American Censorship is Bad for Peace

by Joseph Essertier / March 25th, 2024

I cannot sit back and allow the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

— General Jack D. Ripper in Dr Strangelove

Most people would agree that in any modern, wealthy, multicultural, free, non-colonized, democratic society, people have the right to know what is going on in their community. In fact, in order to fulfill their various responsibilities as citizens, consumers, workers, company presidents, government officials, family members, etc., they have to know what is going on. We want and need to know what our own government and foreign governments are doing; what products, services, and sociopolitical programs are available in our country; and what medical choices we have when we are sick or injured. There are exceptions, such as children and psychopaths, but in general, all people have the right to benefit from the knowledge in libraries, on the Internet, in museums, and in doctors’ offices. In U.S. cities, almost everyone has a right to a library card.

During a “state of exception” or a state of emergency though, some convincingly argue that you do not have the right to certain dangerous information. The United States is officially not at war yet with Russia; we just supply their enemies with lots of expensive weapons. But if and when we are at war with Russia, do U.S. citizens have a right to hear Vladimir Putin speak? When we are under attack by a lethal virus, do we have the right to hear about all the various methods of protecting our health, even alternative, traditional, foreign, naturopathic, or unorthodox methods?

Some would say “no.” Just as you must not be allowed to buy enriched uranium and download from the Internet blueprints for how to make a nuclear bomb, you do not have the right to protect your health from SARS-CoV-2 without using mRNA vaccines. And people who advocate for the Russians, who love Russia, work with Russian companies, promote positive images of Russia, and facilitate the spread of state-sponsored, pro-Russia propaganda must be silenced or banned. Like hate speech, there are certain statements that are just beyond the pale, that are too dangerous and must be suppressed. Some, such as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, argue that when teens are jumping out of windows, the government has a responsibility to step in and prevent people from reading posts encouraging them to engage in this dangerous behavior. With the Supreme Court case of Murthy v. Missouri, Americans are now forced to think about exactly how precious our First Amendment is, and when we prioritize free speech over health and safety.

In the U.S. today, the government is censoring people and publications on both the Left and the Right, the typical library book-banning activities are up, and there is evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) systems are now doing some of the censorship work, strengthening the hand of the government vis-a-vis the people in ways generally only seen during great crises or wars. (This is documented in the downloadable report from the U.S. House of Representatives “The Weaponization of the National Science Foundation: How NSF Is Funding the Development of Automated Tools To Censor Online Speech”).

Here we delve into two cases of the Government suppressing free speech, one on the “Left” of the political spectrum and one on the “Right.” On the Left we see the anti-racist and anti-imperialist, African-American activist Omali Yeshitela and two other socialists. On the Right we see people such as Jill Hines, co-director of conservative Health Freedom Louisiana, and Jim Hoft, founder of Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site that reportedly has published threats against election workers for false claims of election-rigging. Suppressed along with these two on the Right but actually going beyond political categories, we see Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, epidemiologists that raised questions about government pandemic policies, and professor of psychiatry and human behavior Aaron Kheriaty, who was dismissed by the University of California, Irvine, for refusing an mRNA shot. And finally, we see the suppression of millions of people who do not identify with either the Left or the Right, some of whom are not conspiracy theorists, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s public health measures that were taken in response to SARS-CoV-2.

Silencing African-American Socialists

In April of last year the “Uhuru 3,” Omali Yeshitela, an African-American man born in 1941; Penny Hess, a white woman over the age of 70, who is the chairperson of the African People’s Solidarity Committee; and Jesse Nevel, a young, white man who is the “National Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, the mass organization of the African People’s Solidarity Committee,” were charged by a federal grand jury with acting as unregistered agents of the Russian government. The Biden administration apparently considers them major threats to U.S. national security.

Yeshitela’s political roots go back to the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the legendary Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1972, he and others felt the need to move beyond protests and to capture political power, so they formed the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP). This was and is an internationalist Black Power movement, or African internationalism, and has been developed over 50 years, fighting against colonialism, and this is not the first time that their free speech rights have been violated, he says.

Yeshitela explains that he got in trouble with the law this time by touring the U.S. in 2016 to gain support for a movement charging the U.S. with genocide, and going to Russia to speak about self-determination with a Russian NGO, not for the government of the Russian Federation. According to Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors, for the sacrifices he made for white, capitalist Russia, he has received the whopping sum of $7,000. In a summary of the case in October, the Grayzone’s Anya Parampil warns that “lawyers for the Uhuru 3 maintain that the DOJ’s justification for prosecuting their clients sets the stage for the US government to legally harass and prosecute other Americans who criticize US domestic and foreign policy, particularly where designated enemies like Russia or China are concerned.”

Award-winning peace advocate, spokesperson for the Black Alliance for Peace, and 2016 candidate for U.S. vice president on the Green Party ticket Ajamu Baraka has provided insightful analysis of this case. Early on in the “Russiagate” hype, he warned that those fearmongering about Russia would soon target anti-capitalist, Black liberation movements, just as they did at the end of the Second World War, when peace activists including W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) and Paul Robeson (1898-1976) suffered government oppression. (Robeson also charged the U.S. government with genocide. He did so in 1951 for their failure to stop U.S. lynchings).

Like Noam Chomsky, Baraka categorizes the U.S. as a lawless, “rogue state.” He warns that our “national security state” is engaging in systematic repression against anyone who opposes them, including “the Left” (from around 7:30 in the video). For example, people who protest “Cop City” are being labeled as “domestic terrorists.” What we are looking at is “McCarthyism 2.0,” he suggests. The Peninsula Peace and Justice Center is one of the few organizations standing up for the Uhuru movement’s right to free speech.

As Chomsky once said, “Democratic societies can’t force people. Therefore, they have to control what they think.”

Silencing Opponents of Government COVID-19 Policies

Besides the violations of free speech that have resulted from Russophobia, Afro-phobia, and reparations-justice-phobia, we are now also facing such violations caused by SARS-CoV-2-phobia, the biosecurity panic, and the war on the virus. In the opinion of Benjamin Wallace-Wells writing for the New Yorker, “the most eyebrow-raising revelations in the Twitter Files, documented mostly by Matt Taibbi and Lee Fang, concern the extent to which the F.B.I. and the Pentagon were interested in controlling what was seen on the platform.” For instance, Lee Fang has written about a British company called “Logically.ai.” According to AP, they are “an established social enterprise bringing credibility and confidence to news and social discourse,” and they launched an app in the U.S. in 2020 that enables “users to receive personalized, verified and in-depth information on any storyline in order to restore digital trust.”

Such words might make some people feel safe, but Lee Fang warns about the American censorship advocate Brian Murphy, who used to be an FBI agent leading the intelligence wing of the Department of Homeland Security, and is an executive of Logically.ai. Murphy has argued that the U.S. government must now rein in the social media companies, and we, U.S. citizens, must give up some of our freedoms that we “need and deserve” so that we can get our “security back.”

“Since joining the firm, Murphy has met with military and other government officials in the U.S., many of whom have gone on to contract or pilot Logically’s platform.” The company Logically is doing work outsourced to them by the British government. The government agency responsible, called the “Counter Disinformation Unit” or “CDU,” were targeting a “former judge who argued against coercive lockdowns as a violation of civil liberties and journalists criticizing government corruption. Some of the surveillance documents suggest a mission creep for the unit, as media monitoring emails show that the agency targeted anti-war groups that were vocal against NATO’s policies,” Fang explains. Apparently, not only groups that opposed lockdowns but also groups that promote peace are being surveilled and flagged as dangerous, by a foreign company based in a foreign country.

Not long ago, few would have guessed that Stanford University would be against free speech, but now it appears that some segment of the university is actively participating in censorship, as a kind of government proxy. Professor Jay Bhattacharya at the Stanford School of Medicine, who is an expert on health policy at Stanford University, and who holds an M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in Economics, has summarized the free speech case Murthy v. Missouri that is currently before the Supreme Court. He points out that Stanford University, his own employer, has a program called the “Stanford Internet Observatory” (SIO) (10:00 to 12:00 in the video) who describe themselves as a “cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media.” The program was founded in 2019.

In an appellate court struggle, his own university weighed in against him, and they claimed that the Stanford Internet Observatory is not a government cut-out, is just doing research, and is not meant to violate the 1st Amendment. He describes that as “disingenuous.” Stanford has a rule that they require researchers to adhere to, like universities around the world, that human subjects of a research project must not be harmed by the research. Yet this Internet Observatory is basically making a list, effectively a blacklist, of organizations or people to suppress. That would constitute an ethics violation, since the subjects of the research are U.S. citizens, and their rights under the 1st Amendment have been violated. Either this is not research, or it is unethical research, Bhattacharya argues.

In his expert opinion, the U.S. government is “the number one source of misinformation during the Pandemic.” His “short list” of their misinformation includes the following:

1. The government overestimated the lethality of COVID-19.
2. The risk to children was minimal, but the government talked as if everyone was equally at risk.
3. The government suppressed the “idea of immunity after COVID recovery,” and made people wait for the vaccine.
4. Evidence that masking was ineffective was available during the early stages of the pandemic. There was no consensus among scientists that masks worked, but the government recommended masks anyway.
5. The government promoted the illusion that there was a consensus about lockdowns and censored the Great Barrington Declaration.
6. The government censored people who provided evidence that the vaccines were not safe and effective, even after evidence emerged that there was a risk of myocarditis.

(12:00-17:00 in video)

In May of last year, the “New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, filed a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s ongoing efforts to work in concert with social media companies and the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Virality Project to monitor and censor online support groups catering to those injured by Covid vaccines.”

The Stanford Internet Observatory is a proud member of the “Election Integrity Partnership” (EIP) along with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (“DFRLab”), Graphika, and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The Atlantic Council are notorious militarists.

In his Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi calls the Stanford Internet Observatory the “ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations.” The DFRLab is partially funded by the Global Engagement Center (GEC). And they, the GEC, are part of the State Department. Taibbi views the GEC as part of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex,” along with organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the DFRLab itself, and Hamilton 68’s creator, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). In other words, it appears that many of the same organizations that have engaged in fear mongering over Russia or promoting militarism have also engaged in censoring Americans.

Conclusion

The U.S. has become a nation-state that is obsessed with national security. Ajamu Baraka sums up our situation best:

It’s us today but it’s you tomorrow, if you persist in any kind of oppositional politics, because the ruling element in the U.S. is serious. They are serious about attempting to maintain their hegemony, and their global hegemony. And the notion, of some of the values of the liberal framework, liberal philosophy, liberalism—they have completely abandoned that. They have jettisoned that. And basically they are engaged in lawlessness. The U.S. is now a rogue state. What we have domestically in the U.S. is systematic repression from a national security state that seems to be completely unbound by any kind of standards beyond its own. (From 6:50 to 7:40 in video).

Then Baraka raises a very important question, i.e., “Where is the opposition?” Our national security state is currently run by “liberals,” people who are supposed to care about freedom of speech and freedom in general, like their liberal predecessors who espoused the idea that freedom was an essential condition for happiness. (Never for people of African or Native American descent or for women, but they did espouse it for wealthy white men). Instead of protecting our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” they are giving us “death, shackles, and misery.” Now the question is, “What are we going to do about it?”

We need free speech if we are to build peace. Today they are coming for militant revolutionaries who reject white supremacy, for the narrow-minded Right, and for the medical scientists who recommend a different approach from the government’s approach to SARS-CoV-2. Without a thriving movement against the current censorship, the U.S. government, along with the companies that help the government censor people, could easily pull the rug out from under our feet, even as we diligently work for peace and human rights. Do not be surprised if tomorrow the FBI, or the “Blob,” (i.e., the foreign policy establishment including the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA), or any of the many companies that work for them in this constantly expanding biodefense industry come after you next.

Joseph Essertier is an associate professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan, an international human rights advocate, and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Read other articles by Joseph.

 

Bell CEO to appear before federal committee over thousands of job cuts

BNN Bloomberg

The head of Bell Canada will testify before members of Parliament next month over the company's decision to cut thousands of jobs across Canada.

CEO Mirko Bibic is scheduled to appear at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on April 11.

The Canadian Press previously reported that Bibic was summoned to the committee after being unable to attend earlier meetings. However, Bell said the March 19 meeting was actually postponed by the committee.

"The Clerk of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage invited Bell to appear March 19, which we readily accepted and confirmed. This was the only confirmed meeting until now," said a statement from Bell. "The committee then requested that we postpone the March 19 appearance. We accepted the invitation to appear on April 11 and we look forward to speaking with committee members about the challenges and opportunities facing our industry."

In February, Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. announced it was cutting 4,800 positions from its workforce, ending several television newscasts, and selling 45 of its 103 radio stations.

Bell blamed the cuts in part on the federal government and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, claiming Ottawa has been too slow to assist media companies. In the same Feb. announcement, Bell also stated that it was raising quarterly dividend payouts to shareholders from 96.75 cents to 99.75 cents per common share.

With files from The Canadian Press

BNN Bloomberg is part of Bell Media, which is owned by BCE

Breaking: Boeing CEO Resigns Amidst 737 MAX Crisis Top Management Shakeup

BY RYTIS BERESNEVIČIUS

SIMPLY FLYING

PUBLISHED 10 HOURS AGO

David Calhoun and Stan Deal, two top Boeing executives, will leave the company as the post-Alaska Airlines incident crisis continues.
Photo: VDB Photos | Shutterstock


SUMMARY
Boeing CEO David Calhoun will step down from his CEO position at the end of 2024
Stan Deal, the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is also leaving the company.
The changes to its leadership come as Boeing is still dealing with the fallout following the Alaska Airlines door-plug blowout incident.



Boeing has announced that David Calhoun, the current President and chief executive officer (CEO) of the manufacturer, will step down at the end of 2024, with other company executives also retiring or not seeking re-election for their positions.
Post-Alaska Airlines flight incident shake-up

In a message to Boeing employees, which the manufacturer shared publicly, Calhoun said that the Alaska Airlines flight AS1282 incident, when a door plug blew out from a Boeing 737 MAX 9, was a watershed moment for the company.


“We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company.”

While Calhoun expressed that he believes Boeing will come through its current adversity as a better company, the executive stated that it was the right time for a CEO transition at the planemaker. As a result, 2024 will be the last year that Calhoun will act as the chief executive of the company.



Photo: cpaulfell | Shutterstock


However, Calhoun’s letter did not indicate whether the executive would abandon his position as President of Boeing. Calhoun replaced Dennis Muilenburg in December 2019 while the company was still dealing with the fallout following the two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Resigns

Boeing announced that Dennis Muilenburg resigned from his position as CEO and Board Director at Boeing.


Further C-level and board changes at Boeing

Nevertheless, Calhoun emphasized that the company’s board has been prepared for the transitionary process, which will result in a number of changes at Boeing. For one, Larry Kellner, the current Chairman of the Board of Boeing, has informed Calhoun that he will not seek re-election for his position at the upcoming annual general meeting (AGM), which should happen in April 2024.



Photo: Tada Images | Shutterstock

Steve Mollenkopf should replace Kellner, with the former leading the process of finding a new CEO for Boeing. According to Calhoun, after being the chairman for more than four years and 13 years on the company’s board, Kellner decided it was best that a new chair select the CEO they would accompany.

Meanwhile, Stan Deal, the current president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), will also retire. Deal will be replaced by Stephanie Pope, who has been the chief operating officer (COO) of Boeing since January 2024.

RELATED
Future Boeing CEO? Stephanie Pope Snags COO RoleThe industry veteran has been with the aerospace company for nearly three decades.


Responding to the incident

Reacting to the news, the company’s shares were trading up to 3% higher during pre-market trading than it closed on March 22 at the time of writing, possibly indicating a positive response from Wall Street.

Nevertheless, in April 2021, Boeing raised the minimum mandatory retirement age for its CEO from 65 to 70, allowing the then-64-year-old Calhoun to continue serving his role for a couple of years. The 66-year-old executive could have served as the CEO of Boeing for four more years until he would be forced into retirement.

Photo: NTSB

While Calhoun led Boeing out of the 737 MAX crisis, with the FAA leading the way with the type’s ungrounding in November 2020, the executive has had to deal with several issues of his own, most recently the Alaska Airlines door plug event. The incident resulted in the FAA, as well as other stakeholders, scrutinizing the manufacturer’s quality control processes even more.



At the same time, Boeing has struggled to certify the 777X, as well as the 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10. The Alaska Airlines incident only threw another spanner into the works, and, for example, Boeing was forced to withdraw its exemption request for the 737 MAX 7’s anti-ice system for the engine’s nacelles.

Cocoa is more expensive than copper as it tops $9,000

Bloomberg News | March 25, 2024 | 

Cocoa powder. Stock image.

Cocoa extended its surge — surpassing $9,000 a ton for the first time ever — as a supply crunch grips the market and chocolate makers grapple for beans.


Futures are up about 50% this month alone and have more than doubled already this year. Poor harvests on the back of bad weather and crop disease in West African growers, where most of the world’s cocoa is grown, and little sign of production relief elsewhere have left the industry in a bind.

The rally has sent prices toward $10,000 — a level that seemed unthinkable only a few months ago — and even made cocoa more expensive than bellwether industrial metal copper.

Cocoa’s advance will feed through into higher chocolate costs throughout the year. Easter eggs are already getting more expensive due to last year’s price jump, and some manufacturers are curbing bar sizes or promoting varieties with other ingredients to soften the blow.

Futures rose as much as 5.2% to $9,400 in New York. Prices have kept climbing despite a technical gauge being in overbought territory for much of the last couple of months. Cocoa in London also climbed.

“Chocolate may be even more expensive in Easter 2025, if cocoa-tree diseases and inclement weather prolong the deficit amid high sugar prices,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Diana Gomes said in a note on Friday.

While prices have soared, speculators have actually been pulling out of the market. Open interest — the number of outstanding contracts — has dropped from a peak in late January, and money managers cut their net-bullish wagers to a one-year low in the latest week. That suggests that physical buyers may have played a key role in the price rally.

There’s a risk the supply situation may worsen. Incoming European Union rules — aimed at stopping products that destroy forests from being sold in shops — may make it even harder for the bloc’s top chocolate makers to secure supplies.

Focus is now turning to West Africa’s upcoming mid-crop, the smaller of two annual harvests. Top grower Ivory Coast’s regulator expects that to shrink this season, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.

(By Megan Durisin)

Investment announced to boost UK nuclear workforce

25 March 2024

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced a package of public and private investment to reinforce the country's nuclear workforce and support 40,000 expected new jobs in its defence and civil nuclear industry.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (left) and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt (right) visit BAE Systems in Barrow-in-Furness, where UK submarines are manufactured (Image: Simon Dawson / No.10 Downing Street)

The government said it is partnering with industry - including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, EDF and Babcock - to invest at least GBP763 million (USD965 million) by 2030 in skills, jobs and education. The investment will create more than 8000 career opportunities to help the sector fill 40,000 new jobs by the end of the decade – and will support plans to double the number of nuclear apprentices and graduates and quadruple the number of specialist science and nuclear fission PhDs.

"Domestic nuclear capability is vital to our national defence and energy security, underpinning our nuclear deterrent and securing cheaper, more reliable energy for UK consumers," the government said. "The nuclear industry is growing rapidly, requiring 50% more highly skilled workers in the next ten years – and we need to train a new generation of British talent."

Sunak also announced the creation of a Barrow Transformation Fund, with the government committing an immediate GBP20 million and a further minimum of GBP20 million annually over the next 10 years to make Barrow, in Cumbria, "an even more attractive place to live, work, and build a nuclear career".

Building on these new investments, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has published the government's Defence Nuclear Enterprise Command Paper, setting out for the first time the full breadth of activity to sustain and modernise the UK's continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent.

"Safeguarding the future of our nuclear deterrent and nuclear energy industry is a critical national endeavour," Sunak said. "In a more dangerous and contested world, the UK's continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is more vital than ever. And nuclear delivers cheaper, cleaner home-grown energy for consumers.

"That's why we are investing in Barrow, the home of UK submarines, and in the jobs and skills of the future in the thriving British nuclear industry. Today we usher in the next generation of our nuclear enterprise, which will keep us safe, keep our energy secure, and keep our bills down for good."

David Lockwood, CEO Babcock International and member of the Nuclear Skills Executive Council added: "This is a fantastic opportunity for the UK to deliver a stronger nuclear industry that will contribute to the resilience of the UK's independent deterrent and will support the UK's energy security ambitions and net-zero targets."

"EDF welcomes the joint commitments announced today and looks forward to working with government and industry to help deliver the great opportunities for people who choose to work in the nuclear sector," said Simone Rossi, CEO of EDF in the UK and member of the Nuclear Skills Executive Council. "EDF has been at the heart of the UK's nuclear energy sector for over 15 years and in 2024 is hiring a further 1000 people into its UK nuclear family - in operations, construction, engineering support and many other exciting roles. The majority of these will be apprentices and graduates, as well as those with relevant skills from other industries.

"As we have learned in recent years there is an urgent need to attract, train and inspire the next generation of people who can design, build, operate and decommission existing and new nuclear facilities. We are excited to be part of this national endeavour."

The UK's energy strategy unveiled in April last year set the target for eight new reactors plus small modular reactors to produce 24 GWe capacity by 2050, meeting about 25% of the UK's projected electricity demand. The UK currently generates about 15% of its electricity from about 6.5 GW of nuclear capacity. The first new nuclear capacity in the UK for about 30 years is being built by EDF at Hinkley Point C - two EPRs producing 3.2 GW of electricity - with a final investment decision expected soon on a similar sized project at Sizewell C. The UK's nuclear industry is expected to need 123,000 people by 2030.

The government said the investment in nuclear skills - which includes GBP350 million from the government and more than GBP400 million from industry - will create some 5000 new apprenticeships in the next four years. It will also drive private investment and create job opportunities for everyone from specialist scientists and engineers, to welders and electricians, to project managers and Royal Navy submariners.

Welcoming the new funding to boost nuclear skills and jobs, Tom Greatrex, Chief Executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, said: "This is a very welcome investment which will help ensure we have enough people with the right skills to ramp up nuclear capacity to the levels needed for energy security. It is a great opportunity for the government and industry to work together to attract workers into an exciting and cutting-edge sector that will play a vital role in the UK's journey to net-zero.

"Meeting the UK's ambitious nuclear targets will require a huge ramp up in all parts of the workforce from engineering to construction so it is important we attract and train the next generation of nuclear workers so that we keep pace with other countries that are doing the same. The industry, which is match-funding the government's investment, stands ready to do all it can to support in that endeavour."

Fourth Barakah unit connected to grid

25 March 2024

The 1400 MWe pressurised water reactor has begun delivering electricity to the United Arab Emirates' grid, weeks after achieving first criticality and bringing the four-unit plant closer to its goal of providing 25% of the country's electricity needs.

Barkah 4 has now been synchronised to the UAE grid (Image: Nawah)

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) announced on 23 March that its operations and maintenance subsidiary, Nawah Energy Company, had "safely and successfully" connected the unit to the transmission grid, which it said marked a "pivotal moment in the nation's clean energy transition and journey towards Net Zero by 2050".

The Korean-designed APR-1400 will now undergo a process known as power ascension testing, when it will be continuously monitored and tested as its power levels are gradually raised until full capacity, and ultimately,is declared to be in commercial operation.

Construction of the fourth unit at Barakah began in July 2015, three years after work began on the first unit at the site. The institutional knowledge and experience from each reactor has been applied to the subsequent units, meaning each one has been connected to the grid "more efficiently" than its predecessor, ENEC said: unit 3 was delivered four months faster than the unit 2 schedule, and five months faster than unit 1, "demonstrating the significant benefit of building multiple units within a phased timeline".

"Grid connection of Unit 4 puts us well on the path to full-fleet commercial operations, and with that, the ability to generate 40TWh of clean, baseload electricity annually to drive our Net Zero economy, offering a competitive edge to many businesses, decarbonising hard-to-abate industries, while presenting a global benchmark for the entire nuclear energy industry," ENEC Managing Director and CEO Mohamed Al Hammadi said.

Permit issued for dismantling of Isar 2

25 March 2024

Germany's PreussenElektra has received approval from the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection for the dismantling of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant.

Isar 1 and 2 (Image: Regine Rabanus / PreussenElektra)

The Isar 2 plant - comprising a single 1400 MWe pressurised water reactor - was one of Germany's last three nuclear power plants to be shut down on 15 April last year. PreussenElektra - which is responsible for the decommissioning of eight nuclear power plants in Germany - had already submitted the application to decommission and dismantle the plant in July 2019.

Since the shutdown of Isar 2, all 193 fuel elements have been removed from the reactor pressure vessel and placed in the plant's fuel storage pool. In addition, the primary cooling circuit was decontaminated at the beginning of this year. The first dismantling work will be the dismantling of the main coolant pumps. In addition, the main coolant lines will be separated from the reactor pressure vessel in order to begin the first major dismantling project, the dismantling of the reactor pressure vessel internals.

On 21 March, the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection granted the necessary approval for dismantling of the plant to begin in accordance with Germany's Atomic Energy Act.

Isar 2 was the last of the PreussenElektra plants to cease operations. The Brokdorf and Grohnde plants were shut down on 31 December 2021. With the already decommissioned Isar 1, Stade, Unterweser and Würgassen plants, all of PreussenElektra's nuclear facilities are now in various phases of decommissioning and dismantling.

"Seven of our eight power plant blocks are now being dismantled," said PreussenElektra CEO Guido Knott. "With the knowledge from these dismantling projects and our fleet-optimised approach, we will ensure that the dismantling at the Essenbach site will be completed by the end of the 2030s and that the power plant site will be available for new uses."

Dismantling of Isar 1 is progressing according to plan, the company noted. Every year around 2500 tonnes of material is dismantled and disposed of there. The dismantling of the plant's systems is about half complete.

Before it was shut down, Isar 2 plant covered about 18% of Bavaria's electricity production, the ministry noted. With a net output of more than 1400 MWe, it was the most powerful nuclear power plant in Germany and one of only two plants in the world that produced more than 400 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. In addition to Isar 2, there are four other nuclear power plants currently being dismantled across Bavaria: Isar 1, Grafenrheinfeld and Gundremmingen Blocks B and C.

In August 2011, the 13th amendment of the Nuclear Power Act came into effect, which underlined the political will to phase out nuclear power in Germany.

"The shutdown of the last nuclear power plants in April 2023 was wrong," Bavaria's Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber said whilst announcing the granting of the dismantling permit for Isar 2. "We have always advocated allowing the nuclear power plants to temporarily continue to operate as a climate-friendly bridge.

"Given the current global challenges, we need every kilowatt hour of energy that we can generate ourselves. With Isar 2 it would still be possible to produce affordable and CO2-free electricity in Bavaria. It is incomprehensible why the federal government does not want to accept this and instead relies primarily on more coal. With Isar 2, the federal government has one of the world's safest and most reliable nuclear power plants without the need to dismantle a plant in its prime after only 35 years of operation. That's like retiring a perfectly healthy 50-year-old. It is dishonest to import nuclear power from abroad and at the same time shut down the nuclear power plants in Germany, as the federal government is doing."

South Africa aims to be global supplier of HTR fuel

25 March 2024

As well as preparing to issue a Request for Proposals for 2500 MW of new nuclear "this calendar year", the Nuclear Energy Summit was told that South Africa is developing its Pebble Bed Modular Reactor technology and "deserves the opportunity to implement the complete nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful uses".

The Nuclear Energy Summit was held in Brussels (Image: Screengrab from IAEA feed)

Tokozile Xasa, South Africa's ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union, gave an outline of South Africa's nuclear energy ambitions at the international summit organised jointly by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Belgium.

She said that while South Africa has 93% access to electricity, there are 600 million people on the African continent that do not, and South Africa believes that "if we are to eradicate poverty, unemployment, and inequality in Africa, we need to get rid of energy poverty and guarantee energy security".

As part of its diversified energy mix nuclear has a role, she said, with the Koeberg nuclear power plant, the only operating nuclear power plant in Africa, set to have its life extended by a further 20 years. The Request for Proposals for 2500 MWe of nuclear new build - which had originally been due to be issued this month - would be "issued to the market within this calendar year", she added.

In the light of the continent's rich resources, including uranium, "South Africa intends on leveraging on the beneficiation of these resources to produce feedstock for Africa's nuclear power plants whilst developing its own Pebble Bed Modular Reactor technology as a strategic project considering all required approvals. Based on our track record of producing Pebble Bed fuel, South Africa further intends on leveraging its natural resources to become a global supplier of a High Temperature Reactor fuel, followed by a Multipurpose Reactor technology envisaged for commercial deployment beyond 2030".

South Africa’s Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) is also currently working on a feasibility study on a new reactor to succeed the SAFARI-1 research reactor which has been operating for 58 years. The Multipurpose Reactor is envisaged by Necsa as having a power level of 20-30 MWe with irradiation facilities for material testing and isotope production as well as beam line facilities.

Xasa added: "Given all these realities, we firmly believe that in order to obtain all the potential economic benefits from nuclear and to achieve a self-sufficiency goal, South Africa deserves an opportunity to implement the complete nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful uses in line with our nuclear energy policy."

South Africa published a draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP 2023) in January including different combinations of nuclear, renewables, clean coal and gas to provide security of supply as well as supporting carbon reduction commitments, with final policy decisions to "be taken on the basis of a longterm decarbonisation trajectory" while improving South Africa's competitiveness and economic growth.

South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Reactor was to have been a small-scale high-temperature reactor using graphite-coated spherical uranium oxycarbide tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel, with helium as the coolant, able to supply process heat as well as generating electricity. The nature of the fuel in particular gives the reactor a high degree of passive safety, exploiting inherent safety characteristics depending on the physical properties of the system without the need for intervention.

Based on well-proved German technology, South Africa had been working on the PBMR project since 1993, however, in 2010 the government formally announced its decision no longer to invest in the project, which was then placed under 'care and maintenance' to protect its intellectual property and assets. Former chairman of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, Kelvin Kemm, chairman and CEO of Stratek Global, told World Nuclear News last year that with the legacy and experience of the PBMR project, its High Temperature Modular Reactor (HTMR-100) could see a first-of-a-kind 35 MWe unit built within five years.

The Nuclear Energy Summit - which the organisers described as the first of its kind - saw leaders and representatives from 32 countries backing a joint declaration setting out actions needed to achieve the necessary expansion of nuclear capacity to tackle climate change and boost energy security.

KAERI completes irradiation tests for high-density research reactor fuel

25 March 2024

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute's successful irradiation tests and positive inspection of high-density uranium silicide fuel signal potential for high-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium conversion of high-performance research reactors, aiming to bolster international nuclear non-proliferation efforts upon commercialisation.

Irradiation of test fuel at the BR2 reactor in Belgium (Image: KAERI)

A plate-type uranium silicide fuel, with a high uranium density designed for research reactors, has successfully completed irradiation tests and visual inspections, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) said. The uranium density of the test fuel is 5.3 grams per cubic centimetre, which is about 10% higher than that of the current fuel in use. The visual inspection yielded positive observations.

Although most material testing reactor (MTR) fuel assemblies utilise fuel plates with a uranium density of 4.8 gU per cubic centimetre, the development of higher uranium-density fuels has become crucial for high-performance research reactors. This development supports the conversion from high-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel in the USA and Europe. In this context, KAERI initiated research and development on these high uranium-density silicide fuels in 2020, focusing on fuel plates with densities up to 5.3 gU per cubic centimetre.

For the fuel intended for high-performance research reactors, KAERI developed uranium silicide (U3Si2) spherical-particle powder using the atomisation method and has utilised it for the development of various research reactor fuels. KAERI is involved in the high-density atomised LEU U3Si2 MTR fuel qualification campaign - known as the 'KAERI High-Density Atomised Silicide Fuel Qualification Irradiation Project (KIMQI) Fuel Qualification Project of High-Density Atomised Silicide Fuel" - in collaboration with Belgium's Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN).

The qualification campaign, which began in 2021, consists of two phases: the KIMQI-FUTURE test, which ran from 2021 to 2023 to confirm basic performance, and the KIMQI-GTA (Generic Test Assembly) to evaluate performance under high heat flux and high burnup conditions. The KIMQI-GTA irradiation was recently completed, achieving a peak heat flux of 470 W per square centimetre and a peak local burnup that reached 74% of the initial fissile content. The visual inspection results indicated that no abnormal conditions were experienced during the irradiation test, which is a positive indicator for the potential use of the developed high-density fuel in high-performance research reactors. The final qualification report, including Post-Irradiation Examination (PIE) test results, is expected to be available by the end of 2025.

Once this technology is commercialised, it will enable the replacement of HEU with LEU in high-performance research reactors, significantly contributing to the international nuclear non-proliferation effort.

In December 2022, KAERI signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Poland's National Centre for Nuclear Research to supply nuclear fuel for Poland's research reactor MARIA using high-density low-enriched uranium U3Si2 plate-shaped nuclear fuel manufacturing technology. The MoU sees the South Korean institute looking to supply test fuels to MARIA for the qualification of nuclear fuel supply.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

 

China’s Solar Power Dominance Threatens Western Clean Energy Dreams

By Haley Zaremba - Mar 18, 2024, 

• China's massive spending on solar dwarfs Western nations, giving them a significant edge in clean energy production.
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• China's dominance extends to electric vehicle batteries and rare earth minerals, essential for renewable energy technologies.
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• The West's dependence on Chinese clean energy components raises concerns about market manipulation and global energy security.

China is doubling down on solar power production, making the West’s chances of catching up even slimmer. China has been outspending the rest of the world in clean energy deployment for years now, out-investing other economic superpowers by a factor of four. Not only is the window closing for the United States and Europe to produce solar energy competitively in China, the West is increasingly dependent on imports of Chinese clean energy components and raw materials for their own renewable energy expansion strategies. 

In 2023 China spent more than four times what the U.S. spent and three times what the entire European Union spent on renewables. As a result, Beijing installed more solar panels in a single year than the United States has in its entire history. At the same time, Chinese exports of whole solar panels shot up by 38% while exports of solar panel components increased nearly two-fold. 

This is great news for China’s decarbonization trajectory, which in turn means it’s great news for progress toward decarbonization on a global level, as China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. But it’s very, very bad news for renewable energy industries in the West and for energy security worldwide as more and more of global clean energy supply chains are controlled wholly or in large part by Beijing. 

China already controls near-monopolies on a vast number of key renewable energy supply chains and nodes. The economic giant produces a whopping 80% of the world’s solar panels, 60% of its electric vehicles, and more than 80% of its electric vehicle batteries. China also produces 60% and processes almost 90% of the world’s rare earth minerals. Rare earths such as lithium and cobalt are essential components for clean energy manufacturing and infrastructure, including (but certainly not limited to) electric vehicle batteries, photovoltaic solar panels, and lithium-ion batteries used for renewable energy storage

And that dominance is only going to grow and intensify in the coming months and years as China’s juggernaut performance in 2023 hits the market in full force while Beijing also doubles down on manufacturing and production in 2024. In fact, Chinese officials announced last week in the annual national legislature session that the country plans to accelerate construction of massive solar farms alongside major wind and hydroelectric projects. 

The announcement comes as part of a new chapter in China’s economy. China has already built pretty much as much infrastructure as its own economy can possibly absorb, and as a result the economy is slowing down. The property bubble is bursting on a national level, and unemployment rates are punishing, and set to soar. With a record 11.79 million students expected to graduate from university this year in China, an already massive pool of job-seekers will face punishing levels of competition for an insufficient number of employment opportunities. 

In response to this critical economic contraction, China has laid out a well defined strategy that leans heavily on emerging technologies, and in particular what Beijing’s leaders are calling a “new trio” of industries — solar panels, electric cars and lithium batteries. This forward-facing “new trio” is intended to replace the “old trio” of Chinese manufacturing and exports – clothing, furniture and appliances.

Global leaders find this doubling down on manufacturing in China’s new economic era extremely concerning.  In free-market and free-trade focused regions such as the United States and Europe, production comes as a direct response to demand. This is not the way things work in China, which frequently produces for the sake of production, and now risks seriously flooding the global market with a glut of a vast number of “new trio” products, with potentially harsh consequences for the global economy. “China Is Making Too Much Stuff—and Other Countries Are Worried,” blared a recent Wall Street Journal headline. 

More specifically, the concern is that China, faced with far more solar panels, electric cars, and batteries than their own economy can possibly absorb, Beijing will dump the products onto the global market at steep discounts. In the worst-case scenario, the result of this predatory pricing (an illegal activity forbidden by the World Trade Organization) would be that no other producer could possibly compete, causing the failure of non-Chinese firms and leaving China with an all-out monopoly. This would leave the global energy supply extremely vulnerable, and give Beijing an unfathomable amount of leverage over its allies and adversaries alike. 

Even if free trade and antitrust mechanisms work as they should and prevent this kind of catastrophic takeover, the partial takeover that China has already begun is cause enough for major concern at the global level. Already, the United States and Europe are dependent on China for their own nascent clean energy industries. So far, the response in the United States has been to employ protectionist policies via the Inflation Reduction Act, while leaders in Europe are currently agonizing over whether to follow suit. Whatever the political and economic reaction will ultimately be, however, it seems it will almost certainly be too little, too late. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

 

AI Infiltrates Oil Industry To Speed Up Drilling, Cut Costs

                    

• AI-powered technologies are helping the industry to produce more oil and gas for less money.
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• Bloomberg: AI tech hadshelped shale drillers shorten the average period for drilling a new well by a whole day and the period for fracking that well by three days.
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• Evercore: AI and other tech could bring costs in the shale patch down by double digits as soon as this year.
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Many tech analysts have accused the oil industry of being too slow to adopt new technology. Yet the industry is itself the source of much technological progress in its narrow, specialized field.

Over the past ten years, however, oil and gas have started to open up for digital technology and automation. In fact, the energy industry has very much embraced all things digital and AI. And now, these technologies are helping it produce more oil and gas for less money.

Bloomberg recently reported how the oil industry was using artificial intelligence to improve drilling in the shale patch and boost the recovery rates of fracked wells. This is quite an important step for the industry, which until quite recently appeared to prefer to use the power of computers for things like seismic surveys and pipeline monitoring.

Back in 2018, a KPMG survey found that many oil and gas companies were already adopting artificial intelligence or planning to adopt it soon. Of course, at the time, “artificial intelligence” usually referred to tech such as predictive analytics and machine learning, and yet it was proving helpful enough to merit the attention of oil executives.

“Technology is disrupting the status quo in the oil and gas industry. AI and robotic solutions can help us create models that will predict behavior or outcomes more accurately, like improving rig safety, dispatching crews faster, and identifying systems failures even before they arise,” said one of the authors of the survey, KPMG’s Global Sector Head for Energy and Natural Resources in the United States, said at the time in comments on the findings.

All this is still true and digital technology is being used ever more widely in the energy industry. The U.S. shale patch is a natural early adopter because production costs there tend to be generally higher than they are in conventional oil and gas drilling. But thanks to tech, these costs are coming down as drilling times accelerate—and accuracy is improving too.

Bloomberg noted in its recent report that technology had helped shale drillers shorten the average period for drilling a new well by a whole day and the period for fracking that well by three days. A day saved is a day’s costs saved. Then there is the drilling of longer horizontal wells that last year contributed significantly to higher-than-expected well productivity in the shale patch. And it would not have been possible without digital technology.

According to Evercore ISI, AI and other tech could bring costs in the shale patch down by double digits as soon as this year. “There’ll be significant cost savings, at a minimum double digits, but probably in the 25% to 50% of cost savings in certain scenarios,” Evercore analyst James West told Bloomberg.

These are some significant cost savings, for sure. And if they do materialize, they would certainly enable higher production—if the industry develops an appetite for it. This used to be the natural order of things: whenever drillers found a cheaper way to drill, that was what they did, boosting production.

Now, times are somewhat different. Oil and gas companies do plan for higher production—but within limits as they continue to prioritize shareholder returns and capital discipline. Yet digital tech adoption will likely intensify—because it can apparently help oil and gas companies meet their climate-related targets.

Right now, there is a campaign gathering speed against methane emissions. Just an afterthought a few years ago when everyone focused on CO2, methane has now become a public climate enemy in its own right because of its more powerful, though shorter-lived, greenhouse effect.

Methane emission tracking and monitoring—and ultimately reduction—is becoming a priority area for the energy industry. This is one area where digital technology would certainly come in handy, especially since it is already used for monitoring and risk assessment.

AI and other tech will also come in handy in boosting operational efficiency. Remote drilling and monitoring is a big growth area, and so is equipment failure prediction, which is crucial in this industry. Baker Hughes, for example, boasts it can predict equipment failure for 65% of a client’s wells in the Permian. It wants to boost this to 70%, and it probably will before too long.

Perhaps most importantly, however, is that AI and the rest of what we collectively call digital tech could help oil and gas with its talent shortage problem. Fewer and fewer college-age people are choosing a career in oil and gas. That’s in large part a result of a concerted effort by climate NGOs to discourage them from choosing such a career and, in part, due to the long-term uncertainty of such a career. Cyclical industries are famous for it. Many young people also apparently dislike the physical demands of oilfield work.

Yet the tightening embrace between oil and gas and digital technology is attracting a new sort of talent that does not mind working in the oil and gas industry as long as that work is conducted in an office and not the field. The adoption of things like AI, automation, and predictive analytics is changing the reputation of oil and gas—and for the better this time. And it is changing the industry itself.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

B.C. funds project to extract minerals, metals while reducing environmental impact

A statement from the province says Vancouver-based PH7 Technologies Inc. has developed a "closed-loop" process using chemistry to extract and refine critical minerals and help the industry transition to renewable energy.


Author of the article:
The Canadian Press
Published Mar 20, 2024 • 

Energy and Mines Minister Josie Osborne says the company is demonstrating the kind of innovative thinking that could transform mining around the world. 

PHOTO BY CHAD HIPOLITO /THE CANADIAN PRESS
Article content

The B.C. government is funding a pilot project that it says offers the mining industry a way to significantly reduce the environmental impacts of extracting critical minerals.

A statement from the province says Vancouver-based PH7 Technologies Inc. has developed a “closed-loop” process using chemistry to extract and refine critical minerals and help the industry transition to renewable energy.

It says the process also enables the extraction of metals from low-grade resources in a cost-effective way, including platinum-group metals such as copper and tin.

Mines Minister Josie Osborne says the company is demonstrating the kind of innovative thinking that could transform mining around the world.

The company is receiving $850,000 from a provincial fund to conduct a pilot project to process 5,000 kilograms of raw materials each day into about 2,500 kg of extracted platinum group metals per year.

The release says the process results in significantly lower greenhouse-gas emissions, and lower electricity and water usage compared with mining or other recycling methods.