we’ll vaccinate our people and then people in other parts of the world take care of their own business,” said John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Covid won’t be defeated until it’s defeated everywhere.”

The mad dash to corner vaccines shows rich countries have learned little from the global swine flu pandemic in 2009, when poor nations were left high and dry, says Helen Rees, chairwoman of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority. Despite the heightened risk of the virus spreading with increased interconnectedness, “there was not a thought about what would happen to the rest of the world,” she said.

Countries from Nigeria to Ethiopia and Zimbabwe have large numbers of their citizens living and working in Europe, North America and even Asia, and regular flights mean that just as easily as the virus arrived in Africa from Europe, mutated strains could be spread into the developed world by returning travelers.

In addition, a slow vaccine rollout could further delay the economic recovery in Africa, which contracted for the first time in 25 years last year.  Already, Zambia has defaulted on its debt and Ethiopia and Chad are seeking debt relief. The developed world relies on the continent’s natural resources for much of the raw materials it needs. West Africa accounts for 60% of the world's cocoa supply, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the key source of cobalt needed for electric vehicles and tantalum used in mobile phones. South Africa is the world's biggest source of platinum.

Vaccines are slowly trickling into Africa. The African Union has secured some supplies, China has provided vaccines to Zimbabwe and other African nations and countries such as Israel are beginning to donate excess supplies. Still, most African countries are almost entirely reliant on Covax—the initiative backed by the WHO, the vaccine alliance Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations that offers vaccines cheaply to developing countries. Covax began distributing vaccines to countries such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast last month.

But the program will only cover 20% of the populations of its members by year-end. Of the 304 million doses administered worldwide so far, fewer than 0.2% have been in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to 14% of the world’s population.

Richer nations are beginning to acknowledge that poorer countries need better access to vaccines. In an interview with the Financial Times in February, French President Emmanuel Macron called the vaccine gap “an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality.” At their meeting last month, leaders of the G7 countries pledged $7.5 billion to Covax and also called on countries to donate surplus supplies.

Granted, African governments haven’t helped themselves. Few made attempts to secure supplies directly from pharmaceutical companies, with South Africa—which has a wealth of medical expertise and is the site of five coronavirus vaccine trials—only signing deals this year.

“The bulk of the blame should be placed on African leaders for being somewhat nonchalant and non-proactive,” said Ifeoluwapu Asekun-Olarinmoye, an epidemiologist at Nigeria’s Babcock University.

That’s in part because the official Covid-related death toll across Africa is just under 106,000 with almost 4 million cases reported, small compared to the rest of the world. But testing has been sparse and many infections and deaths have gone unrecorded. At times over the last few months hospitals from Cape Town to Harare and Lagos have groaned under the strain. Doctors and oxygen have been in short supply and people have taken to social media to search for beds for their afflicted relatives.

With vaccines beginning to arrive, other challenges are coming to the fore. The continent is plagued by poor health infrastructure, a shortage of trained personnel and inadequate data on the people who need to be vaccinated.

Take Nigeria, for instance. Africa’s most populous nation has about 214 million people, most living in areas that are hard to reach. Fewer than a third of the country’s 195,000 kilometer (121,170-mile) road network is paved; power supply—even in the biggest cities—is unreliable, making it a challenge to keep vaccines refrigerated; and a 15-year gap since the last census means the government has little idea about the whereabouts of vulnerable groups like the elderly. The same applies to many African countries.

“We don’t know where they live, we don’t know how many there are, we don’t know how to find them,” Atuhebwe said in a webinar.

In countries like Tanzania virus denial is holding back attempts to immunize the population. President John Magufuli has declared his country Covid-free even as people continue to die from it. Vaccine skepticism runs high in some countries, with 15 high school students taken to hospital in south-west Cameroon last month after leaping from the second floor to escape what they thought was a team of medics arriving to vaccinate them.

Meanwhile, some shots—like Russia’s Sputnik V and vaccines from China’s CanSino Biologics Inc.—have sparked concern. They use a cold germ to carry the genetic material of the Covid virus into patients’ cells to trigger an immune response. A trial in South Africa of an HIV vaccine using the same vector more than a decade ago was tied to an increase in HIV infections. South Africa has the world’s biggest AIDS epidemic and many of its neighbors have similar infection rates.

Even when vaccines are suitable, some African countries can’t afford shots outside the Covax system. Since African countries didn’t contribute to the development of the shots and didn’t pre-order, they don’t get the discounts offered to richer countries. In January, Anban Pillay, a deputy director general in South Africa’s Department of Health, said the country would pay $5.25 per dose of AstraZeneca’s shot compared with about $3 the European Union was paying.

All that has meant a very slow pace of vaccination. South Africa, the continent’s most developed country, is inoculating at most about 11,000 people a day with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot, a pace that would take a decade to cover the 40 million people the government wants to vaccinate. Most vaccines available to African nations require two shots. If a double-dose regime is followed and 780 million Africans inoculated over 12 months to attain herd immunity, there would need to be 7 million vaccinations a day, according to Ernest Darkoh, founder of Cape Town-based Broadreach Group, which works with governments on healthcare.

That’s unlikely to happen without a lot of help.

“The whole world needs to walk this journey together,” said Mmboneni Muofhe, a deputy director general at South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology. “We are going to find ourselves sitting with a variant that defies all the vaccines. We are sitting on a ticking time bomb.”

— With Ruth Olurounbi, Katarina Hoije, Pius Lukong, and Zoe Schneeweiss

 

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

 Mountains of radioactive waste remain in Fukushima a decade after disaster

Duration: 00:58 

Thursday will mark the tenth anniversary of the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant in Japan. Even though nearly a decade has passed, mountains of radioactive waste remain at the site, as a seemingly never ending cleanup process continues.

An obituary for small modular reactors

Jim Green - Nuclear Monitor 

REPRINTED FROM THE ECOLOGIST

An obituary for small modular reactors (theecologist.org)

Creative Commons

11th March 2019

The latest cost estimate for the CAREM small modular reactor under construction in Argentina is 22 times greater than the initial cost estimate.

Small modular reactors are being heavily promoted but the economics don't stack up.

The nuclear industry is heavily promoting the idea of building small modular reactors (SMRs), with near-zero prospects for new large power reactors in many countries. These reactors would have a capacity of under 300 megawatts (MW), whereas large reactors typically have a capacity of 1,000 MW.

Construction at reactor sites would be replaced with standardised factory production of reactor components then installation at the reactor site, thereby driving down costs and improving quality control.

The emphasis in this article is on the questionable economics of SMRs, but a couple of striking features of the SMR universe should be mentioned (for details see the latest issue of Nuclear Monitor).

Fossil fuels and militarism

First, the enthusiasm for SMRs has little to do with climate-friendly environmentalism. About half of the SMRs under construction (Russia's floating power plant, Russia's RITM-200 icebreaker ships, and China's ACPR50S demonstration reactor) are designed to facilitate access to fossil fuel resources in the Arctic, the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Another example comes from Canada, where one application of SMRs under consideration is providing power and heat for the extraction of hydrocarbons from oil sands. 

SASKATCHEWAN WHERE THIS IS BEING TOUTED HAS URANIUM AND TAR SANDS (UNDEVELOPED)

A second striking feature of the SMR universe is that it is deeply interconnected with militarism:

Argentina's experience and expertise with small reactors derives from its historic weapons program, and its interest in SMRs is interconnected with its interest in small reactors for naval propulsion.

China's interest in SMRs extends beyond fossil fuel mining and includes powering the construction and operation of artificial islands in its attempt to secure claim to a vast area of the South China Sea.

Saudi Arabia's interest in SMRs is likely connected to its interest in developing nuclear weapons or a latent weapons capability.

A subsidiary of Holtec International has actively sought a military role, inviting the US National Nuclear Security Administration to consider the feasibility of using a proposed SMR to produce tritium, used to boost the explosive yield of nuclear weapons.

Proposals are under consideration in the US to build SMRs at military bases and perhaps even to use them to power forward operating bases.
In the UK, Rolls-Royce is promoting SMRs on the grounds that "a civil nuclear UK SMR programme would relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability".

Independent economic assessments

SMRs will almost certainly be more expensive than large reactors (more precisely, construction costs will be lower but the electricity produced by SMRs will be more expensive).

They will inevitably suffer diseconomies of scale: a 250 MW SMR will generate 25 percent as much power as a 1,000 MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 percent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.

It's highly unlikely that potential savings arising from standardised factory production will make up for those diseconomies of scale.

William Von Hoene, senior vice president at Exelon, has expressed scepticism about SMRs: "Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that's associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive," he said last year.

"It's possible that that would evolve over time, and we're involved in looking at that technology. Right now they're prohibitively expensive."

Every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from SMRs will be more expensive than that from large reactors.

A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, commissioned by the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated costs of A$180‒184/MWh (US$127‒130) for large pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors, compared to A$198‒225 (US$140‒159) for SMRs.

A 2015 report by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency predicts that electricity costs from SMRs will typically be 50−100 percent higher than for current large reactors, although it holds out some hope that large volume factory production of SMRs could help reduce costs.

A report by the consultancy firm Atkins for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that electricity from the first SMR in the UK would be 30 percent more expensive than power from large reactors, because of diseconomies of scale and the costs of deploying first-of-a-kind technology.

An article by four current and former researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, considered options for the development of an SMR market in the US.

They concluded that it would not be viable unless the industry received "several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies" over the next several decades.

No market

SMR enthusiasts envisage a large SMR market emerging in the coming years. A frequently cited 2014 report by the UK National Nuclear Laboratory estimates 65‒85 gigawatts (GW) of installed SMR capacity by 2035, valued at £250‒400 billion.

But in truth there is no market for SMRs.

Thomas Overton, associate editor of POWER magazine, wrote in 2014: "At the graveyard wherein resides the "nuclear renaissance" of the 2000s, a new occupant appears to be moving in: the small modular reactor (SMR)...

"Over the past year, the SMR industry has been bumping up against an uncomfortable and not-entirely-unpredictable problem: It appears that no one actually wants to buy one."

Let's briefly return to the National Nuclear Laboratory's estimate of 65‒85 GW of installed SMR capacity by 2035. It is implausible and stands in contrast to the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency's estimate of <1 GW to 21 GW of SMR capacity by 2035. But even if the 65‒85 GW figure proved to be accurate, it would pale in comparison to renewable energy sources.

As of the of end of 2017, global renewable energy capacity was 2,195 GW including 178 GW of new capacity added in 2017. On current trends, even in the wildest dreams of SMR enthusiasts, SMR capacity would be roughly 50 times less than renewable capacity by 2035.

SMRs under construction

SMR projects won't be immune from the major cost overruns that have crippled large reactor projects (such as the AP1000 projects in the US that bankrupted Westinghouse). Indeed cost overruns have already become the norm for SMR projects.

Estimated construction costs for Russia's floating nuclear power plant (with two 35-MW ice-breaker-type reactors) have increased more than four-fold and now equate to over US$10 billion / GW (US$740 million / 70 MW).

A 2016 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency report said that electricity produced by the Russian floating plant is expected to cost about US$200 per megawatt-hour (MWh), with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.

The CAREM (Central Argentina de Elementos Modulares) SMR under construction in Argentina illustrates the gap between SMR rhetoric and reality. Cost estimates have ballooned. In 2004, when the CAREM reactor was in the planning stage, Argentina's Bariloche Atomic Center estimated an overnight cost of US$1 billion / GW for an integrated 300 MW plant.

When construction began in 2014, the estimated cost of the CAREM reactor was US$17.8 billion / GW (US$446 million for a 25-MW reactor). By April 2017, the cost estimate had increased to US$21.9 billion / GW (US$700 million with the capacity uprated from 25 MW to 32 MW).

The CAREM project is years behind schedule and costs will likely increase further. In 2014, first fuel loading was expected in 2017 but completion is now anticipated in November 2021.

Little credible information is available on the cost of China's demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). If the 210 MW demonstration reactor is completed and successfully operated, China reportedly plans to upscale the design to 655 MW.

According to the World Nuclear Association, China's Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology at Tsinghua University expects the cost of a 655 MW HTGR to be 15-20 percent more than the cost of a conventional 600 MW PWR.

A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost of China's demonstration HTGR is about twice the initial cost estimates, with increases due to higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and increased costs associated with project delays. The World Nuclear Association states that the cost of the demonstration HTGR is US$6,000/kW.

NuScale Power's creative accounting

Cost estimates for planned SMRs are implausible. US company NuScale Power is targeting a cost of just US$65/MWh for its first plant. But a study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, commissioned by the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated a cost of US$159/MWh based on the US NuScale SMR design. That's 2.4 times higher than NuScale's estimate.

A 2018 Lazard report estimates costs of US$112‒189/MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale's claim that its electricity will be 2‒3 times cheaper than large nuclear is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65/MWh, that would still be well above Lazard's figures for wind power (US$29‒56) and utility-scale solar (US$36‒46).

Likewise, NuScale's construction cost estimate of US$4.2 billion / GW is implausible. The latest estimate for the AP1000 reactors under construction in Georgia is US$12.7 billion / GW.

NuScale wants us to believe that it will build SMRs at less than one-third of that cost, even though every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

No-one wants to pay for SMRS

No company, utility, consortium or national government is seriously considering building the massive supply chain that is at the very essence of the concept of SMRs ‒ mass, modular factory construction. Yet without that supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities.

In early 2019, Kevin Anderson, North American Project Director for Nuclear Energy Insider, said that there "is unprecedented growth in companies proposing design alternatives for the future of nuclear, but precious little progress in terms of market-ready solutions."

Anderson argued that it is time to convince investors that the SMR sector is ready for scale-up financing but that it will not be easy: "Even for those sympathetic, the collapse of projects such as V.C Summer does little to convince financiers that this sector is mature and competent enough to deliver investable projects on time and at cost."

A 2018 US Department of Energy report states that to make a "meaningful" impact, about US$10 billion of government subsidies would be needed to deploy 6 GW of SMR capacity by 2035. But there's no indication or likelihood that the US government will subsidise the industry to that extent.

To date, the US government has offered US$452 million to support private-sector SMR projects, of which US$111 million was wasted on the mPower project that was abandoned in 2017.

The collapse of the mPower project was one of a growing number of setbacks for the industry in the US. Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D last year.

Westinghouse sharply reduced its investment in SMRs after failing to secure US government funding. MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa after failing to secure legislation that would force rate-payers to part-pay construction costs.

The MidAmerican story has a happy ending: the company has invested over US$10 billion in renewables in Iowa and is now working towards its vision "to generate renewable energy equal to 100 percent of its customers' usage on an annual basis."

Canada and the UK

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has set the goal of siting a new demonstration SMR at its Chalk River site by 2026. But serious discussions about paying for a demonstration SMR ‒ let alone a fleet of SMRs ‒ have not yet begun.

The Canadian SMR Roadmap website simply states: "Appropriate risk sharing among governments, power utilities and industry will be necessary for SMR demonstration and deployment in Canada."

Companies seeking to pursue SMR projects in the UK are seeking several billion pounds from the government to build demonstration plants. But nothing like that amount of money has been made available.

In 2018, the UK government agreed to provide £56 million towards the development and licensing of advanced modular reactor designs and £32 million towards advanced manufacturing research.

An industry insider told the Guardian in 2017: "It's a pretty half-hearted, incredibly British, not-quite-good-enough approach. Another industry source questioned the credibility of SMR developers: "Almost none of them have got more than a back of a fag packet design drawn with a felt tip."

State-run SMR programs

State-run SMR programs ‒ such as those in Argentina, China, Russia, and South Korea ‒ might have a better chance of steady, significant funding, but to date the investments in SMRs have been minuscule compared to investments in other energy programs.

And again, wherever you look there's nothing to justify the high hopes (and hype) of SMR enthusiasts. South Korea, for example, won't build any of its domestically-designed SMART SMRs in South Korea ("this is not practical or economic" according to the World Nuclear Association).

South Korea's plan to export SMART technology to Saudi Arabia is problematic and may in any case be in trouble.

China and Argentina hope to develop a large export market for their high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and small pressurised water reactors, respectively, but so far all they can point to are partially-built demonstration reactors that have been subject to significant cost overruns and delays.

All of the above can be read as an obituary for SMRs. The likelihood that they will establish anything more than a small, niche market is vanishingly small.
.
​This Author

Dr Jim Green is the lead author of a Nuclear Monitor report on small modular reactors, and national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia

LET'S NUKE SASKATCHEWAN 

Energy transition leading to small modular reactors, Part 1

Regina– On Feb. 26, Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Society Saskatchewan held a “dinnerless dinner” online, with its focus on the development of small modular reactors in this province.

Three speakers addressed the online event, with Dean Reeve and Robin Woodward, speaking on “Transform Saskatchewan’s Stranded Assets – profit from the Climate Economy, and Howard Schearer speaking on “The Promise – Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Offer Saskatchewan. 

The event was moderated by Costa Maragos. Reeve is a retired utilities senior executive, formerly with TransGas, SaskEnergy and Atco while Woodward is the principal with RW Consulting, a Regina-based consulting firm focussed on alternative energy development, agriculture and municipal policy and growth. Shearer is chief executive with Hitachi Canada. He pointed out he was speaking on his behalf, not his company’s.

Clockwise from top left: Costa Maragos, Dean Reeve, 

Howard Shearer and Robin Woodward discussed energy transition

(This story is broken into three parts.)

Reeve said that energy transition is nothing new. Heating your home in the 1880s on the prairies was a lot different than today.

“We can all agree it was a completely different world, 140 years ago from an energy perspective,” he said. “

In those 140 years we've experienced some fundamental energy transitions that have greatly impacted our daily lives. Our great-grandparents or our grandparents saw the transitions from wood and coal to electricity and propane and natural gas to energize their homes and their businesses, and of, course petroleum products for transportation purposes. And they greatly expanded their work productivity by moving from oxen and horses, to steam engines and then diesel-powered engines. These energy transitions occurred for many reasons, through innovation and new technology, and economic drivers making new energy choices more available, and more affordable. So while for current generations, energy transition is relatively new, for our ancestors, it was something they experienced and embraced, to really improve their human condition.”

He said the energy transition occurring today is gaining so much attention because “how it improves the individual human condition is maybe not quite as evident as when propane or natural gas was available to remove the need for gathering wood or going to the coal bin for fuel, or how obvious the improvements were to productivity, when you move from the horse and oxen, to the steam engine and the diesel engine. This transition is being driven by an environmental need to reduce greenhouse gases and slow the pace of climate change.”

He noted that windchills of –50 C in February make it “hard to drum up a very serious conversation about global warming.” Thus, many people wonder who energy transition will improve their daily human conditions and economic prospects, Reeve said, noting it often it becomes a heated and polarized conversation.

“It's often expressed in terms of are you for or against fossil fuels? If you're for fossil fuels. you must deny the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change and not care about the environment. If you're for zero emissions and renewables, you must be against any kind of fossil fuel future, and our own prosperity. Like many things today these polarizing transpositions fail to recognize the realities and merits of both positions. Look at the reason example of Regina city council in the discussion of eliminating advertising on city-owned buildings by fossil fuel related companies. Talk about a polarizing conversation.”

He pointed out almost 85 per cent of primary energy consumption in the world today comes from fossil fuels, which means almost all the energy growth since 1900 has been made up by fossil fuels. “I don’t see this as an either-or conversation. The world will need all these energy forms to meet its energy needs,” he said. But that doesn’t mean the energy mix won’t change.

“If natural gas is a ‘bridge fuel,’ it’s going to be a very, very long bridge.” Reeve said. He pointed out the ultimate goal is to reduce emissions, not eliminate fuel choices.

“The key energy transition is technology improvement and innovation. It's not about a single silver bullet solution. We must use the right energy for the right purpose right place, right time.”

He said, “The solution to energy transition is a portfolio approach, no single fuel or technology will manage to replace the 85 per cent of world energy consumption satisfied by fossil fuels.”

This includes improving energy efficiency. He pointed out that since the late 1980s, a typical home went from using 150 gigajoules for space and water heating to 100 gigajoules now.

Additionally, distributed energy production and sharing are real options today. Reeve pointed out Lumsden uses solar panels to power its wastewater treatment plant.

“The technology focus and advancements in carbon capture will also be important to reduce emissions from fossil fuels.”

Hydrogen may be a solution for the energy needs of heavy-duty trucking, he said. Japan “is clearly moving towards an economy fueled by hydrogen,” he said.

In Saskatchewan, there is the potential for small modular nuclear reactors forming part of the electrical generation mix.

Reeve noted the possibility of growing trees as a way to deal with carbon pricing. “Industry energy producers, agriculture, communities, individuals and governments at all levels must avoid the trap of polarizing positions and must seek opportunities in this new energy dynamic,” Reeve said.

“Just like many of our ancestors who came to this prairie land in the 1800s, we are all interested in how we can use this energy transition to improve the human condition of our families and our future generations.”

In Part 2: Robin Woodward discusses growing trees, distributed energy, and the impact of $170 carbon taxes

Brian Zinchuk, Local Journalism Initiative reporter, Estevan Mercury

SASKATCHEWAN HAS URANIUM CITY, NOT A REAL CITY BUT A MINING TOWN, 

ONE OF THE LARGEST SUPPLIES OF URANIUM IN THE WORLD

Tesla is building a secret 100MW energy storage project in Texas


Tesla is building a secret energy storage project in Texas, according to Bloomberg. In Angleton, a town of nearly 20,000 located 40 miles south of Houston, Tesla subsidiary Gambit Energy Storage is installing the company’s modular Megapacks. When complete, the 100MW installation will be able to power approximately 20,000 homes. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told Bloomberg the site could begin operating as soon as the start of June.

It’s unclear why Tesla is being so secretive about the project. It’s not the first of its kind undertaking for the company. In 2017, it built a 100MWh battery farm in South Australia. At the moment, it’s also supplying California’s Pacific Gas and Electric with Megapacks for its in-progress Bay Area Moss Landing project.

But there’s no mistaking the timing of the project. Last month, unprecedented winter weather left much of Texas without electricity. When the power grid buckled, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to mock ERCOT. “Not earning that R,” he said of the organization, which manages approximately 90 percent of the state’s power grid and has come under intense scrutiny following last month's near failure. Notably, Musk was asked by one of his followers if a battery storage project similar to one Tesla built in Australia was possible in Texas. “Yes,” he said.

A German cave may be where dogs were first domesticated, study claims

Joe Pinkstone For Mailonline 

© Provided by Daily Mail 

Dogs are known to have evolved from wolves, yet until now, determining exactly when and where this occurred has proved difficult for scientists.

Several examples of ancient canines have previously been found, dating back thousands of years. Some resemble wolves, some look like dogs, and some sit awkwardly between the two groups.

Now, a new study has found the transition from wolves to dogs may have first occurred in a cave in southwest Germany between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago.

Analysis of eight canine fossils in the Gnirshöhle cave revealed a huge genetic diversity wide enough to include everything from a wild wolf to a pet pooch.

Experts from Germany believe the Magdalenian people, who spanned Europe between 12,000 and 17,000 years ago, tamed wolves, turning them into dogs.

The theory states the Magdalenians did this with a range of wolves from many lineages, and this diversity gave rise to the entire spectrum of breeds we see today.

© Provided by Daily Mail Eight ancient dog fossils found in the Gnirshöhle cave were analysed and had a genetic diversity wide enough to include almost all pet dogs and also wolves. it is thought this cave may have been where wolves were first tamed

© Provided by Daily Mail Dogs are known to have evolved from wolves (pictured) and are the first animals to have been successfully domesticated by people. However, determining exactly when and where this transition occurred has proved difficult for scientists

A team of scientists, led by the University of Tübingen, set about analysing genetic material preserved in the fossilised remains of the Gnirshöhle cave fossils.

This was then compared to 11 ancient dogs from another nearby site, three from Frankfurt, two from France and five from northern Canada. These other canine remains ranged in age from the 7th century AD back to 33,000 years ago.

One was an outlier, but mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down from mother to child — was successfully obtained and reconstructed for 23 of the remaining 28 samples, including five from Gnirshöhle.


It revealed the dogs which lived in the cave contained a huge amount of genetic diversity. Analysis found the five dogs from Gnirshöhle were almost as diverse as all breeds of modern-day dogs found around the modern world.





Ancient canine fossils were analysed to see how much Carbon 1 and Nitrogen 13 they contained, how old they were and also their mitochondrial genome

4 SLIDES © Provided by Daily Mail

Ancient canine fossils were analysed to see how much Carbon 1 and Nitrogen 13 they contained, how old they were and also their mitochondrial genome

Dogs split into at least five breeds by the end of the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago


Dogs are humankind's longest-serving animal companion and millennia of coexistence has earned canines the well-deserved title of 'man's best friend'.

A December 2020 study found that dogs, which evolved from wolves, were splitting into distinct breeds as far back as 11,000 years ago.

A total of 27 ancient dog genomes were sequenced and they revealed that when the last Ice Age ended, there were at least five different types of dog.

These ancient breeds each had their own unique genetic ancestry, and traces of them are seen today in modern pets.

Pontus Skoglund, study co-author and group leader of the the Ancient Genomics laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, says: 'Some of the variation you see between dogs walking down the street today originated in the Ice Age.

'By the end of this period, dogs were already widespread across the northern hemisphere.'

Modern dog types emerged from the evolution and breeding of these five ancient groups.

Ten of the bones were subjected to further testing, including six from the Gnirshöhle site.

Measurements of carbon 13 and nitrogen 15 isotopes were used to put each animal into one of three niches — A, B or C — based on diet.

Niche A was largely similar to more ancient wolves and fed on a diet predominantly of megafauna, large animals like mammoths.

Specimens in niche B had a lower N15 measurement, which is indicative of low protein intake, and a wide-ranging diet.

'Members of niche B fed on small mammals, such as hares, and in addition, on ungulates, such as reindeer and horse, and megaherbivores,' the researchers write in their study, published in Scientific Reports.

Those in niche C had a higher C13 content than the other two categories which came from a diet of mostly small mammals.

All the specimens from the Gnirshöhle cave were deemed to be of niche B.

'The closeness of these animals to humans and the indications of a rather restricted diet suggest that between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago, wolves had already been domesticated and were kept as dogs,' says Dr Chris Baumann, lead author of the study from the University of Tubingen.

'Direct dating of the Gnirshöhle samples implied that canids could have lived in close vicinity of Magdalenian people, occupying the Hegau Jura [region of southern Germany], and subsequently adapted to a restricted diet, possibly under human influence,' the researchers write.

'Thus, we consider the Gnirshöhle canids to likely represent an early phase in wolf domestication—facilitated by humans actively providing a food resource for those early domesticates (niche B).'

WAR IS ECOCIDE
Attack on Saudi oil site fuels upward march for crude prices

BANGKOK — Oil prices remained elevated Monday as Saudi Arabian oil facilities were targeted by drone strikes just days after the largest crude exporting nations in the world said they would not increase output.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Brent crude, the international standard, surpassed $70 per barrel for the first time in over a year. Even after it lost ground in afternoon trading, at $68.19 a barrel prices are still hoverning at levels not seen since the early days of last year.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil also gave up early gains but at $65 per barrel, it's up 12% over just the past month.

Crude prices have surged more than 30% this year as massive vaccinations campaigns gain momentum, potentially signalling the beginning of the end of a global pandemic.

The attacks in Saudi Arabia follow a devastating winter freeze in Texas and other parts of the southern United States last month knocked out production of roughly 4 million barrels per day of U.S. oil, pushing prices above $60 a barrel for the first time in more than a year.

The threats to the global oil supply are taking place with economists expecting energy demand to surge as nations recover from the pandemic.

In that environment, many energy analysts had expected the OPEC cartel and its allies to lift more restrictions and let the oil flow more freely. But OPEC, rattled by plunging prices over the past year, chose not to open the spigots, sending prices higher still.

The strikes on Saudi sites have increased in frequency and precision in recent weeks, raising concerns about Saudi Arabia’s air defences and the expanding capabilities of the Iran-backed rebels across the border in Yemen.

A Saudi-led coalition launched an air campaign on war-torn Yemen's capital and on other provinces Sunday in retaliation for missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia that were claimed by the Iranian-backed rebels.

The official Saudi Press Agency quoted an anonymous official in the Ministry of Energy as saying that a drone flew in from the sea and struck an oil storage site in Ras Tunura, the port run by Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, Aramco.

It claimed the strike did not cause any damage. Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s oil giant that now has a sliver of its worth traded publicly on the stock market, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Ministry of Energy denounced the strike as “an act of sabotage” targeting not only Saudi Arabia “but also the security and stability of energy supplies to the world.”

When key oil facilities in Saudi Arabia were attacked in 2019, global energy prices soared 14% the next day. But that prior attack disrupted more than half of its daily exports, halting 5% of world crude oil output.

Costlier oil pushes energy costs higher. That would add to inflation at a time when investors have been focusing on the potential for rising prices to cause central banks to raise interest rates that have been taken to record low levels to support economies battered by the pandemic.

“The last thing anyone wants in a recovering global economy is higher oil prices, and we are likely nearing a point when higher oil prices become a negative rather than a positive influence over risk assets," Stephen Innes of Axi said in a report Monday.

Rising prices are a boon, however, for the oil industry, which has lost billions of dollars during the pandemic.

Oil prices crashed as millions of people stayed home and avoided travelling, hoping to avoid infection. Oil futures briefly traded below $0 a barrel last spring before settling around $40 a barrel for months, well below what most producers needed to survive. Many U.S. producers cut production dramatically, others filed for bankruptcy protection. Workers lost jobs by the thousands.

Eventually, prices began to recover as demand trickled back. In January, after Saudi Arabia announced it would cut production by 1 million barrels per day on top of cuts the kingdom already made through its agreement with the OPEC cartel, prices for U.S. benchmark crude pushed above $50 a barrel. The upswing continued through February, when Saudi Arabia’s cuts went into effect.

Natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie reports it is forecasting that oil prices will trade in the $70-$75 range in April and that global demand will increase in 2021 by 6.3 million barrels a day from a year earlier.

___

Bussewitz contributed from New York.

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Exclusive: Chinese EV trio eye Hong Kong listings this year to raise combined $5 billion - sources

POST FORDIST CAPITALISM 

WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS 

By Julie Zhu, Scott Murdoch and Yilei Sun 

© Reuters/MIKE SEGAR FILE PHOTO: 

An Xpeng P7 performance electric vehicle is seen outside the New York Stock Exchange

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S.-listed Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers Li Auto Inc, Nio Inc and Xpeng Inc plan to list in Hong Kong as soon as this year, to tap an investor base closer to home, said three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The trio each aim to sell at least 5% of their enlarged share capital in the Asian finiancial hub, the people said. Based on their New York market capitalisation on Monday, proceeds could total around $5 billion.

The EV makers have been working with advisors on the sales which could begin as early as mid-year, one of the people said. The three are looking to take advantage of growing demand from prospective investors in Asia, said another of the people, who declined to be identified due to confidentiality constraints.

Li Auto, Nio and Xpeng declined to comment.

The plans come as the trio increase capital raising efforts to fund technology development and expand sales networks, to better compete in the world's biggest EV market where U.S. peer Tesla Inc is boosting sales of its China-made vehicles.

Auto executives have marked 2021 as a crucial year for EV makers to seize market share as the industry expects Chinese sales of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) to jump almost 40% from last year to 1.8 million units.

Selling shares in Hong Kong would also add the trio to a slew of New York-listed Chinese firms seeking a presence on more local exchanges against a backdrop of political tension between the United States and China.

TRACK RECORD

Under Hong Kong rules, an issuer seeking a secondary listing must have had at least two financial years of good regulatory compliance on another qualifying exchange.

Li Auto and Xpeng went public in the United States in the middle of last year so will likely apply in Hong Kong for a dual primary listing, said two of the people as well as a separate person with direct knowledge of the matter.

As per Hong Kong's dual primary listing rules, firms are subject to full bourse requirements in Hong Kong and a second exchange, but are not bound by the two-year rule.

Xpeng is also considering a third listing on Shanghai's STAR Market for new-economy firms, said two other people.

"In the long run, it's helpful for consumer-focused companies like us to connect with domestic capital markets and domestic investors," Xpeng President Brian Gu told Reuters last week when asked about local listing plans.

"This is the direction we should pay attention to," he said, declining to comment on any Hong Kong listing plan.

GOING GREEN

China's government has heavily promoted NEVs - such as battery-powered, plug-in petrol-electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell cars - to help reduce chronic air pollution, spurring interest from technology companies and investors alike.

Last month, Reuters reported telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies Co Ltd plans to market EVs as early as this year.

China forecasts NEVs will make up 20% of the country's annual auto sales by 2025 from around 5% in 2020.

Domestic vehicle deliveries last year totalled 32,624 by Li Auto, 43,728 by Nio and 27,041 by Xpeng. That compared with 147,445 vehicles by Tesla, industry data showed.

(Reporting by Julie Zhu and Scott Murdoch in Hong Kong, Yilei Sun in Beijing; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Christopher Cushing)

China Xinjiang: First independent report into Uyghur genocide allegations claims evidence of Beijing's 'intent to destroy' Muslim minorities

By Ben Westcott and Rebecca Wright, CNN 

The Chinese government's alleged actions in Xinjiang have violated every single provision in the United Nations' Genocide Convention, according to an independent report by more than 50 global experts in human rights, war crimes and international law.

© Bloomberg/Getty Images A Chinese flag flies outside the east gate

 of the Old City in Kashgar, Xinjiang, on November 8, 2018.

The report, released Tuesday by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy think tank in Washington DC, claimed the Chinese government "bears state responsibility for an ongoing genocide against the Uyghur in breach of the (UN) Genocide Convention."

It is the first time a non-governmental organization has undertaken an independent legal analysis of the accusations of genocide in Xinjiang, including what responsibility Beijing may bear for the alleged crimes. An advance copy of the report was seen exclusively by CNN.

Up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have been placed in a sprawling network of detention centers across the region, according to the US State Department, where former detainees allege they were subjected to indoctrination, sexually abused and even forcibly sterilized. China denies allegations of human rights abuses, saying the centers are necessary to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

Speaking at a press conference on March 7, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said allegations of a genocide in Xinjiang "couldn't be more preposterous."

On January 19, the outgoing Trump administration declared the Chinese government was committing genocide in Xinjiang. A month later, the Dutch and Canadian parliaments passed similar motions despite opposition from their leaders.

Azeem Ibrahim, director of special initiatives at Newlines and co-author of the new report, said there was "overwhelming" evidence to support its allegation of genocide.

"This is a major global power, the leadership of which are the architects of a genocide," he said.

This photo taken on June 4, 2019 shows a facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are  detained, north of Akto in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. 

Genocide Convention

The four-page UN Genocide Convention was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and has a clear definition of what constitutes "genocide." China is a signatory to the convention, along with 151 other countries.

Article II of the convention states genocide is an attempt to commit acts "with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

There are five ways in which genocide can take place, according to the convention: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Since the convention was introduced in 1948, most convictions for genocide have occurred in the International Criminal Tribunals held by the UN, such as those for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, or in national courts. In 2006, former dictator Saddam Hussein was found guilty of genocide in a court in Iraq.

However any establishment of an International Criminal Tribunal would require the approval of the UN Security Council, of which China is a permanent member with veto power, making any hearing on the allegations of genocide in Xinjiang unlikely.

While violating just one act in the Genocide Convention would constitute a finding of genocide, the Newlines report claims the Chinese government has fulfilled all criteria with its actions in Xinjiang.

"China's policies and practices targeting Uyghurs in the region must be viewed in their totality, which amounts to an intent to destroy the Uyghurs as a group, in whole or in part," the report claimed.

A separate report published on February 8 by Essex Court Chambers in London, which was commissioned by the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project, reached a similar conclusion that there is a "credible case" against the Chinese government for genocide.

No specific penalties or punishments are laid out in the convention for states or governments determined to have committed genocide. But the Newlines report said that under the convention, the other 151 signatories have a responsibility to act.

"China's obligations ... to prevent, punish and not commit genocide are erga omnes, or owed to the international community as a whole," the report added.


'Clear and convincing'

Yonah Diamond, legal counsel at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, who worked on the report, said a common public misunderstanding about the definition of genocide was it required evidence of mass killing or a physical extermination of a people.

"The real question is, is there enough evidence to show that there is an intent to destroy the group as such -- and this is what this report lays bare," he said.

All five definitions of genocide laid out in the convention are examined in the report to determine whether the allegations against the Chinese government fulfill each specific criterion.

"Given the serious nature of the breaches in question ... this report applies a clear and convincing standard of proof," the report said.

The Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy was founded in 2019 as a nonpartisan think tank by the Fairfax University of America, with a goal to "to enhance US foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of the different regions of the world and their value systems." It was previously known as the Center for Global Policy.

Thousands of eyewitness testimonies from Uyghur exiles and official Chinese government documents were among the evidence considered by the authors, Diamond said.

According to the report, between 1 million and 2 million people have allegedly been detained in as many as 1,400 extrajudicial internment facilities across Xinjiang by the Chinese government since 2014, when it launched a campaign ostensibly targeting Islamic extremism.

Beijing has claimed the crackdown was necessary after a series of deadly attacks across Xinjiang and other parts of China, which China has categorized as terrorism.

The report details allegations of sexual assaults, psychological torture, attempted cultural brainwashing, and an unknown number of deaths within the camps.

"Uyghur detainees within the internment camps are ... deprived of their basic human needs, severely humiliated and subjected to inhumane treatment or punishment, including solitary confinement without food for prolonged periods," the report claimed.

"Suicides have become so pervasive that detainees must wear 'suicide safe' uniforms and are denied access to materials susceptible to causing self-harm."

The report also attributed a dramatic drop in the Uyghur birth rate across the region -- down about 33% between 2017 and 2018 -- to the alleged implementation of an official Chinese government program of sterilizations, abortions and birth control, which in some cases was forced upon the women without their consent.

The Chinese government has confirmed the drop in the birth rate to CNN but claimed that between 2010 and 2018 the Uyghur population of Xinjiang increased overall.

During the crackdown, textbooks for Uyghur culture, history and literature were allegedly removed from classes for Xinjiang schoolchildren, the report said. In the camps, detainees were forcibly taught Mandarin and described being tortured if they refused, or were unable, to speak it.

Using public documents and speeches given by Communist Party officials, the report claimed responsibility for the alleged genocide lay with the Chinese government.

Researchers cited official speeches and documents in which Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are referred to as "weeds" and "tumors." One government directive allegedly called on local authorities to "break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins."

"In sum, the persons and entities perpetrating the enumerated acts of genocide are State organs and agents under Chinese law," the report said. "The commission of these enumerated acts of genocide ... against the Uyghurs are therefore necessarily attributable to the State of China."

Rian Thum, a report contributor and Uyghur historian at the University of Manchester, said in 20 years, people would look back on the crackdown in Xinjiang as "one of the great acts of cultural destruction of the last century."

"I think a lot of Uyghurs will take this report as a long overdue recognition of the suffering that they and their family and friends and community have gone through," Thum said.


'The lie of the century'

The Chinese government has repeatedly defended its actions in Xinjiang, saying citizens now enjoy a high standard of life.

"The genocide allegation is the lie of the century, concocted by extremely anti-China forces. It is a preposterous farce aiming to smear and vilify China," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news conference on February 4.

The detention camps, which Beijing refers to as "vocational training centers," are described by officials and state media as being part of both a poverty alleviation campaign and a mass deradicalization program to combat terrorism.

"(But) you can simultaneously have an anti-terrorism campaign that is genocidal," said report contributor John Packer, associate professor at the University of Ottawa and former director of the Office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in The Hague.

World Uyghur Congress' UK director Rahima Mahmut, who was not involved in the report, said a lot of countries "say (they) cannot do anything, but they can."

"These countries, the countries that signed the Genocide Convention, they have an obligation to prevent and punish ... I feel every country can take action," she said.

While the report team avoided making recommendations to maintain impartiality, co-author Ibrahim said the implications of the its findings were "very serious."

"This (is) not an advocacy document, we're not advocating any course of action whatsoever. There were no campaigners involved in this report, it was purely done by legal experts, area experts and China ethnic experts," he said.

But Packer said such a "serious breach of the international order" in the world's second-largest economy raised questions about the global governance.

"If this is not sufficient to instigate some kind of action or even to take positions, then what actually is required?" he said.

AS FAR BACK AS 2006 THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT HAS TRIED TO FREE A DUAL CITIZEN WHO WAS A UYGHUR/CANADIAN, CHINA CALLED HIM A TERRORIST AS THEY LABELED ALL UYGHURS AT THE TIME.

TERRORISM IS THE FAVORITE EXCUSE OF EVERY AUTHORITARIAN STATE