Why cancer is often a death sentence in Africa

The number of cancer cases is on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa. But medical professionals say facilities are lacking, and there is not enough awareness or political will to change the situation.

Kenyans have been pressing their government to declare cancer a national emergency

Lilian Gasper is an oncologist at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) in Moshi, located just south of the eponymous mount in Tanzania. The consultant says she sees more patients these days than in previous years.

"However, few patients really know about cancer," she told DW. This is why she also visits surrounding villages in the hope of educating more people about the symptoms of various cancers, helping them to detect disease early.

"We show women techniques to scan their breasts and offer consultations in our mobile clinics," she says. "We offer imaging solutions for [detecting] breast cancer and also offer vaccinations for young girls against cervical cancer."

But an overall lack of awareness among the population isn't the only challenge cancer specialists face in many parts of the continent. Above all, there's a shortage of medical equipment.

German physician Oliver Henke — who helped set up the new cancer ward at KCMC Hospital in Moshi in 2016 — says finding a cancer specialist anywhere in Africa can be difficult.

"If we exclude the North African countries and South Africa, the rest of the [African] countries suffer from an overall sense of poor coverage in terms of specialists and staff," he told DW.

Few cancer specialists for an entire country

In Tanzania — a country with a population of over 60 million — fewer than 20 doctors specialize in cancer care, says Henke. In addition, only three hospitals offer cancer therapies, and only two of those three have the equipment for radiation therapy. In Moshi, for example, there are plans to open a radiation center in the future — but there still isn't enough money to do so.

The clinics that do offer treatments are often overbooked, Henke adds. As a result, many cancer patients have to travel for a couple of days to receive treatment.

On top of everything else, cancer treatment in Tanzania is far from being a free service.

"Only 8% of Tanzanians have adequate health insurance that covers cancer," Henke says. "The others have to pay out of their own pockets, collect donations or try to participate in free aid programs."

This is part of why most cancer patients seek out traditional healers first — not realizing that they cannot cure cancer.

Tanzanian oncologist Lilian Gasper says many cancer patients know little about the disease

More routine cancer examinations needed 

By the time they overcome all of these obstacles and see a specialist, it's already too late for many people. Gaspar explains that "many patients only come when they are already showing symptoms due to the lack of routine examinations," which can be fatal.

Henke also confirms that about 80% of patients only come to seek help when the cancer is no longer curable.

But there is also another issue at play that may contribute to higher death rates across Africa: Genetics. Henke says evidence suggests that "prostate cancers appear earlier in African men and are generally much more aggressive."

More aggressive forms of breast cancer are also more common in African women than German women. According to Henke, these differences are "very likely genetic."

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) projects that cancer cases worldwide will nearly double between 2018 and 2040. Factors behind this forecast, include the growth in the global population and the steady increase in life expectancy around the globe.

A team of scientists — most of whom work at the Pasteur Institute in Tunisia — conducted a study on cancer trends on the African continent. Their research, published in 2021, revealed that growing affluence across Africa is also a risk factor for cancer.

Lifestyles are shifting alongside changing disposable income levels, with "urbanization, various forms of pollution, more tobacco and alcohol consumption, and diets high in meat, sugar and processed foods" all contributing to an increased risk.

Many cancer patients in Africa come for treatment when it's too late

The biggest killer: Cervical cancer

Oncologist Henke says that an estimated 30% of all cancer cases in sub-Saharan Africa are caused or exacerbated by infections. Above all, this includes cervical cancer, which is usually the result of a long-term Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection.

Gasper says that the risk factors for transmitting the virus include having sex without barrier protection (usually a condom) or having multiple sexual partners. Unfortunately, many people don't realize the magnitude of these risks, partly because the narrative on sexually transmitted diseases in Africa has focused primarily on HIV/AIDS for decades.

According to The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project, cervical cancer caused the highest number of deaths in more than half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018. And the study from Tunisia confirms that there is a high mortality rate for cervical cancer in Africa: In 2018, more than 75% of all affected women in East, Central, and West Africa did not survive.

The mortality rate declined in southern Africa in recent years, while it has increased in all other African regions over the past four years. Although vaccinations against this type of cancer are available, Gasper says that vaccine skepticism is high based on her experience in Tanzania.

Oncologists blame changing lifestyles and diets for Africa's rising cancer cases

South Africa's battle against lung cancer

The study from Tunisia also highlights that lung cancer is on the rise in northern and southern Africa. In South Africa, this type of cancer caused the most deaths in 2018, according to TCGA.

Lorraine Govender, a health promotion manager at CANSA, South Africa's oldest non-governmental organization working to help eradicate cancer, is concerned about the lack of official screening programs against lung cancer in her country.

Although South Africa is considered a middle- and upper-income nation, Govender says there are still massive inequalities in cancer treatment. Currently, only private health insurance is available in South Africa, which offers varying degrees of care and services.

This means that the quality of care is low, especially in rural areas, as there is a lack of personnel. "Most oncologists work in private clinics," Govender told DW.

Politics over people

Meanwhile, the potential introduction of national health insurance in the country remains a highly debated issue in a country where poor service delivery has disillusioned much of the population, with few trusting the government to run any public program.

But any progress towards making healthcare accessible to everyone has effectively been halted, as other political issues and scandals take center stage. This puts lower-income demographics at a major disadvantage when they fall ill.

Govender believes that saving people's lives should not depend on politics: "People are dying while we wait for new laws and a strengthening of the health sector."

New book explores being queer in German Catholic Church

A new collection of essays details the discrimination and exclusion experienced by queer people in the Catholic Church in Germany, adding to mounting pressure on the embattled institution to carry out reforms.



Anyone who listens to folk and pop music in Germany will know Patrick Lindner. The 61-year-old has been in the music business for decades. He's a well-known face on television and performs in German-speaking countries. Patrick Lindner is gay — and Catholic.

"In the fall of 2020, my husband and I got married," Lindner writes in a book published earlier this week.

"It was important to us to also receive God's blessing in church after the civil wedding. Contrary to his expectations, it was made possible without any problems.
A wish for the church

The artist talks about growing up in a Catholic environment, without having been "raised too strictly Catholic." He describes his coming out in 1999 as a low point in his career, and the impact of fans' outpouring support. He also writes about his mother's wish: "I want you to be happy!" The same attitude, Lindner says, is what he would want from "Mother Church."


Singer Patrick Linder (left), with his husband Peter Schäfer

Lindner's contribution is one of 68 texts compiled and published by the priest Wolfgang Rothe in the German book "Wanted. Loved. Blessed. Being queer in the Catholic Church." Not all of the authors belong to this group. Some essays are by relatives or friends. And, every fourth contribution is published anonymously, under the initials "N.N."

Huge pressure on queer people

"Queer" is an umbrella term used to describe people whose sexual orientation or gender identity does not conform to heterosexual or cisgender ideas. Until now, the Catholic Church has rejected as dangerous any sexual orientation that diverts from heterosexuality.

Queer people who work for the Catholic Church — whether in parishes, kindergartens or retirement homes — can be fired at any time.

Wolfgang Rothe, who published the book, told DW that he wants the manuscript to depict the reality of queer people in the Catholic Church "as comprehensively as possible" and thus "bring about a change of perspective in our church." Rothe said he himself "burst into tears" when he first read many of the contributions.

He said he hoped readers will feel the same way and understand just how much queer people in the church suffer from discrimination and exclusion. "This suffering must come to an end," he said.

Wolfgang Rothe, a priest who published the book, blesses a same-sex couple

Rothe is among Catholic clerics in Germany who blessed same-sex couples at church in May 2021, even though the Vatican had previously banned such celebrations.
Hurt, fear and frustrations

"The divide is widening, the need for reform is obvious," wrote architect Ulrike Fasching in the book. She lives in a so-called "rainbow family" — two women with one son.

Stefan Thurner, a geriatric nurse, when referring to his experiences in everyday community life, wrote: "To act as if there are no queer people is simply out of touch with reality."

Three of the anonymous contributions come from the clergy. "I am a priest. And I'm gay," is how one begins, expressing hurt that homosexuals, even if celibate, are not allowed to become priests at all under Vatican rules.

Church employees, who have come out as gay, can be fired

Film director and event manager Katrin Richthofer describes her tense relationship with the Catholic Church and comments on her lesbian daughter: "Don't let a church ruin your faith! God created you just the way you are and loves you unconditionally!"

The collection is a catalog of hurts, fears and frustrations, as well as the hopes pinned on faith, and painful experiences surrounding the idea of home and identity.

Rothe explains why so many contributions are anonymous. "In this anonymity, the fear is expressed very clearly." Among those who chose to publish anonymously, he says, are even some people "who are out of the closet in their everyday lives, but who were afraid to speak out in public."

Need to accelerate reform

The book was published eight days after 125 queer church employees came out, causing a big stir in Germany. The timing was coincidental but it illustrates the growing calls for reform. As recently as last Sunday, the president of the German Bishops' Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, had welcomed the coming out of numerous queer employees of his church. "We have deeply hurt people and continue to do so today," he said on German public television network ARD.

But even Bätzing cannot guarantee that no church employee will be fired because of his or her sexual orientation. He refers to the ongoing reform of church labor law in Germany. That, however, has been going on for years — a fact Bätzing did not explicitly mention. The slow process has led to calls for lawmakers to raise pressure on the church.

Many are pushing for the recognition of queer people in the church

The call for decisive action by bishops will become stronger again when the third plenary assembly of the "Synodal Way" of the Catholic Church in Germany meets in Frankfurt am Main at the end of the week.

The assembly, launched at the end of 2019, is intended to discuss — and advance — reforms.

Earlier in January, the publication of a new, damning report investigating historical sexual abuse at the Munich Archdiocese over several decades sparked renewed outrage. That has prompted many of the faithful to renew calls for swifter action, including recognizing queer people in the church.

Bishops go against the tide

One of those already taking action has his say in the book with the essay titled: "Encounters create change." Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers, who is 69, describes his uncertainty before meeting with a group of queer Christians in Dresden.

"What they had to tell me touched me deeply," Timmerevers writes. His diocese has now set up a counseling service for queer people. The Dresden bishop calls the Vatican's refusal to bless same-sex partnerships "deeply devastating," saying the church "cannot continue like this in the long run."

Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers changed his stance on same-sex couples after meeting with Dresden's queer community

Timmerevers is not alone. On March 13, Cardinal Reinhard Marx will celebrate a queer service in Munich's Paulskirche. It also marks an anniversary. Since March 2002, queer people and their friends in the city have been celebrating "Roman Catholic services" once a month in Munich.

Marx's presence will mark the first time that an archbishop will attend the anniversary — complete with champagne and a buffet.

This article was originally written in German.

Game-Changing Carbon Capture Technology To Remove 99% of CO2 From Air

By UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE FEBRUARY 4, 2022

University of Delaware researchers have broken new ground that could bring more environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to commercialization. Credit: Graphic illustration by Jeffrey C. Chase

University of Delaware researchers’ carbon capture advance could bring environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to market.

University of Delaware engineers have demonstrated a way to effectively capture 99% of carbon dioxide from air using a novel electrochemical system powered by hydrogen.

It is a significant advance for carbon dioxide capture and could bring more environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to market.

The research team, led by UD Professor Yushan Yan, reported their method in Nature Energy on Thursday, February 3.

Game-changing tech for fuel cell efficiency

Fuel cells work by converting fuel chemical energy directly into electricity. They can be used in transportation for things like hybrid or zero-emission vehicles.

Yan, Henry Belin du Pont Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been working for some time to improve hydroxide exchange membrane (HEM) fuel cells, an economical and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional acid-based fuel cells used today.

But HEM fuel cells have a shortcoming that has kept them off the road — they are extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air. Essentially, the carbon dioxide makes it hard for a HEM fuel cell to breathe.

This defect quickly reduces the fuel cell’s performance and efficiency by up to 20%, rendering the fuel cell no better than a gasoline engine. Yan’s research group has been searching for a workaround for this carbon dioxide conundrum for over 15 years.

The UD research team’s spiral wound module takes in hydrogen and air through two separate inlets (shown on the left) and emits carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide-free air (shown on the right) after passing through two large-area, catalyst-coated shorted membranes. The inset image on the right shows, in part, how the molecules move within the short-circuited membrane. Credit: University of Delaware

A few years back, the researchers realized this disadvantage might actually be a solution — for carbon dioxide removal.

“Once we dug into the mechanism, we realized the fuel cells were capturing just about every bit of carbon dioxide that came into them, and they were really good at separating it to the other side,” said Brian Setzler, assistant professor for research in chemical and biomolecular engineering and paper co-author.

While this isn’t good for the fuel cell, the team knew if they could leverage this built-in “self-purging” process in a separate device upstream from the fuel cell stack, they could turn it into a carbon dioxide separator.

“It turns out our approach is very effective. We can capture 99% of the carbon dioxide out of the air in one pass if we have the right design and right configuration,” said Yan.

So, how did they do it?

They found a way to embed the power source for the electrochemical technology inside the separation membrane. The approach involved internally short-circuiting the device.

“It’s risky, but we managed to control this short-circuited fuel cell by hydrogen. And by using this internal electrically shorted membrane, we were able to get rid of the bulky components, such as bipolar plates, current collectors or any electrical wires typically found in a fuel cell stack,” said Lin Shi, a doctoral candidate in the Yan group and the paper’s lead author.

Now, the research team had an electrochemical device that looked like a normal filtration membrane made for separating out gases, but with the capability to continuously pick up minute amounts of carbon dioxide from the air like a more complicated electrochemical system.

This picture shows the electrochemical system developed by the Yan group. Inside the highlighted cylindrical metal housing shown is the research team’s novel spiral wound module. As hydrogen is fed to the device, it powers the carbon dioxide removal process. Computer software on the laptop plots the carbon dioxide concentration in the air after passing through the module. Credit: University of Delaware

In effect, embedding the device’s wires inside the membrane created a short-cut that made it easier for the carbon dioxide particles to travel from one side to the other. It also enabled the team to construct a compact, spiral module with a large surface area in a small volume. In other words, they now have a smaller package capable of filtering greater quantities of air at a time, making it both effective and cost-effective for fuel cell applications. Meanwhile, fewer components mean less cost and, more importantly, provided a way to easily scale up for the market.

The research team’s results showed that an electrochemical cell measuring 2 inches by 2 inches could continuously remove about 99% of the carbon dioxide found in air flowing at a rate of approximately two liters per minute. An early prototype spiral device about the size of a 12-ounce soda can is capable of filtering 10 liters of air per minute and scrubbing out 98% of the carbon dioxide, the researchers said.

Scaled for an automotive application, the device would be roughly the size of a gallon of milk, Setzer said, but the device could be used to remove carbon dioxide elsewhere, too. For example, the UD-patented technology could enable lighter, more efficient carbon dioxide removal devices in spacecraft or submarines, where ongoing filtration is critical.

“We have some ideas for a long-term roadmap that can really help us get there,” said Setzler.

According to Shi, since the electrochemical system is powered by hydrogen, as the hydrogen economy develops, this electrochemical device could also be used in airplanes and buildings where air recirculation is desired as an energy-saving measure. Later this month, following his dissertation defense, Shi will join Versogen, a UD spinoff company founded by Yan, to continue advancing research toward sustainable green hydrogen.

Reference: “A shorted membrane electrochemical cell powered by hydrogen to remove CO₂ from the air feed of hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells” by Lin Shi, Yun Zhao, Stephanie Matz, Shimshon Gottesfeld, Brian P. Setzler and Yushan Yan, 3 February 2022, Nature Energy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00969-5

Co-authors on the paper from the Yan lab include Yun Zhao, co-first author and research associate, who performed experimental work essential for testing the device; Stephanie Matz, a doctoral student who contributed to the designing and fabrication of the spiral module, and Shimshon Gottesfeld, an adjunct professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UD. Gottesfeld was principal investigator on the 2019 project, funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), that led to the findings.

Enbridge teams up with Alberta First Nations on carbon capture project

Capital Power’s Genesee Generating Station, located west of Edmonton. (Supplied)

Kerry McAthey
CTV News Edmonton
Feb. 4, 2022 

Enbridge has partnered with four Treaty Six Nations and the Lac Ste. Anne Métis Community to expand a proposed carbon capture and transportation project west of Edmonton.

In a Thursday announcement, Enbridge said the Open Access Wabamun Carbon Hub is being developed to both transport and store carbon, in support of recently announced carbon capture projects by Capital Power, Lehigh Cement, and others.

The Alexander First Nation, Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, Enoch Cree Nation, and Paul First Nation recently formed the First Nation Capital Investment Partnership (FNCIP) to pursue ownership in major infrastructure projects. The partnership with Enbridge on the Hub is the FNCIP’s first such project.

“This path creates an opportunity to generate wealth, but more importantly it allows sustainable economic sovereignty for our communities,” said Chief George Arcand Jr. of Alexander First Nation in a release. “We’re looking forward to working with industry leaders who share our values of environmental stewardship and to collaborate with Enbridge on world-scale carbon transportation and storage infrastructure investments.”

The hub would transport carbon emissions like those from the Lehigh Cement plant in Edmonton by pipeline, to be stored by Enbridge. According to Enbridge, that project alone could capture up to 780,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Combined, the emissions from Capital Power and Lehigh’s projects could avoid nearly four million tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions.

Enbridge has applied to develop the open access hub through the province’s Request for Full Project Proposals process.

Enbridge and its partners haven't publicly said what the project will cost, except that it expects to invest "hundreds of millions of dollars."

The company said pending regulatory approvals, it could be up and running by 2025.

Alberta's investment in carbon capture technology not worth bang for buck, environmental group argues

Alex Antoneshyn
CTVNewsEdmonton.ca Digital Producer
Updated Jan. 21, 2022 


A new report accuses the oil-and-gas industry of greenwashing the impact of carbon capture and storage – also known as CCS – technology, pointing to an oil-processing complex in Alberta that emits more carbon than it buries in the ground.

The report by Global Witness argues CCS is a poor substitute for phasing out fossil fuels and an expensive undertaking that the governments of Alberta and Canada partly funded.

"We think this really isn't sustainable, it's not climate friendly, and it shows that governments across the world, not just in Canada, mustn't support fossil hydrogen," report author Dominic Eagleton told CTV News Edmonton. "They should boost more genuinely sustainable alternatives to fossil hydrogen, such as renewables."


Global Witness, a non-government organization based in the U.K., says its goal is to create a "more sustainable, just and equal planet."

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Alberta prioritizes oil sands' carbon storage hub, energy minister says

Eagleton, a senior campaigner with the group, compared the amount of emissions produced at Shell's Scotford Complex in Fort Saskatchewan, northeast of Edmonton, with the amount of carbon dioxide its CCS system – called Quest – removes. He says the site was chosen because of the data publicly available on it.

Global Witness found that between 2014 and 2019, Quest stored five million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or CO2. During the same period, it says the Scotford Complex produced in total 7.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, including methane. The data was pulled from reports submitted by Shell to the Alberta government, as well as data crunched by the Pembina Institute.

Eagleton calls the 2.5-million tonne difference a "wake-up call for the world."

Shell believes Quest hints at what is possible in the future.

'A DEMONSTRATION PROJECT'

Shell operates Quest on behalf of its partners mining oil sands in northern Alberta and refutes Global Witness' assertion it overpromised Quest's potential.

In addition to the CCS system, Scotford Complex consists of an upgrader that turns bitumen from those oil sands into lighter crude products, a refinery that makes fuels and other products from synthetic crude oil, and a chemical plant.

In order to upgrade bitumen, Shell makes hydrogen, producing carbon dioxide in the process.

Quest's job is to capture and liquefy CO2 before trapping it two kilometres below ground.

Quest has stored about six million tonnes of carbon in its six-and-a-half years – faster and cheaper than expected, according to the company. However, the system was never meant to capture more than one third of the Scotford upgrader's emissions, Shell maintains.

When Quest was built, it was touted as the world's first commercial-scale CCS facility at an oil sands operation. And, as one of the first facilities of its kind, Quest isn't able to capture and store as much carbon as is now possible – around 90 per cent, the industry estimates.

"We were there working with the government to really demonstrate Quest as a proof point that CCS does work. Not only in the capture in a brownfield site, but also the storage complex," Shell's national CCS lead Tim Wiwchar told CTV News Edmonton.

"We called it a demonstration project."

Shell is currently planning a CCS project at Scotford that would have a storage capacity of 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or the above-90 per cent capture levels industry says current technology now allows.

The company is expected to decide to move forward or not with Polaris in late 2023.

'A FRACTION OF THOSE EMISSIONS'

Quest cost $1.35 billion, $845 million of which came from the provincial and federal governments. Some of the provincial dollars, contingent Quest's performance, continue to flow in.

And more dollars will flow to similar projects in the future.

Alberta wants to increase its CCS capacity and has incentivized proposals as part of a plan to capitalize on what is expected to become a $2.5-trillion global hydrogen market by 2030. Hydrogen's potential is premised on its nature to burn cleanly. When it is made alongside a carbon capture system, like at Shell Scotford Complex, it's known as blue hydrogen – and considered dirtier only than green hydrogen made with renewable energy.
Alberta prioritizes oil sands' carbon storage hub, energy minister says
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But Eagleton says it is misleading for the fossil fuel industry to present hydrogen production and carbon capture as favourably as it does when CCS can't transform the oil-and-gas sector into a zero-emitting industry.

The senior campaigner at Global Witness found Quest only captured 48 per cent of carbon emissions produced by the Scotford complex – which he called "a fossil hydrogen plant," which Shell disputed – and 39 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

"Trying to apply carbon capture systems to the rest of the world's fossil hydrogen plants could be a disaster for the climate because it might only capture a fraction of those emissions," Eagleton told CTV News Edmonton.

He also believes investing more in carbon-capture infrastructure is a bet in technology that hasn't yet proven itself, when compared to things like wind and solar power.

"It's these options that will take us to a safer climate and not more investment in fossil-fuel infrastructure, which is what fossil hydrogen will entail," Eagleton added.

"Given…that CCS is required in other industries that go beyond fossil fuels -- fertilizer, cement, chemicals, those are all going to be required into the future -- that again, this is a proof point using an oil and gas facility that CCS does work," Wiwchar responded.

"[Quest] has captured over six million tonnes of CO2. That's six million tonnes that would have been emitted from the upgrader…had we not built Quest."

Alberta's energy minister did not respond to CTV News Edmonton's request for comment.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Touria Izri


Quest carbon capture and storage facility in Fort Saskatchewan Alta., on Nov. 6, 2015. (Jason Franson / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Opinion: With Ukraine in peril, writer laments indifference

After spending 30 years of working with media outlets across Europe, the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych is frustrated by the lack of understanding for his country and culture.


Andrukhovych writes that Russian troops could soon arrive in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv

If you're Ukrainian, now is not the time to be getting COVID-19. Putin could attack while you're in bed with fever, preventing you from reaching for your rifle when the occupiers march past singing "Katyusha" and other wartime classics.

It would be particularly unpleasant for me because I keep getting requests from all over Europe. Every day, there are more: commissions for a Spanish magazine, an Italian newspaper, a Romanian agency, a French outfit, a Norwegian radio station ...

Yuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian writer, poet, essayist and translator whose works have been translated and published in many countries

Nobody showed any interest in Ukraine for eight years. It was if the country did not exist. And now, all of a sudden, everyone is getting in touch at the same time: "Answer this series of questions." "Contact us per telephone!" "Write an essay about the historical roots of the current conflict!" "Contradict Putin!" "Convince the Germans!" "Draw the attention of the Austrians!" "Remind the Croats!" "Explain to the Montenegrins!"

Whoa! What's the deadline? "Today, of course! Tomorrow at the latest!"

If I write in English, it will take longer. "No problem! Write in your mother tongue! We can also translate from Russian."

Unified German indifference

It is frustrating — just as it was eight years ago, when protesters were shot on Maidan square in Kyiv. People would phone me and say: "Write an opinion piece about the nationalists! Nationalist gangs have taken over Maidan. Tell us more about that!"

You could be shaking all over, and, at the same time, people wanted you to deliver a coolheaded analysis presenting "both sides" as accurately as possible, explaining what exactly is going on. So you'd compose something in English, which meant looking up words in dictionaries, figuring out expressions and formulating answers to almost everybody who had been in touch.

You would send it off and that was that: Everybody disappeared — nobody would responded, not even confirmation of receipt. There were no words of thanks, no words of support, neither for me personally, nor for my country. Till next time, then.

Everything is calmer eight years later. Nobody is being shot in the streets (yet). I know where my loved ones are. But, when a Spanish magazine asks me what Ukrainian writers are doing to work things out with the Russian people, it hits a nerve.

Some fear that President Vladimir Putin wants to build a new Russian empire

When I read that the vast majority of Germans oppose supplying Ukraine with arms, it's frustrating. According to a January 27 survey, most supporters of the Left party (71%), the nationalist Alternative for Germany (67%), the center-left Social Democrats (61%), the center-right Christian Democrats (56%), the Greens (55%) and the neoliberal Free Democrats (54%) share this view.

The Germans are finally unified — in their opinion that unarmed Ukrainians can be killed if they do not accept annexation by "Putin's nation." After all, ceasing to resist would be easier and more comfortable.

'People have gotten dumber'

Allow me to quote from a letter by an editor of one of Germany's best newspapers. "I think that most Germans do not yet realize that Putin wants to build a new Russian empire," the editor wrote. "If you could hear what people are saying here, even in educated circles: 'He is just interested in his legitimate sphere of influence,' 'Ukraine has always belonged to Russia,' 'he just wants respect,' and so on. People have not learned from 2014 — they've gotten dumber."

For me, this is a very sad, even tragic, assessment of the past 30 years. I never turned down the German media and was glad to be in contact. At the request of editors, I would put my novels and poems on hold to write other texts or to give interviews to influential national newspapers, as well as local ones, simply to everybody. I also did live and recorded radio and TV, which had audiences of millions. I thought I was being understood. At least, I thought I was beginning to be understood.

But now? Three decades later, three decades of effort, of hundreds of what I thought were good conversations, it is as if I am back at the beginning: in Munich in 1992, when people would ask me whether Ukrainian was a language — and not just a dialect of Russian. I am certain that I will be asked this question more than once in 2022. Nothing has changed in the German consciousness when it comes to the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture and Ukraine itself.

How could it have? For Germans, the top priority is the respect of spheres of influence — particularly Putin's sphere of influence. It is sacred and should not be violated.

This article was translated from German.

Ukraine and Canada agree closer nuclear cooperation

04 February 2022

The Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries (OCNI)  and Energoatom have agreed a cooperation deal covering nuclear energy and related technologies.

Ukraine's nuclear plans include a first AP1000 project at Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant (Image: Energoatom)

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by OCNI president Ron Oberth and Energoatom’s acting president, Petro Kotin, at a virtual signing ceremony in Canada and Ukraine.

Areas it covers include supporting cooperation opportunities associated with deployment of Canadian large-scale and small modular reactor technologies in Ukraine, nuclear decommissioning, medical isotopes and hydrogen production with nuclear electricity.

It also aims to encourage cooperation between academics and researchers in the two countries.

In a statement issued after the signing Oberth said: "OCNI looks forward to working closely with colleagues in Ukraine on projects that support global initiatives to achieve net zero by 2050 and improve the health of people around the world."

Kotin said: "Energoatom is pleased to establish partnership relations with OCNI, which opens new opportunities for our engagement with Canadian companies on the most promising areas in the nuclear energy field associated with ensuring reliable nuclear generation, nuclear research and development, innovation and care for the environment and people."

OCNI is an association of 240 Canadian suppliers to the nuclear industry. The Ukraine state enterprise Energoatom operates four nuclear power plants with 15 power units.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Partnership could lead to first fusion power plant in Ontario

Magnetized target fusion technology is seen in this undated handout photo.

 (Source: General Fusion)

Scott Miller
CTV News London Videographer
Published Feb. 3, 2022 

The joke in the scientific world is that fusion energy is 20 years away, and always will be. Well, Jay Brister from General Fusion says otherwise.

“I like to tell people fusion is getting much more tangible than it ever has,” says Brister, the chief business development officer with the B.C.-based fusion development company.

General Fusion has joined forces with the Port Elgin, Ont.-based Nuclear Innovation Institute and Ontario’s largest nuclear plant, Bruce Power, to work towards advancing fusion-based electricity and possibly building a fusion power plant in Ontario.

“If there was an area in Ontario that would be a potential candidate for it, the Bruce Power site would be at the top of that list,” says Bruce Power’s Chief Development Officer James Scongack.

Bruce Power’s CANDU reactors harness the powers of 'fission,' splitting one atom into two, to power their nuclear fleet.

'Fusion,' which unleashes the power of combining two atoms into one, has not yet been harnessed commercially to produce electricity, -- until now, says General Fusion.

The company is about to build a fusion demonstration plant in the United Kingdom, with operations to begin in three years' time.

“That will bring us to the point that we’re ready to put a shovel in the ground by the end of this decade on the first fusion power plant, with operations anticipated in the early 2030s,” says Brister.

And if all goes according to plan, that first fusion plant could be built at or near the Bruce Power site.

“A lot of the attributes that we have for a nuclear site would make sense for a fusion site. It’s a secure site, there are utilities, support services, technical staff, not to mention the 60+ clean energy companies that are in the tri-county (Bruce, Grey, Huron) region,” says Scongack.

Hold your horses, says University of British Columbia professor and nuclear power researcher, Dr. M.V. Ramana.

He doesn’t believe fusion energy will be commercially feasible for many, many decades, if ever.

“As of today, no experiment in the the world has actually produced more energy than has been put in, so we are far from even the point where we can contemplate fusion being a source of energy,” he says.

That isn’t dulling the excitement at General Fusion or Bruce Power, who believe fusion energy could be part of the answer to our future carbon-free energy needs.

“To tackle net zero we need massive volumes of clean power, so that allows us to say, 'Let’s put every tool in the tool box on the table to tackle this problem,'” says Scongack.

Bruce Power is looking for its next act — and thinks fusion power might be it

ANALYSIS: The company that operates the world’s largest nuclear plant apparently won’t have enough on its plate in the 2030s, so it’s signed a deal with a Canadian fusion-power startup

By John Michael McGrath - Published on Feb 04, 2022

Bruce Power has signed an agreement with General Fusion to explore a possible commercial fusion power plant in Ontario. (Chuck Szmurlo/Wikimedia/CC BY 2.5)

Jay Brister has heard the joke before a million times: fusion power is 20 years away and has been for the last 50 years. It’s an occupational hazard for him, as the chief business development officer for General Fusion, a Burnaby, British Columbia-based company that’s been developing a novel approach to fusion power for 20 years. He’s able to laugh about it, although, these days, he’s trying to convince people that fusion isn’t some far-off prospect for the future — it’s now.

“We’ve been doing fusion research for over 70 years. And, from a science perspective, we know more today than we’ve ever known about plasma physics,” he says. “Add to that advanced manufacturing technologies that we didn’t have even a few years ago … we’re at a point now where it’s about to become a lot more tangible.”

Earlier this week, General Fusion signed an agreement with Bruce Power — the operators of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on the shores of Lake Huron — to explore a possible commercial fusion power plant in Ontario. In this context, “now” doesn’t mean soon: if everything pans out, General Fusion and Bruce Power are eyeing a possible fusion plant sometime in the 2030s.

Bruce Power’s chief development officer, James Scongack, says the company will have its hands full with the ongoing work to refurbish the existing Bruce nuclear plant and extend its operating lifespan into the 2060s. But the refurb work will be done after this decade, and then Bruce will be looking to build on its current assets — the power plant itself, but also the network of suppliers and personnel that have been established in the region — to explore new opportunities.

Some of that work has already started: the Bruce’s reactors are now producing medically important radioactive isotopes, for example, and the company is looking at new technologies to help Ontario get to net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions. Fusion is part of the long-term plan, too.

“The commonality with all of those things is that they are all highly technical fields — they require significant expertise — and that’s something we have here for 50 or 60 years,” says Scongack. “We’ve been working with General Fusion for some time; they’re doing great work, and they’re a great Canadian success story.”

It’s not just Bruce Power that’s betting on the potential for fusion power in the near future: a number of companies have landed huge investments from private capital on the promise of finally cracking a problem that scientists have been working on for over half a century.

Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised $1.8 billion from investors like Bill Gates late last year;Helion Energy has announced up to $2.2 billion in investments (dependent on achieving certain milestones). For its part, General Fusion announced a successful $130 million funding round in November 2021.

Fusion’s proponents use superlatives like “unlimited clean energy” to describe its potential, and the scientific basis is clear enough: we know that nuclear fusion — combining light elements such as hydrogen at extremely high temperatures, instead of splitting heavy elements in conventional nuclear reactors — powers everything from the sun (benignly) to nuclear weapons (less so). Researchers have spent decades trying to generate a fusion reaction that is controlled, can be maintained, and generates more power than it takes to do both. So far, nobody has demonstrated that can be done on a commercial scale.

Critics have also argued that, even if fusion does turn out to be technically possible — which is still a big “if” — it may end up being so difficult and expensive that it will never produce power more cheaply than more conventional methods. Daniel Jassby, a former plasma physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, wrote in 2017 that, in his retirement, he’d come to take a more jaundiced view of the potential for fusion power. In particular, while fusion proponents say their reactors don’t produce nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel rods (as conventional nuclear reactors do), the power plants themselves will be subjected to intense radiation for their operating lives and could effectively be radioactive waste that would need to be decommissioned carefully and expensively at the end of their lives.

Those might be difficult or even impossible problems to solve. (Brister says that General Fusion’s design for a reactor will minimize the creation of radioactive-waste problems.) Alternatively, it’s possible that one of the competing designs for a fusion power plant could succeed but that General Fusion’s might not. General Fusion is confident enough in its approach that it’s leased space at the Vancouver International Airport to build a 70 per cent-scale version of what it believes will be a commercial-size plant. That should begin construction later this year and be in operation by 2025.

But then there are the problems technology can’t answer, which come from Ontario’s murky politics around electricity planning. Both the current government and its predecessor have, for example, ended up being rebuked by courts or tribunals for cancelling wind-power projects that have happened to conflict with political imperatives of the government of the day. So is General Fusion worried about spending time, energy, and money working in a province where energy planning can be so unpredictable?

“That landscape is a variable, I would say, that’s not unique to Ontario,” says Brister, charitably. He describes navigating political waters as just as much a part of getting a new project built as securing financing or proving the science and engineering.

Bruce County has hosted the current generating station for half a century, first as an Ontario Hydro station and since 2001 as Bruce Power — and, Brister says, with more than 20 years of experience navigating the political and regulatory space, the company can help General Fusion navigate the sometimes treacherous political and regulatory shoals here.

Scongack sees that as just another one of the assets that Bruce Power can bring to the table. “We’ve got the supply chain, we’ve got the workforce, and we’ve got the site. We believe if we’re going to tackle net-zero, we need to be open to all technologies.”

Initiatives aim to speed fusion deployment

03 February 2022

Two newly announced North American initiatives aim to accelerate the deployment of fusion technologies for power generation. In Canada, Bruce Power, General Fusion, and the Nuclear Innovation Institute (NII) will work together to evaluate potential deployment of a fusion power plant in Ontario. Meanwhile, scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are teaming up with Renaissance Fusion America as part of a US programme to speed the development of fusion energy.

(Image: Bruce Power/General Fusion/NII)

Bruce Power, General Fusion and the NII yesterday announced that they have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on accelerating the delivery of clean fusion power in Canada. The partners said they will build on existing clean energy technologies, skills, and expertise in the so-called Clean Energy Frontier region of Ontario to develop a "go-forward strategy", and will also lead stakeholder and public outreach activities to raise awareness of the "transformative potential" of fusion energy for powering Canadian homes, businesses, and industry.

Vancouver-based General Fusion is a private company which aims to build a commercial fusion power plant based on Magnetised Target Fusion (MTF) technology, which involves injecting hydrogen plasma into a liquid metal sphere, where it is compressed and heated so that fusion occurs. A Fusion Demonstration Plant at the Culham Campus near Oxford in the UK is scheduled to be operational in 2025, and the company says it aims to bring clean fusion energy to the world's energy systems by the early 2030s.

General Fusion CEO Christofer Mowry described the MOU as a "landmark", providing a framework under which Canada's energy leaders can benefit from each other's technology innovations and expertise to lead the way in adopting fusion power in Ontario and across Canada. "We look forward to advancing this partnership to help meet Canada's climate targets and the increasing electricity needs of Canadians," he said.

Fostering innovation in new energy technologies including fusion is one of the five pillars in Bruce Power's NZ-2050 strategy to contribute to a net-zero Canada while growing the economy and supporting innovation. The MOU represents one way the company is looking to advance new clean energy technologies, the company said.
 
"In order to achieve a net-zero future here in Ontario, and Canada, we need to continue expanding the clean electricity production of our existing facilities and will need innovation as part of the future," said Mike Rencheck, President and CEO, Bruce Power. "Our partnership will explore these innovations and leverage the established capability in this region as a home to new technologies that will contribute to a carbon-free future."

PPPL collaboration

Grenoble, France-based Renaissance Fusion aims to put fusion energy from stellarator-based devices on the grid in the next 13 years. A newly announced public-private partnership between the company's US affiliate, Renaissance Fusion America, and three scientists at PPPL aims to further speed the development of the technology by generating an open-source dataset of stellarator configurations that scientists around the world can use to train their own models and advance artificial intelligence research in stellarators.

Stellarators, like tokamaks, are devices for the magnetic confinement of fusion plasmas. Unlike tokamaks, they have no toroidal plasma current, meaning that they offer increased plasma stability compared with tokamaks. Because the burning plasma can be more easily controlled and monitored, stellarators have an intrinsic potential for steady-state, continuous operation. This makes stellarators potentially easier to operate than tokamaks, but their greater complexity makes them more difficult and expensive to design and build.  

Developing machine-learning software to speed up predictions of the loss of alpha particles from fusion reactions should enable designers to quickly enhance the shape, or geometry, of stellarator magnetic fields to improve alpha particle confinement, PPPL said.

The year-long collaboration is sponsored by the US Department of Energy's Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) programme, launched in 2015 to accelerate fusion energy development in the private sector by reducing impediments to collaboration involving the expertise and unique resources available at DOE laboratories and universities.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

European industrial giants join nuclear fusion race

February 3, 2022
in Tech


European industrial giants have joined the race to create cleaner energy through nuclear fusion, a nascent industry pioneered primarily in the US.

Munich-based Marvel Fusion has signed partnerships with Dax-listed Siemens Energy, France’s Thales and the privately owned German mechanical engineering group Trumpf, while also raising €35mn in a funding round led by tech investor Earlybird.

Interest in nuclear fusion technology, a promising process that does not produce long-lasting radioactive waste and carries no risk of reactor meltdowns, has been hotting up in recent months.

Last year, the sector attracted more than €2.3bn in venture capital funding, predominantly for companies based in the US.

Unlike current nuclear power generation, which is based on fission, fusion could provide a virtually limitless energy supply with a very low environmental footprint. In theory, a fusion plant the size of a football field could even power a city as large as London.

But although the technology has been around since Soviet scientists tried using it in the 1950s, to date none of the few dozen nuclear fusion companies worldwide have been able to achieve it while producing more electricity than the complex process consumes.

Marvel Fusion claims its method, which uses lasers to trigger atomic reactions rather than magnets and extreme heat, will make the process commercially viable in a few years’ time.

“It’s a theoretical model, which is essentially a very large computer simulation, and then step by step it is being validated in an experimental campaign that started last year,” Marvel Fusion chief executive Moritz von der Linden told the Financial Times, adding that the validation should be completed in two to three years. “If it works, it is the Holy Grail.”

The company, which was founded in 2019, said its technology was based on the breakthrough by 2018 Nobel Prize winners Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou, who “succeeded in creating ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses without destroying the amplifying material”.

Most other nuclear fusion start-ups use a process called magnetic confinement and some have attracted large sums from investors.

In December, American start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems secured nearly $2bn from backers, including Tiger Global Management and Bill Gates, a few weeks after competitor Helion raised $500mn from Peter Thiel’s investment vehicle and Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman, among others.

Marvel Fusion’s partners are among those hoping that Europe’s existing laser technology expertise could help companies on the continent catch up.

Europe “can probably have a breakthrough by doing this with lasers”, said Thales’ director of laser activities, Franck Leibreich. But he added: “Right now we are more in the feasibility stage. We need to demonstrate that the fusion is possible physically, not just on paper.”

Energy independence in Europe has also risen to the top of the political agenda in recent weeks, with fears mounting that gas supplies from Russia could be cut off or reduced in the event of conflict in Ukraine.

Germany, which is due to close down its last three nuclear plants in the next year, needs clean technologies to make up for the lost capacity.

Peter Leibinger, chief technology officer at Marvel Fusion’s new partner Trumpf, said the family-run company was “pleased to jointly develop this important technology” because “fusion is an essential component of the energy sovereignty of Europe and Germany”.

But von der Linden said Marvel Fusion, which is launching another funding round this year, would “need significantly more money” for laser developments and warned that a prototype power plant — that would cost billions of euros — would have to be backed by public investment too.

“Europe has to step up its game,” he added.

Source: Financial Times

Kyoto Fusioneering secures $11.7M to build out its fusion reactor technologies

Mike Butcher@mikebutcher •February 3, 2022

Image Credits: Kyoto Fusioneering

With startups getting into nuclear technology, it’s no surprise to see more fundraising happening. Now, Kyoto Fusioneering, a fusion energy startup based out of Japan but increasingly expanding abroad, has raised 1.33 billion yen ($11.7 million) in its latest round of funding. The company has now raised 1.67 billion yen ($14.7 million) to date.

In 2020 the U.K. government-backed STEP, a prototype reactor, aiming to have it operating by 2040, and Kyoto Fusioneering has been awarded several contracts to support its development. This is going to be key to KF’s future.

The Series B funding round was supported by existing investors, including Coral Capital Co. Also participating was Daiwa Corporate Investment, DBJ Capital, JAFCO Group, JGC MIRAI Innovation Fund and JIC Venture Growth Investments.

KF has also secured an 800 million yen ($7 million) debt financing from Bank of Kyoto, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and MUFG Bank.

The funds will be used to accelerate its research and expand the business, developing its plant engineering technologies for plasma heating (gyrotrons) and heat extraction (blankets). These technologies are needed in the development of fusion reactor projects.

At the moment a group of nations are supporting the international ITER project (the European Union, Japan, the United States, Russia, Korea, India, the UK and China), a technology test reactor which will be first operated later this decade.

Others, such as the U.S. and China, are pursuing their own domestic programs. The Japanese government also has a number of initiative sin the fusion space.

James Riney, founding partner and CEO of Coral Capital, said: “Climate change is an existential threat to humanity, and a fusion energy future, if achieved, could be the silver bullet that literally saves the world.. While many startups talk about how they want to change the world, this company is actually doing it.”

Nuclear fusion promises a lot, but to date has not delivered a great deal. But if someone gets it right, it has the potential to solve much of the world’s energy and environmental problems, given it would mean a virtual unlimited fuel resource, and clean energy with no carbon emissions.