Henry Ford’s Bizarre Social Program To Control The Personal Lives Of Workers


Elizabeth Puckett
Thu, December 23, 2021
⚡️ Read the full article on Motorious

This disgusting program allowed the Ford Motor Company a hand in everything from their employees' love lives to the cleanliness of their homes.

Henry Ford was a man whose personal life and general personality were fraught with more than a few flaws that would be considered borderline horrendous these days. If historical accounts of the man are to be believed, it would appear that he was a terrible racist, sexist, and had a particular distaste for immigrants. However, his father was an Irish immigrant. Of course, this is not to say that the Ford Motor Company wasn't a massive innovator within the automotive industry, but these extreme values even made their way into how Ford did business.

The Ford Sociological Program was a sector of the Ford Motor Company dedicated solely to ensuring their employees' moral and social righteousness. This came from Ford changing its pay rate from $2.34/day(about $65.08/day in 2021) to $5/day($138.97/day in 2021) to reduce their terrible turnover rate of around 370% in 1913. This was an effective policy as it led to the reduction of employees, leaving the company at just 16% in 1915. So what was so wrong with this new Company initiative if the numbers seemed to show positive results?

Apart from the fact that this raise was entirely unsustainable for Ford in the long term, which eventually led to the program's ending. It also came with many downsides in the form of constant monitoring of the employees' personal lives and personal value requirements. The staff within the sociological department consisted of 50 investigators, which would eventually grow to over 200, who would make regular visits to employee households to check up on their homes, children, and spouses. If you were below the age of 22, you needed to be married, and if you were a woman, you weren't eligible for the raise unless you were a single mother.

Patriotism is a beautiful thing, and you should always be proud of your country. However, Henry Ford took things a little too far as he set stringent guidelines around how his employees could act, talk, and believe. If you weren't what he described as a "good American," you would have been blocked from all of the promotion options that other workers could obtain provided they followed the strict values imposed upon by the company. This was after, of course, your pay was reduced to the previous $2.34/day. If your behavior didn't shape up within six months, you would be fired.

'Excluded, humiliated and degraded’: Case of Quebec teacher removed for wearing hijab is ‘disturbing’ for all Canadians


A person wearing a mask with a graphic protesting Quebecs Bill 21 records on their phone during a rally against that law, after a teacher was removed from her position because she wears a hijab, in Chelsea, Que., on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021. Bill 21 bans public sector workers who are considered to be in positions of authority, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols while working. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang


Sakeina Syed
·Contributor
Fri, December 24, 2021

After a teacher in Chelsea, Quebec was told she had to be removed from her role for wearing a hijab, Canadians are expressing concern and outrage.

Fatemeh Anvari was told she had to move to a position outside the elementary school classroom she had been working in due to Bill 21, a Quebec secularism law that bars some civil servants from wearing religious symbols — like Anvari’s hijab.

Since her removal, there has been increased outcry from citizens and politicians. Hundreds gathered in protest on Tuesday in Chelsea, expressing support for Anvari. Meanwhile, Members of Parliament, Senators, and city councillors have been expressing their condemnation of the law.

While members of the Canadian Muslim community are frustrated by the news, they are less surprised.

It’s shocking that Canadians are looking at this incident and are surprised by it. This is exactly what we’ve been saying since Bill 21 had been passed. We’ve been saying what the drastic effects of it could be, and sadly now we’re seeing them.Fatema Abdalla, Communications Coordinator for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM)

“Throughout the nation, Muslims across Canada are frustrated and disturbed by this bill, and are wanting to do more and take more action,” she said.

The NCCM is calling for the federal government to intervene in the legal challenge against Bill 21. Abdalla says they have yet to hear of this intervention.

In a recent press conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that despite his opposition to the law, the government would not be stepping in. Trudeau said that he wished to avoid a fight over jurisdiction between Ottawa and Quebec, and would leave the matter of making the case to “Quebeckers themselves.”

Liberal MP Salma Zahid released a statement this week saying it was time for the federal government to step in: “To date, the challenge has come from civil society. But as the party that brought the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to Canada, as a government that champions human rights around the world, we cannot allow the weight of this fight to be carried by civil society alone.”
What does the law mean for Muslims and other religious groups?

The law, known as Bill 21, is officially titled “An Act respecting the laicity of the State,” and it bars certain civil servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols in an effort to impose state secularism.

Abdalla said the NCCM has been fighting Bill 21 “since the day it was passed,” and has been engaged in an ongoing legal challenge of the bill since 2019. In collaboration with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), they have been challenging the constitutionality of the bill.

Alongside this, the groups were pushing for a temporary suspension of the law until it was reviewed by the courts. However, this request was denied, and the appeals process is ongoing.

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, Director of the Equality program at the CCLA, spoke to Yahoo News Canada about the organization’s ongoing objection to the law.

“The harms that are happening are both to fundamental rights — the right to equality is being limited, the right to dignity, and of course to freedom of religion,” said Aviv. She added that the law violates “arguably a whole slew of other rights” on top of these: “People’s livelihoods and professions and career aspirations have been interfered with because of who they are and how they practice.”


Aviv said that when Bill 21 was “rushed through the National Assembly” in 2019, the CCLA filed their challenge within 24 hours.

“When we filed, it it was already clear to us that if people who wore religious symbols could not be hired into their professions or make a move within their professions, even those who were grandfathered in, that this was going to have a huge impact on Muslim women, and potentially also on some others, like religious Jewish men and women, Sikh men and women,” she said.

“Excluded and humiliated and degraded”

During the hearings late last year, Aviv says many people testified about the ways the law had already impacted their lives. These included financial impacts, jeopardized family stability, and emotional repercussions.

“One person talked about wanting to actually be a person who wears hijab — wanting to be her social, kind, caring self — and work with people who would understand that it could break down barriers. That people could see her and know her and understand.

Some of the moving testimony that was heard at the hearing was from women who talked about feeling like a second class citizen, about feeling excluded and humiliated and degraded.”

Masla Tahir is an activist in her final year of university, set to enter law school next year. She founded the organization My Hijab My Right as a response to laws restricting Muslim women’s clothing around the world, including in Belgium, France, and Canada.

Tahir told Yahoo News that hearing about Anvari’s removal from her position elicited a feeling of “helplessness.”

“Despite our activism work or our community engagement work, the bill is still in place. The power really lies within the federal government’s ability to intervene and make this stop, or it’s going to be dragged on in court,” she said.

Tahir said that while the ongoing legal challenges are occurring, it could take years: “In the meantime, it’s Muslim women who are going to be impacted negatively.” She cited the economic impacts that set the women, their families, and their livelihoods at a disadvantage.

She says that the recent events in Quebec, and the existence of the law, are particularly demoralizing in light of her own family’s perspective on coming to Canada.



My mom specifically chose Canada for us to move to because she wanted to raise her daughters in a country where there were equal rights for men and women, where women were given equal opportunity to flourish and follow their dreams.Masla Tahir, founder of My Hijab My Right

“Knowing that Bill 21 exists, and is stealing Muslim women’s dreams,” leaves her wordless.

Like Abdalla, Tahir is unsurprised that Bill 21 has impacted Anvari’s life and the lives of other Quebec women, an outcome she has been speaking out about. But seeing the concerns she’s been voicing be confirmed is no consolation.

“We knew that something like this would happen, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

Analysis-Chile miners brace as president elect signals environmental crackdown


Gabriel Boric



Mon, December 20, 2021
By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's mining sector is bracing for tighter environmental rules ahead after President-elect Gabriel Boric pledged to oppose a controversial $2.5 billion iron-copper mine that was approved in August after years of legal wrangling.

"To destroy the world is to destroy ourselves," Boric told a cheering crowd in his first speech after celebrating election victory on Sunday.

The 35-year-old leftist lawmaker singled out the planned Dominga mine, which critics say could devastate La Higuera, a coastal ecosystem rich in biodiversity with a large number of marine mammals and birds. The project's owner, privately held Andes Iron, has long rejected that assertion.

Boric, who takes office in March, campaigned on a pledge to overhaul Chile's market-oriented economic model, but details on his stance toward mining were thin. His comments on Sunday signaled that environmental regulation may be where he looks to make the biggest difference.

"We don't want more 'sacrifice zones' (areas of high pollution), we don't want projects that destroy our country, destroy communities and we exemplify a case that has been symbolic: No to Dominga," Boric said.

Shares of mining companies dropped sharply on Monday, including Chile-focused lithium miners Albemarle and SQM, amid a wider market retreat.

Prices for copper, Chile's major export, are at record highs, which has whetted the appetite of legislators around the region to push for a bigger share of profits to pay for economic recoveries after the coronavirus pandemic.

In neighboring Peru, the new leftist administration of President Pedro Castillo has given communities stronger backing in a spate of protests against mining firms, often over allegations they pollute local lands and water.

"If there is something that can have a real impact on the mining industry, in my opinion, we should start looking at the environmental issues," said Santiago-based Juan Carlos Guajardo, head of consultancy Plusmining.

Chile has the world's largest reserves of lithium, the ultra-light battery metal that is mined using brine from beneath pristine salt flats in the Atacama desert, where regulation around water use is already under scrutiny. Boric has criticized privatization in the sector and wants a state lithium firm.

The Andean nation is the world's top producer of copper and the No. 2 producer of lithium, a major ingredient of batteries used in electric vehicles. Both metals are seeing sharp price rises on soaring demand and a global rush to secure supply.

Chile is already debating higher taxes on mining firms - something Boric supports - as well as a stalled bill to protect glaciers in the mineral rich Andes. The industry says that measure, if unchanged, would risk current mines and obstruct new ones.

It could impact the Andina and El Teniente mines of state company Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, as well as Anglo American's Los Bronces, Los Pelambres of Antofagasta and Caserones, linked to JX Nippon Mining.

The National Mining Society (Sonami), representing companies in the sector, declined to comment on the president-elect's remarks on Sunday or about the outlook for Dominga.

"It is clear that the new wealth and environmental taxes are on the horizon, while the presidency will support plans to raise royalties on mining firms," said consulting Teneo in a report.

Boric, who has moderated his tone in recent weeks to win over centrist voters, did say environmental adjustments would have to be gradual.

"Not everything can be done at the same time and we will have to prioritize to make progress that allows us to improve, step by step, the lives of our people," he said.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and David Gregorio)

Las Bambas says temporary truce in Peru road does not allow sustainable restart of mine


Peru's Andean rural residents complain of negative effects of mining activity

Thu, December 23, 2021, 

LIMA (Reuters) - MMG Ltd's Las Bambas copper mine said on Thursday that a temporary truce to lift a month-long blockade affecting a key copper transport road in Peru does not guarantee conditions to restart operations in a sustainable way.

Residents of the Chumbivilcas province had been blocking the road since Nov. 20, forcing Las Bambas, which produces some 2% of global copper output, to suspend production.

The situation has created a major issue for the government of leftist President Pedro Castillo. Peru is the world's No. 2 copper producer.

While many Chumbivilcas residents agreed to lift the blockade on Wednesday, Giselle Huamani, a top government official focused on social conflicts, told Reuters that the last community to unblock the road had communicated its decision only on Thursday.

In addition, communities have only agreed to lift the blockade temporarily until Dec. 30 https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/exclusive-peru-protesters-clear-las-bambas-road-after-mining-shutdown-legal-2021-12-22, when Peruvian Prime Minister Mirtha Vasquez is set to visit the area. Residents have said that depending on the agreements reached that day they will lift the blockade permanently or restart it.

Las Bambas said in a statement it "calls on all parties to respect the rule of law and generate the conditions necessary to restart our operations in a sustainable way." The company added that the temporary truce did not meet those conditions.

The Las Bambas mine has been a flashpoint for protests since the mine started operations, with blockades hitting the road on and off for over 400 days since then.

Vasquez has strongly urged protesting communities to clear the road but was vague about the consequences of not doing so. She has not ruled out a state of emergency declaration but said she would rather engage in dialogue.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Chris Reese, Diane Craft and Sonya Hepinstall)

A CALF BY ANY OTHER NAME....
Baby cow escapes NY slaughterhouse, finds sanctuary in Sussex County

William Westhoven, Morristown Daily Record
Thu, December 23, 2021

A Christmas break is keeping a young cow from becoming a Christmas steak.

A 400-pound Hereford heifer that escaped a slaughterhouse last week in Queens has found refuge at Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue center in Sussex County.

New York Police said the cow, estimated to be nine months old, ran away from an area business last Friday and was corralled by rangers later that day in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

"She will now be spending the holiday season at her new home, a local rescue sanctuary," the NYPD Special Ops Department wrote in a Tweet.

"Only in New York!" they added.

The New York City Parks Department also went to social media to praise its staff who "managed to rescue the cow through quick thinking and action."


Looks like our Urban Park Rangers were in a sentimental Moo-d today," they wrote.

The NYPD dispatched its ESU Truck 10 to assist at the scene.

The next day, Skylands posted that "Stacy" was in temporary quarantine at their 230-acre facility in Wantage.

"Little Stacy is doing well, getting used to us as she awaits test results that will hopefully give her the OK to go in with some other kids," they wrote.

During the quarantine period, "She gets human visitors and can see and hear other cows," they explained. "She just can’t get up close with them."

Young Hereford cow that escaped a Queens, N.Y. slaughterhouse finds a new home at Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue Center in Wantage.

Once Stacy clears quarantine, she will join the approximately 450 other permanent residents at Skylands. The population there includes 93 other cows or bovine creatures, according to director Mike Stura.

The animals have permanent homes at the sanctuary after being rescued "from slaughterhouses, live markets, farms, extreme neglect, abuse, religious ceremonies, abandonment and are even found wandering streets."

"No matter where they are from or from what dire circumstances they escape, they are provided with proper veterinary care, the best foods, water, a safe place to live, eat and sleep as well as lots of love around the clock," Skylands states on its website. "Every animal requires room to run and live unencumbered by the threat of harm and each one gets exactly what they need here."

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. 

This article originally appeared on Morristown Daily Record: Slaughterhouse-bound cow finds refuge at Skylands Sanctuary in Wantage

SHE IS RIGHT, THEY ARE NOT

Parents outraged after teacher mocks 'bigots,' 'evangelicals' in Dr. Seuss-style poem at school board meeting

Tyler O'Neil

FAUX NEWS
Fri, December 24, 2021

Parents in the Austin, Texas, area expressed outrage after a technology teacher read a Dr. Seuss-style poem mocking "evangelicals" and parents who have expressed concerns about books they call pornographic.

Krista Tyler, instructional technology specialist at Grisham Middle School in the Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) read the poem at the Leander ISD school board meeting Dec. 16.

"Everyone in Leander liked reading a lot/ but some evangelicals in Leader did not," Tyler begins. "These kooks hated reading, the whole reading season./ Please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason./ It could be perhaps critical thinking causes fright./ It could be their heads aren't screwed on just right./ But whatever the reason, their brains or their fright,/ they can't follow policy in plain black and white."

"These bigots don't get to choose for us, that's clear," Tyler's poem continues. "Then how, I am wondering, did we even get here./ They growl at our meetings, all hawing and humming,/ ‘We must stop this indoctrination from coming!’/ They've come for the books and the bonds and what for?/ Their kids don't even attend Leander schools anymore./ Bring back our books, maintain decorum, good grief./ Wouldn't it be nice to have a meeting in peace?"

Parents 

WHITE EVANGELICAL TRUMPETTES in Round Rock ISD and Leander ISD expressed outrage over Tyler's poem.

BLAH BLAH BLAH FOX OF COURSE GIVES THE NEXT 1000 WORDS TO PROTESTERS 

THE RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY OF WE PAY YOUR WAGES YOU GET NO SAY WE ARE THE BOSS OF YOU

Schools fear mass exodus of teachers: 'We’re overworked, undervalued, and constantly under attack'

Suzanne Perez
Fri, December 24, 2021

Kelly Kluthe, who has taught in public high schools in Kansas and Missouri, recently took a job at a private Catholic grade school, saying she has lost faith in public education.

WICHITA — Kelly Kluthe is one of those rock-star science teachers schools need.

She landed an innovative teaching grant at Olathe West High. She speaks at national conferences about ways to make science lessons fun. She mentored new teachers through the University of Kansas Center for STEM Learning and the UKanTeach program, where she got her start.

She’s been teaching for a decade. Loves science, kids, public education.

And she just quit.

“While I love and believe in education for every student despite their circumstances, public schools as a system don’t love their teachers back,” Kluthe posted on Twitter recently.

“The working conditions have always been challenging, but they became downright unsustainable since the start of the pandemic,” she tweeted. “We’re overworked, undervalued, and constantly under attack from people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.”

Kluthe is leaving Crossroads Preparatory Academy, a public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, for Notre Dame de Sion Grade School, a private Catholic school known for its small classes and college-prep trajectory.

That tweet about her mid-year departure drew thousands of responses from teachers across the country, many of whom say they’re burned out, depressed and disillusioned.

They point to struggles over teaching in-person and remote students simultaneously, filling in for peers during substitute shortages and feeling the pressure to make up for lost learning time. What’s more, they’re caught in the middle of controversial mask mandates, debates over critical race theory and challenges to books in school libraries.

Steve Case, a former teacher and professor who ran the University of Kansas’ now-defunct UKanTeach program, says schools should prepare for a mass exodus of teachers in coming months.

“I’m very, very afraid of a collapsing system here,” he said. “We will see a very large number of teachers who leave teaching altogether and don’t come back.”

Case, who taught Kluthe at KU, said mid-year resignations that were once rare are becoming more common. Generally, teachers will “gut it out for the kids” until the end of the year, he said. But a notably different tenor this fall has some Kansas teachers speaking out against what they say is a toxic environment.

During a recent meeting of the Blue Valley school board, veteran teacher Dianne O’Bryan urged communities to ease up on the negativity or risk losing more teachers.

“For those angry, highly critical, accusatory parents in our district, please know that you’re a major contributing factor to teachers leaving,” O’Bryan said. “You have a choice to be angry, but we also have a choice to leave.”

Kluthe, 31, said in an interview that she didn’t intend to resign mid-year, but the stresses of teaching started to affect her physical and mental health.

“I was getting anxiety almost every single work night, just dreading coming to work,” she said. “I was starting to resent the students for behavior issues … when I know a lot of those things are outside of their control. It was just not a healthy place for me to be.”

On Twitter, she wrote: “I’m exhausted. I’m burnt out. I have nothing left to give. I need to step away and take care of myself for a bit.”

Her private-school job comes with less pay but also less pressure, Kluthe said — about 10 students per class instead of 23 or more. She also pointed to more planning time, a tight-knit school community and the “freedom to be creative and follow my passions.” She’ll teach fourth- and fifth-grade science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, classes, mentor peers and write a new social justice curriculum.

“I want to retire (as) a teacher,” she said, “but I need a school that will love me as much as I love my work.”

Case, the retired professor, said Kluthe’s comments echo a growing frustration among teachers “who have not had a voice” in discussions around education.

“It’s like, yeah, we’re talking about it. We know all this stuff,” he said. “But nobody’s doing anything about it, and that’s where hope gets lost.”

Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Some experts think Kansas could soon see mass exodus of teachers

DEP: Texas oil company permit for exploratory well in Big Cypress may be denied

Chad Gillis, Fort Myers News-Press
Thu, December 23, 2021, 

The state is encouraging Texas oil speculators to withdraw their plans until more information is provided on how seismic testing and oil drilling in the Big Cypress National Preserve will be remediated.

Burnett Oil has coveted lands in the preserves for years, filing applications with state and federal agencies to allow a 12,000-foot-deep exploration well.

The company conducted seismic testing over the past several years in the preserve, and critics say the company did not comply with mitigation plans for that part of the drilling process.

Betty Osceola leads a group of concerned citizens and Miccosukee and Seminole tribe members on a hike through Big Cypress National Preserve on Saturday, April 10, 2021. The group is unhappy about a proposed oil drilling site in the preserve.

Jaclyn Lopez, with the Center for Biologist Diversity, said she's concerned that Burnett will again violate the terms of the permit by failing to properly address environmental damages.

"We’re quite worried about that," Lopez wrote in an email to The News-Press. "It seems they aren’t able to get the seismic reclamation right after four years, which gives us little reason to believe they’ll get the oil drilling mitigation right."

More: More than 100 manatees died in Lee County waters this year. Advocates concerned about population

Lopez, along with several environmental groups, penned a letter earlier this month to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, expressing their concerns about whether the company will abide by regulations going forward.

Burnett Oil could not be reached for comment.

Others concerned about South Florida's dwindling environmental resources say they'd prefer to see the company give up on its plans in Big Cypress.

Houston Cypress is a member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and is involved with several environmental groups.

More: Lake O water levels high, what does it mean for SWFL?

Cypress said he wants the company to stop operations in the Big Cypress, not that he's in favor of drilling elsewhere.

"Overall, I’m about leaving it in the ground, but my first instinct is to say the oil they would pull up anyway is poor quality," Cypress said. "They could get better elsewhere. I’m not saying drill elsewhere. It’s just my way to get rid of them. Overall, I’m against extraction."

He said the land in the Big Cypress is sacred to his people and that he wants the company to clean up previous damages and leave South Florida.

"We recently created a letter that was very critical of the Burnett oil exploration years ago," Cypress said. "They didn’t clean up their act good enough — ruts in the ground and other disturbances that weren’t mitigated or fixed."

DEP sent a letter to the company earlier this week, asking for more information before the permit gets denied.

More: For the birds: Wintering species making their way to Southwest Florida for the season

Burnett submitted changes to the initial permit application last month, and DEP permit reviewers said more information on remediation will be needed before the state can proceed with its review.

"The ongoing changes in project design and mitigation proposals presents a significant challenge to (DEP's) ability to review and assess the permitting criteria," wrote DEP attorney Megan Mills, who is over DEP's permitting program, in a Dec. 20 letter to Burnett. "If reasonable assurances that the permitting criteria have been adequately addressed to support the issuance of a permit are not provided in the next response, your application may be denied."

Burnett has until Feb. 22 to respond with more information, according to the DEP letter.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Oil drilling in Big Cypress National Preserve: DEP wants info from Burnett

DoorDash will require all employees to deliver goods or perform other gigs, and some of them aren’t happy

Levi Sumagaysay -

All DoorDash Inc. employees, from software engineers up to the chief executive, will have to perform deliveries or maybe shadow a customer-service agent once a month starting next year — and some of them aren’t happy about it.




DoorDash confirmed Thursday that it told employees this week it is reinstating the program, called WeDash, in January. The company said it has had the program since its inception and in 2018 tied it to a philanthropic effort to address hunger and food waste, but put it on hold because of the pandemic.

The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said. Besides WeSupport, which will allow employees to shadow customer-service workers, the company will also eventually offer WeMerchant, a way for employees to take a closer look at the merchant-support side of DoorDash’s business.

On Blind, an app that lets employees post anonymously, a thread about the delivery requirement has about 1,500 comments. The post, which is titled “DoorDash making engineers deliver food,” includes profanity and statements such as “I didn’t sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this.”

Others responding to the post said it was a good way for engineers to see how their work affects customers and merchants, and possibly to “empathize” with lower-paid delivery workers. Other commenters said their companies have also required white-collar employees to step into the shoes of their companies’ hourly workers once in a while.

A Blind spokesman said Thursday the company can confirm the post was written by a DoorDash employee, because Blind requires users to sign up using their work email addresses. The DoorDash spokeswoman said the complaints on Blind don’t reflect the sentiment of the company’s employees at large.

DoorDash said it was reinstating the program because it wants employees to understand the challenges and problems in its business and help solve them.

The money employees earn from doing deliveries will be donated to nonprofits, according to the company.

Japan's latest life-sized Gundam statue is almost complete




Igor Bonifacic
·Contributing Writer
Thu, December 23, 2021, 12:30 PM·1 min read

No matter how many times a new Gundam statue goes up in Japan, it’s always a sight to behold. This week was no different when workers attached the head of the RX-93FF V to its body as a crowd of onlookers and journalists came to watch the spectacle.

The one-to-one recreation is a riff on Amuro Ray’s Nu Gundam from 1988’s Char’s Counterattack. It stands 81.3 feet tall and is located in front of the LaLaport shopping center in Fukuoka, the most populous city on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino was involved in the design of the statue, including the new tri-tone color scheme that adorns it.

It’s not the first one-to-one scale Gundam statue to go up in Japan. The one most people are probably familiar with is the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam that stands in Tokyo’s Odaiba district. It was a frequent sight during the 2020 Summer Olympics and the source of many a nerd faux pas during the event. Just ask the BBC and this guy.

According to The Mainichi, there are still some finishing touches workers need to add before the Gundam is complete sometime by the end of February. Hopefully the pandemic eases by then so that there's a possibility people outside of Japan can visit it.

Comet Leonard lights up the night sky this Christmas

Thomas Hornberger
Fri, December 24, 2021

Eighty-thousand years ago, Comet Leonard zoomed past Earth for the first time. Now, it's lighting up the skies once again. Leonard is the most anticipated and dazzling comet of the year. It was first discovered by Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, earlier this year.

The comet came within 21 million miles of Earth — the closest it will get — on December 12, and is now heading out towards the sun. It's traveling at a speed of 158,084 miles per hour, relative to Earth, according to the astronomy site EarthSky.

"This is the last time we are going to see the comet," Leonard said in an interview posted by the University of Arizona. "It's speeding along at escape velocity, 44 miles per second. After its slingshot around the sun, it will be ejected from our solar system, and it may stumble into another star system millions of years from now."

/ Credit: / Getty Images

The comet can be seen at night about an hour after sunset above the southwestern horizon. Experts are saying to use Venus as a guide to help you find the comet. NASA says you may need binoculars to spot it.

This will be the last chance stargazers have for viewing before the comet travels deep into space — if it doesn't break up first. The comet, which is mostly made up of space dust, rock and ice, could disintegrate at any time.

The NASA and ESA Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager caught several images of the comet passing Earth last week. They used the images to create a video.

 

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

A Second Morgan Stanley Trader Linked to FX Probe Leaves the Lender

Donal Griffin
Thu, December 23, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- A Morgan Stanley currency trader, whose unit was tied to an internal probe into suspected mismarking in 2019, has left the firm, the second such departure in recent months.

Rodrigo Jolig, who helped run the New York-based bank’s FX options business before being suspended amid an internal probe two years ago, was discharged in November after the investment bank disclosed allegations about his conduct, according to filings from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The allegations against Jolig were linked to “valuation control processes and marking non-securities positions relative to profit and loss goals” and “communicating about affiliate business using an unapproved communication platform,” the Finra filing shows. The claims are similar to those levied against his former boss Thiago Melzer, the bank’s ex-head of FX options trading who was discharged in June, Bloomberg reported.

Jolig and Melzer were stars at the Wall Street lender until a series of complex transactions linked to the Turkish lira went awry in 2019, losing millions of dollars and prompting officials at the bank to investigate whether traders had been valuing the deals improperly, Bloomberg revealed at the time. The status of that review -- and its conclusions -- are unclear.

Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in New York, declined to comment. Roberta Scrivano, a spokeswoman for Jolig, also declined comment.

Both Jolig and Melzer have since started hedge funds in their native Brazil, Bloomberg reported in September. Jolig is a partner in Alphatree Capital, a new hedge fund backed by the family of Brazilian property tycoon Elie Horn. Melzer has started a fund called Upon Global Capital, where he is chief investment officer.

Fund Critic Birdthistle to Take Reins at SEC’s Division of Investment Management

By Kenneth Corbin

BARRONS
Dec. 23, 2021 2:51 pm ET

The Securities and Exchange Commission has tapped a law professor and vocal critic of the mutual fund industry to head up the Division of Investment Management, the unit of the agency that develops policy governing the advisor and fund industries.

William Birdthistle will join the SEC from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, where his research has focused on securities regulation and investment funds, which figures to be an active area of policymaking under the agenda of Chairman Gary Gensler.


Birdthistle is a prominent critic of the fund sector, arguing that the industry is riddled with bad behavior among asset managers. As the head of the division that develops policy in the fund and advisor space, he will now have a chance to put his ideas into regulatory initiatives.

“Professor Birdthistle will bring remarkable expertise in investment funds to the SEC,” Gensler says in a statement.


William Birdthistle at the law library at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Illinois Institute of Technology

“The Division of Investment Management develops regulatory policies to oversee investment companies and investment advisors so that American investors can confidently save to buy homes, pay for college, or plan for retirement,” Gensler says. “I look forward to working closely with William to execute our mission.”

Birdthistle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his priorities at the SEC. In a statement, he lauds the investment management unit’s “exceptional reputation for protecting investors in funds and the asset management arena,” and says he is eager to work with the chairman and staff “to help investors and others.”

As author of the 2016 book Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now, Birdthistle argues that Americans saving for retirement through fund-heavy 401(k) plans and IRAs are vulnerable to “the built-in flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds,” according to a synopsis of the book.

“Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the panoply of ways that some financial advisors have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds in trading after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds,” the synopsis says.

Birdthistle joins the commission at a time when the chairman has laid out an ambitious regulatory agenda, and brought in staffers like Barbara Roper, a leading advocate for stricter investor protections, that signal a pivot toward a more muscular regulatory regime that has some industry leaders worried. Writing this week in Barron’s, Baird Vice Chairman John Taft warned that the industry is facing “the single most aggressive regulatory push we’ve seen from the SEC in decades.”

The addition of Birdthistle to the division of the SEC overseeing funds and advisors won’t likely allay any of those concerns.

“One would expect that he will bring a very strong pro-investor bias to the SEC Division of Investment Management, with a particular focus on transparency,” Bill Singer, a veteran securities attorney and the author of the Broke and Broker blog, says in an email to Barron’s Advisor.

“My expectation is that he will push for more clarity as to fees and will certainly seek to discourage the conflicts inherent in the ’40 Act community that are nurtured by the overlap of mutual funds, investment advisors, and brokerage firms,” Singer said, referring the 1940 Investment Advisers Act and Investment Company Act, the foundational statutes for regulation of advisors and fund companies.

Duane Thompson, president of the consultancy Potomac Strategies, anticipates that Birdthistle could advance the commission’s efforts to crack down on funds and advisors that advertise ESG investments, products that purport to make commitments around environmental, social, and governance practices. That could include ensuring that an advisor’s ESG disclosures on Form ADV are in line with their portfolios.

Thompson also notes that Birdthistle, an academic, follows a pattern of Gensler bringing in outsiders to head divisions, rather than the more customary selections of prominent Wall Street attorneys, suggesting that “a modest shakeup is in store in terms of prioritizing which regulatory issues to tackle.”

“Given the shakeup at the division levels by Chairman Gensler, I think there could be a few surprises in store for this part of the securities industry,” Thompson says. “We’ll just have to wait and see what Mr. Birdthistle has in mind.”

PRIVATIZATION CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST
U.K. Government Repeats Bulb Energy Mistake by Failing to Hedge

Todd Gillespie, Lucca de Paoli and Alex Morales
Thu, December 23, 2021




(Bloomberg) -- After nationalizing Bulb Energy Ltd., the U.K. government is making the same mistake that helped take down the nation’s seventh biggest supplier in the first place: failing to hedge adequately.

The energy firm, currently run by special administrator, isn’t buying power and gas in advance to shield its finances from rising prices as Treasury rules won’t allow the government to hedge, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details are private. Bulb’s employees are also being paid higher salaries as administrator Teneo Inc. seek to retain staff needed to run the firm.

All of that risks ballooning the 1.7-billion-pound ($2.3 billion) bailout bill that will eventually be paid by consumers. Gas prices in the U.K. have surged more than 60% since the government announced it was taking steps to run Bulb. The forced nationalization -- the first since the 2008 banking crisis -- had already been questioned as cheaper options were available.

“We’re focused on continuing to deliver the best possible service for our members during this period,” Bulb said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “In order to do this, we’ve offered team members who stay with Bulb - excluding our executive team - a payment on top of their normal salary.”

The U.K. energy market is facing a crisis, with 24 firms that supply households having failed since August, forcing millions of customers to switch supplier. As gas prices soared 500% this year, many small providers that weren’t hedged couldn’t afford to buy energy for their clients.

Bulb, which lacked the large balance sheets and generation capacity of bigger firms, was put into special administration on Nov. 22 after energy regulator Ofgem judged it too large to be absorbed through the normal process, in which a new supplier is appointed to take on the customers of failed rivals. The founder of Ovo Group, the U.K.’s second-largest supplier, cast doubt on the nationalization process.

Energy providers that absorbed customers from smaller companies have already been granted 1.8 billion pounds by Ofgem to cover initial wholesale costs. That will also add to the mounting bills for the government and taxpayers over the coming year.

U.K. households are set for an 18-billion-pound increase in energy bills in 2022, according to Investec Plc. The surge in gas prices has left the energy price cap -- the ceiling for what firms can charge most customers -- on course to increase by 56% in April, to an average of 2,000 pounds per household a year, analysts Nathan Piper, Sandra Horsfield and Martin Young wrote in a report.

China Mobile Boosts Share Sale to World’s Second-Biggest in 2021

Bloomberg News
Thu, December 23, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- China Mobile Ltd., the country’s largest wireless carrier by revenue, is set to raise $8.78 billion from its Shanghai listing, making it the world’s second largest offering this year -- thanks in part to state support.

The state-run company, which was removed from the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year due to an investment ban ordered by former U.S. President Donald Trump, will exercise its over-allotment option for the offer due to strong demand from domestic retail and state investors, according a Shanghai bourse filing.

That would enable China Mobile to raise a total of 56 billion yuan from the sale, making it the world’s second largest offering this year after electric pickup truck maker Rivian Automotive Inc.’s $13.7 billion IPO, Bloomberg data show. It would also become one of the 10 largest share offers for the nation’s domestic stock market in a decade. Companies listing in mainland China had raised nearly a record $80 billion this year, up about 17% from 2020.

The A-share offer has attracted a total of 19 strategic investors, mostly state-owned entities including the National Council for Social Security Fund, China-Africa Development Fund, China Culture Industrial Investment Fund, National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, State Grid Yingda International Holdings Co., State Development & Investment Corp., China FAW Group Co., and state-run insurers like China Life Insurance Co. -- as well as the Brunei Investment Agency -- the filing shows.

The NYSE suspended trading in China Mobile in January, along with the Asian nation’s other major state-owned operators, China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. That development followed an order barring U.S. investments in Chinese companies the Trump administration deemed a threat to national security. China Telecom listed in Shanghai in August after raising more than $7 billion. China United Network Communications Ltd. is already trading on the exchange.

The strategic investors for China Mobile will pay 24.3 billion yuan for 49.9% of its planned A-share offer of 845.7 million shares ahead of exercise of the green shoe option, and they will be subject to lock-up period from 12 months to 36 months.

All of the over-allotment portion of the A-share offer, or 126.86 million shares, will be allocated to retail investors, according to the filing. Earlier this week, China Mobile said its A-share issue was 805.68 times covered from retail investors’ subscription.

Proceeds from the listing in the Chinese financial hub will be used to fund 5G network expansion, cloud infrastructure, smart-living projects and tech development that will cost the company 157 billion yuan in total, China Mobile has said.

China International Capital Corp. and Citic Securities Co. are sponsors of China Mobile’s A-share offer. The main underwriters include Huatai United Securities Co., BOC International (China) Co. and China Merchants Securities Co.

Hong Kong's pension scheme heads for first loss since 2018, prompting fund managers to seek wider investment scope

Fri, December 24, 2021

The Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF), Hong Kong's compulsory retirement scheme, is set to register its first loss in three years due to the equities slump that wiped out value in the city's stock market and the exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The nearly 400 investment funds under the MPF scheme lost HK$14.8 billion (US$1.9 billion) in the first 11 months, according to the data provider MPF Ratings. The pension of each of the city's 4.5 million MPF members shrank by about HK$3,288, a loss that is unlikely to be recovered, with Hong Kong's key index still wallowing among the world's top losers as the year draws to a close.

The MPF funds suffered a 0.4 per cent loss on average in the first 11 months. If the trend continues this month, the HK$1.2 trillion (US$153.8 billion) pension scheme will post its first yearly loss since 2018 when the funds fell 8.21 per cent on average

Hong Kong and China equity funds were the worst performing MPF funds, losing 12.8 per cent in the year to November, according to MPF Ratings. A crackdown on Chinese tech companies, along with a slowdown in the property market and pandemic-driven economic slump contributed to a sell-off this year.

The Hang Seng Index has lost about 15 per cent so far this year through December 22, erasing about US$283 billion of market value from its 64 blue-chip members. The CSI 300 Index, which tracks the biggest companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, fell 5.6 per cent. MSCI China, a gauge of more than 741 companies listed in onshore and offshore markets, slumped 23 per cent.

To enhance longer term returns, analysts said the pension regulator should continue to relax investment restrictions on MPF fund managers.

The Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA) in November last year relaxed rules, allowing MPF fund managers to invest in yuan-denominated Chinese shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Analysts attributed this year's milder loss to the easing of the investment rules. Before that, Hong Kong and China equity funds could only have Hong Kong stocks or Chinese stocks listed overseas in their portfolio but not shares listed on mainland bourses.

MPF: Hong Kong's pension regulator mulls allowing members to invest in sovereign bonds

"Before the relaxation, we only had 300 stocks in the original Hong Kong equity sleeve," said Jacky Cheng, senior associate at consultancy firm Willis Towers Watson. "Now, under the new Hong Kong and mainland sleeve, we have more than 1,000 stocks."

Cheng said the combined returns of the mainland-listed shares and Hong Kong were better than Hong Kong stocks alone in the past three-year period.

"The easing of rules does raise the profile of Chinese equities as a whole, arousing interest from investors to tap into the structural growth opportunities both in the onshore and offshore China equities space," said Ronald Chan, head of equities for Asia at Manulife Investment Management, the largest MPF provider in Hong Kong.

While the MPF's investment returns have not been good this year, Chan said Manulife's MPF China Value Fund, which has exposure to A shares and is one of the most popular funds in the company's MPF profile, showed cumulative returns of 29.7 per cent for three-year period to November and 52.9 per cent over a five-year horizon.

"Over the longer term, China A-shares provide opportunities in companies and sectors that are not available in China H shares and Hong Kong names, helping investors diversify and look for exposure in China's structural growth," Chan said.

The MPFA, meanwhile, is set to continue easing rules further. Next year, the MPF will allow investments in Chinese government bonds.

Christopher Hui Ching-yu, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, said on Wednesday that the government will seek legislators' approval by the middle of next year to amend a law to allow pension funds to invest in bonds issued by the central government and the mainland's policy banks.

"This initiative will further diversify the products for MPF investment, which is not only responding to the MPF industry but also helping MPF schemes members seize the opportunities in the mainland bond markets to strive for better return," said Ayesha Macpherson Lau, chairwoman of the MPFA.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
China Cements Rare Earths Dominance With New Global Giant




Bloomberg News
Thu, December 23, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- China formed a rare-earths giant by merging some key producers, creating a behemoth that will strengthen its control over the global industry it has dominated for decades.

The group is formed through merging rare-earth units of government-owned companies including China Minmetals Corp., Aluminum Corp. of China and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group Co., according to a stock exchange filing from China Minmetals Rare Earth Co. The new entity, China Rare-Earths Group, will speed the development of mines in the south, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Bloomberg News reported in September that China was planning to create two giants -- one in the country’s north and the other in the south, each focusing on a different subset of materials. China controls most of the world’s mined output of rare earths, a broad group of 17 elements that are used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets, and has a stranglehold over processing.

The move aims to better allocate resources, realize green development and upgrade deep-processing of the rare-earth sector, according to CCTV. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will hold a 31.21% stake in the new group, while Chinalco, China Minmetals and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group will each own 20.33%, it said.

“This is part of a broader repositioning of Chinese industry to feed the supply chain for the coming years of electrification, and it’s a recognition that the supply chain is the key tool for success in the coming decade,” said Jim Litinsky, the CEO of MP Materials, which is the only U.S. producer of rare earths. “It’s great for the business in the sense that I think the West is increasingly realizing that there needs to be an integrated localized supply chain.”

China Minmetals Rare Earth surged as much as 8.5% in Shenzhen and Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. gained more than 5% in Shanghai.

Read more on how China’s grip on rare earths began with decision 30 years ago

The country’s dominance of the sector has been an increasing concern. The little-known materials were thrust into the spotlight in 2019 when China considered export controls as part of its trade war with the U.S., which relies on the country for 80% of its imports. While ultimately no restrictions were ever implemented, it highlighted the risks of being dependent on one country and spurred a raft of announcements from Western economies pledging to boost their rare-earths independence.

The latest round of consolidation follows restructuring efforts by Beijing that created six licensed groups in 2016. The government also controls production, granting annual quotas to the firms. This year’s volume has been set at 168,000 tons.

Rare earth prices have surged this year as demand outpaced supply, while a power shortage exacerbated disruptions and a broad rally in commodity prices increased production costs. Neodymium and praseodymium -- two elements used in permanent magnets -- have jumped to the highest in a decade.

“The new boom cycle is about the fact that in EV we’re going from low single-digit penetration to all vehicles in decades, so the amount of scale needed to be successful is enormous,” Litinsky said.

What the US could learn from China's nuclear power expansion

HOW TO BUILD RITE
Daniel Van Boom 

One of the world's great powers is making significant progress toward reaching carbon neutrality. It's not the US.

Like many countries, China has made a pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2060. Unlike many countries, it's actually doing something to get there. That's not a reference to its commitment to stop financing overseas coal plants, nor its steady expansion of wind and solar power. China's progress comes in the form of 150 new nuclear reactors, which it plans to construct over the next 15 years.

Just the mention of nuclear power is enough to make some wince. There's a powerful perception that these plants are unsafe and devastate the local environment. Yet nuclear power is clean, reliable and safe. Traumatic imagery of nuclear meltdowns like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima obscure the statistics: Coal kills about 350 times as many people per terrawatt produced as nuclear.

China's expansion of nuclear power will be the biggest in the history of the world, but its merits go beyond simple scope. The country is also pioneering the use of "Generation 4" reactors, which promise to be safer and more efficient. One such design is known as a "pebble bed reactor," where atomic fuel is encased within graphite balls that can withstand more heat than nuclear fission is capable of generating. These pebble bed reactors are said to be incapable of meltdown. On Tuesday, China became the first country in the world to connect a Generation 4 PBR to the grid. Another is under construction.

The US and Europe were once enthusiastic about nuclear power, which promised to produce energy "too cheap to meter." Development of new plants reached a peak in the '70s, but a meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979 soured enthusiasm. Seven years later, the Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union killed it entirely. Two decades after that, as governments were rethinking their aversion to nuclear energy, Fukushima in 2011 acted as a nail in the coffin.

Since Fukushima, however, climate change has altered the equations by which we calculate nuclear energy's merit. The world needs to drastically ramp up power production, yet it can no longer rely on the polluting means it's long been accustomed to. Solar and wind power are important elements of a carbon-neutral future, but there's fierce debate over whether they alone will be sufficient. Acceptance of nuclear power has been on the rise as a result, with a May study reporting that 76% of Americans are in favor of atomic energy, the highest percentage since pre-Fukushima.

"If you're going to decarbonize the global energy system, you're going to need a lot of energy, a lot more than we have," said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force. "We [support] nuclear from around the bend. It's not like we're pro nuclear, we're pro 'anything that can solve the climate problem'."

China's nuclear expansion is a double opportunity. The People's Republic emits nearly a third of the world's carbon and burns six times as much coal as the US. If nuclear energy can reduce those emissions, the whole planet will benefit. An even better scenario would be China developing cheap, safe reactors that can be constructed around the world. Many governments make big claims about reducing carbon, but few have charted a course to actually getting there. Nuclear adoption will help.

China has not come out of 2021 in a positive light. In addition to ongoing genocide in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party this year embarked on a heavy-handed Big Tech crackdown and has set a questionable example on COVID management. But on the topic of nuclear energy, at least, it appears China has something to teach the US.

For its part, the US has gone the opposite route. In April, New York's Indian Point Power Plant had its final reactor shut down. California plans to close two reactors in 2025 that generate 15% of its carbon-free electricity. Less nuclear doesn't necessarily mean more solar or wind, as environmentalists hope, but rather more natural gas. New York's gas usage was 30% higher in November compared to the same month last year, according to S&P research, with the closure of the Indian Point plant being a major cause.

PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, California, in 2012. Bloomberg/CNET

Nuclear's great costs

The public's association of nuclear power with calamity is one reason why atomic energy has languished in the West. The other key issue is cost. Nuclear plants were once relatively affordable to build, but many argue they're prohibitively expensive. The price tag for two overdue reactors being built in Georgia looks to exceed $27 billion.

It doesn't have to be this way, says Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He points to numerous reasons that costs have ballooned. First, giant infrastructure projects of all kinds have seen more delays and cost increases in the West, not just nuclear power plants. Second, the US and much of Europe went on a 20-year nuclear hiatus after Chernobyl. Nuclear construction know-how and efficiency were lost during that time.

Then there are simple organizational flaws.

"In Asia, the company that designs the plant is often the same company that builds and then operates the plant," he said. "In the US we have seen the technology companies that create the blueprints for components and modules toss them over the fence to another company that then has to build them."

"If the two sides have not talked to each other from the very beginning, there is no guarantee that what was designed is actually constructible."

Nuclear power in the US does have one specific challenge not faced by other industries: the complex web of regulations that's been spun in the years since Chernobyl. China's method of nuclear expansion is similar to the one proven to work by France in the '70s: Design a few plants and then build a lot of them. Meanwhile, different states in the US have different safety requirements, which inhibits any company's ability to standardize design.

"Nuclear needs to be heavily regulated, but it's inefficiently regulated," Cohen said. "Is it really plausible that we're going to have 27 designs in the world?"

He looks to the airplane industry as an example of how to streamline. Companies like Boeing and Airbus have only a handful of aircraft designs. That makes it easier to mass produce, but it also simplifies problem solving. It's easier to work out why 1,000 planes have the same issue than to solve 20 different issues across 20 different designs.

"If China can bring a cheaper unit to the world, just as they brought cheap solar panels, then bring it on," he said.

© Provided by CNET The tristructural isotropic, or TRISO, particle fuel for X Energy's nuclear power plant design. X Energy

Green future

China's nuclear ambitions don't end at its own borders. One of President Xi Jinping's signature projects is the Belt and Road Initiative, which sees China building bridges, airports and other infrastructure across the developing world. If China can make capable reactors at competitive prices, they can be exported across Africa and energy-hungry countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. One senior Chinese Communist Party member said he hopes China will build 30 reactors overseas by the end of the decade.

"China has already announced that they're not going to make any coal investment overseas, so the next phase of infrastructure is going to be nuclear," said Sha Yu, associate research scholar at the Center for Global Sustainability. Yu expects that nuclear's space in China's energy mix will expand considerably in the next three decades, from around 4% now to between 15% and 25% by around 2050.

Such advancements may prod the US into revitalizing its interest in atomic energy. Several companies already have next-generation nuclear plants in development. X-Energy has a pebble bed reactor it hopes will be operational by 2027, and the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower is advancing toward meltdown-proof reactors that run off depleted nuclear fuel. NuScale last month struck a deal to build a small modular reactor in Romania.

The question is how much these activities will be supported by the government. There are some signs of life. President Joe Biden's landmark infrastructure bill will see just under $10 billion devoted to nuclear projects, including $3.2 billion that will go to developing Generation 4 technology. More was to come in Biden's Build Back Better legislation, though that bill's future is now in doubt.

"The Biden Administration's plan is to have a carbon-free grid by 2030. That is an enormous challenge, and the resources that are being discussed now are not commensurate with its magnitude," said MIT's Buongiorno.

"It's a fantastic start, but we're going to need a lot more."