U.S. Treasury warns crypto firms on Russia cybersecurity threat - source

Thu, March 3, 2022,
By Hannah Lang

March 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department has reached out to cryptocurrency companies about their cybersecurity controls amid concerns that Russia could wage retaliatory cyber attacks in response to Western sanctions, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The United States and its allies have unleashed a slew of sanctions targeting Russia's banks, state-owned entities, and elites, among others, following the country's invasion of Ukraine

Governments have warned for weeks that Russia or its allies could carry out cyber attacks in retribution for sanctions, leading banks to increase monitoring, scenario-planning and line up extra staff in case hostile activity surges.

In a sign U.S. regulators see the ballooning cryptocurrency industry as a growing source of systemic risk, U.S. Treasury officials have also been in discussions with cryptocurrency exchanges and trade groups to ensure U.S. digital assets are safe, said the person familiar with the matter.

Officials are also sharing indicators that IT systems have been compromised, such as a network infiltration or a data breach, with crypto and other financial firms, the person said.

The value of all cryptocurrencies surged past $3 trillion last year, with approximately 13% to 14% of Americans invested in digital assets as of 2021, according to research by the University of Chicago.

As the digital asset has become more popular, crypto hacks have grown. Last year, for example, an anonymous hacker stole roughly $600 million in cryptocurrencies from Poly Network, a decentralized finance network, before giving it back. Hackers also stole at least $150 million from crypto exchange BitMart.

Regulators have warned that crypto routs or runs on crypto currencies could pose a risk to the broader financial system.

Some U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern that digital assets could be used to evade Western sanctions, although Biden administration officials have played down that risk.

 (Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Lukoil, a Russian Oil Company, Calls for an End to the Ukraine War

March 3, 2022


Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, appeared to distance itself from President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday by calling for a “fast resolution” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The statement most likely reflects the company’s desire to protect its extensive overseas operations, which include a network of more than 200 franchised gas stations in states like New York and New Jersey. Lukoil is one of the most recognizable Russian brands in the United States.

Many lawmakers in Washington are pressing the Biden administration to ban the purchase of Russian oil by U.S. companies and to impose sanctions on Russian energy companies. Shares of Lukoil on the London Stock Exchange have fallen more than 40 percent since mid-February.

Lukoil has long projected a more independent image than Rosneft, the state-controlled company that dominates the Russian oil industry. Lukoil was founded in 1991 as a state-owned enterprise as the Soviet Union was falling apart. The company went private in 1993, and seven years later it acquired Getty Oil, an American company, which gave Lukoil a network of U.S. filling stations.

“We stand for the immediate cessation of the armed conflict and duly support its resolution through the negotiation process and through diplomatic means,” Lukoil said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday.

It was not clear whether the move was a sign that executives of Russia’s largest private enterprise were breaking with Mr. Putin, or mainly an effort to persuade Western leaders, business partners and customers to keep doing business with the company.

“It says they realize it’s going to be difficult for them to engage in international commerce, let alone retail sales in the U.S.,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. “I’d call a Russian brand for gasoline the 21st-century equivalent of the scarlet letter.”

While petroleum products are the biggest Russian import in the United States and Europe, Russian products and sports teams have become pariahs. Several states have banned the sale of Russian vodka, and restaurants, stores and bars across the United States have taken Russian spirits off their shelves.

The Newark City Council voted on Wednesday to suspend the business licenses of local Lukoil gas stations.

Lukoil stations in the United States sell fuel produced in many countries, including the United States. They are operated as independent franchises, and make up a small fraction of Lukoil’s operations. The company has subsidiaries in roughly 30 countries, including those involved in exploring and producing oil and gas in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Colombia and Iraq. The company’s biggest reserves are in Russia, particularly western Siberia.

In its letter to shareholders, Lukoil said it “makes every effort to continue stable operations in all countries and regions of its presence, fulfilling the main mission — to provide reliable energy supplies to consumers around the world.”

Source: NY Times

The hydrogen market’s growing credibility

When journalists write about other journalists, it often smacks of navel gazing — and is thus best avoided. However, this week I am breaking this rule since I have been struck by the intensifying debate inside the media about how to cover the climate crisis.

To cite one example: on Tuesday the World Editors Forum is holding its first virtual global climate conference to discuss “the gaps between what audiences need and want on climate change and what newsrooms are delivering right now.” This will discuss issues such as the role of storytelling and how to communicate technical data. Another debating point will be the decision by Canada’s Globe and Mail to release more than 180 files of its raw sources from an investigation into last summer’s extreme heat, reflecting a wider #ReadTheSources campaign from Unesco and the French group Outlet to make climate reporting more credible.

Can tactics such as these offset the crumbling levels of public trust in the media? What else can journalists (like us) do to communicate climate issues effectively? We would love to hear your views, given that Moral Money was established three years ago to illuminate green finance issues and ESG.

Meanwhile in today’s newsletter, we cover a striking data initiative in the fast-expanding world of hydrogen, a pandemic-era twist in philanthropy at Fidelity, new data about impact investing and alarming news about how rising sea levels threaten the US east coast. And if you want another sign of how sustainability issues are getting more media focus, check out the breaking story about how Carl Icahn, the corporate raider, has teamed up with animal welfare activists (which we will return to later this week.) Read on. 

Gillian Tett

Hydrogen is hot

The hydrogen market is red hot today, or so many opportunistic investors would say. However, like many nascent areas of finance, it has hitherto operated with considerable opacity. Last autumn, one of the first efforts to create more price transparency and consistency emerged: Deutsche Börse’s power and gas exchange EEX announced plans to launch a new price index in 2022.

Now another initiative is under way to help the market become more credible: S&P Global Platts, a provider for benchmark prices in the commodities and energy markets, is joining forces with other industry players to create a so-called Open Hydrogen Initiative (OHI) — a platform to let investors and companies track carbon emissions from hydrogen.

It is easy to see why this is needed. Hydrogen has recently sparked great excitement in the renewable energy world since the fuel is light, storable, energy-dense, and appears to produce no direct emissions of pollutants or greenhouse gases, a key attracter for green investors, as a recent report from the International Energy Agency explains.

As a result, the sector is growing fast: in 2020, the space was estimated to be worth more than $187bn, but it is projected to reach $286bn by 2027, according to MarketWatch. Meanwhile, annual government funding for hydrogen has reached $16bn a year globally, up 40 per cent from July 2021, according to research group Bloomberg NEF.

However, thus far there have been relatively few ways for investors, companies or governments to track indirect emissions from the fuel in a consistent way. This matters given the pressure on companies (and asset managers) to measure all aspects of emissions emanating from corporate supply chains, under scope one, two and three reporting systems.

To tackle this, S&P Platts is working with GTI (the research education group) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory to build tools to track hydrogen greenhouse gas emissions at the production facility level. These will be free for investors and companies to use, and aim to establish benchmarks for the market. “What we know is that we need hydrogen. It is very versatile. But what we have not yet had is precise and consistent technical tools for measuring hydrogen’s carbon intensity,” said Paula Gant, senior vice-president of strategy and innovation at GTI. “And, we’re at a place where the market needs that to enable hydrogen’s rollout.”

The group hopes this will promote wider adoption of hydrogen. “We see hydrogen being a key part of the future of the energy market in the decades to come” Jonty Rushforth, S&P Global Platts senior director, told Moral Money.

However, technical challenges remain. Previous research from S&P Global Platts suggests the cost of producing hydrogen from renewables will need to fall by more than 50 per cent to be a viable alternative to traditional energy. Hydrogen faces big production challenges and is difficult to store and transport. (The Saudis, however, seem to have set their bet on the growing market.)

Establishing price and emissions indices could spark more research and development to tackle these issues; or so the group hopes. And the initiative incorporates another interesting twist that investors should watch: the group intends to include metrics that indicate how much confidence investors should have in the emissions data.

This reflects a growing recognition that “green” measurements can sometimes be more art than science. This should not stop investors or companies from trying to measure emissions; but a more realistic debate is needed about the limits of current tools. Call this, if you like, another sign that the green market is growing up.

 (Kristen Talman and Gillian Tett)

Sustainability schism raises questions for the ISSB

People rarely log on to LinkedIn for a fight, but that’s what broke out on Friday when Bob Eccles, a visiting professor at Oxford university’s Saïd Business School, used the site to promote what he thought was “an innocuous little piece” in the Harvard Business Review.

In it, he and with Bhakti Mirchandani, managing director of responsible investing at Trinity Church Wall Street, argued that investors need uniform accounting standards for ESG, and that the new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) could provide the global baseline from which companies and regulators could build.

Eccles’ post set some heads nodding and others spinning. “WTF Bob?!?” wrote Bill Baue, co-founder of the Sustainability Context Group, saying he was dangerously conflating ESG with sustainability and pushing incremental solutions that could not produce real change. Mark McElroy, director of the Center for Sustainable Organizations, accused Eccles of “appeasement”.

We won’t rehash the whole debate about single, double, dynamic and contextual materiality here, but it’s worth reading to understand a question hanging over the ISSB: is it an imperfect but necessary first step towards greater clarity and rigour, or a fudge that will perpetuate flaws in ESG while satisfying nobody?

Eccles has asked his “cantankerous critics” not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Faber, the former Danone chief executive, has only just been named as the ISSB’s first chair. The intensity of feeling it has sparked suggests that his will not be an easy job.

 (Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson)

A look at pandemic-era philanthropy

Did the experience of Covid-19 make people feel more or less generous? The former — judging from the 2022 report from Fidelity Charitable, the philanthropic foundation that provides donor-advised fund (DAF) options for asset managers’ clients. Last year investors made a record $10.3bn in these DAF grants, 41 per cent more than in 2019, ie before the pandemic.

This is striking. What is also notable is that there was a sharp increase in the assets allocated to impact investments (that is, those made with ESG factors in mind), which jumped to $3bn in 2021, up 67 per cent on the previous year. Another thought-provoking twist is that two-thirds of these donations were made not in dollars, but non-cash assets (which are converted into cash when Fidelity Charity ultimately gives these to charities.) This included real estate. But another, newish, component, was cryptocurrencies. As I wrote this week, donations in digital assets (mostly bitcoin) rose twelvefold last year.

The pandemic-era philanthropy boom has happened alongside a wider trend of impact investment growth over the past decade. The number of impact investments annually has grown fivefold since 2011, according to research from PitchBook and BCG.

As private equity companies crowd into climate-focused deals, BCG research has found an increasing number of investors see the sector not only for its positive impact on society, but also for its financial returns.

Investors would benefit from approaching social investments with the same drive as green ventures, the report says, calling investment in the diversity, equity and inclusion space the next “impact frontier”.

“The need for social impact investing has never been greater . . . institutional investors have the opportunity and the imperative to step up their funding and catalyse growth,” the report states. 

(Gillian Tett and Kristen Talman)

Smart read
If you have ever been tempted to buy your dream house on the coast of Florida, Maine or the Hamptons, you should first read this striking piece in The Conversation by Jianjun Yin, an associate professor at the University of Arizona. Drawing on data issued last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he suggests that the US will see 10-12 inches of sea level rise in the next 30 years, on average. Has the mortgage market or insurance priced this in? Yin does not comment. But this is the question Moral Money readers need to ask; never mind the realtors selling those beach homes.


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Source: Financial Times

Visit our Moral Money hub for all the latest ESG news, opinion and analysis from around the FT

February 21, 2022

If Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock

March 3, 2022
in Markets


“What is money?” is a question that economists have pondered for centuries, but the blocking of Russia’s central-bank reserves has revived its relevance for the world’s biggest nations—particularly China. In a world in which accumulating foreign assets is seen as risky, military and economic blocs are set to drift farther apart.

After Moscow attacked Ukraine last week, the U.S. and its allies shut off the Russian central bank’s access to most of its $630 billion of foreign reserves. Weaponizing the monetary system against a Group-of-20 country will have lasting repercussions.

The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis scared developing countries into accumulating more funds to shield their currencies from crashes, pushing official reserves from less than $2 trillion to a record $14.9 trillion in 2021, according to the International Monetary Fund. While central banks have lately sought to buy and repatriate gold, it only makes up 13% of their assets. Foreign currencies are 78%. The rest is positions at the IMF and Special Drawing Rights, or SDR—an IMF-created claim on hard currencies.

Many economists have long equated this money to savings in a piggy bank, which in turn correspond to investments made abroad in the real economy.

Recent events highlight the error in this thinking: Barring gold, these assets are someone else’s liability—someone who can just decide they are worth nothing. Last year, the IMF suspended Taliban-controlled Afghanistan’s access to funds and SDR. Sanctions on Iran have confirmed that holding reserves offshore doesn’t stop the U.S. Treasury from taking action. As New England Law Professor Christine Abely points out, the 2017 settlement with Singapore’s CSE TransTel shows that the mere use of the dollar abroad can violate sanctions on the premise that some payment clearing ultimately happens on U.S. soil.

To be sure, the West has frozen Russia’s stock of foreign exchange, but hasn’t blocked the inflow of new dollars and euros. The country’s current-account surplus is estimated at $20 billion a month due to exports of oil and gas, which the U.S. and the European Union want to keep buying. While these balances go to the private sector, officials have mobilized them. Stopping major banks like

Sberbank

from using dollars and excluding others from the Swift messaging system still plunges the economy into chaos, especially if foreign businesses are afraid to buy Russian energy despite the sector’s explicit exclusion from sanctions. But hard currency will probably keep gushing in through energy-focused lenders like Gazprombank, and can theoretically be used to pay for imports and buy the ruble.

Yet the entire artifice of “money“ as a universal store of value risks being eroded by the banning of key exports to Russia and boycotts of the kind corporations like Apple and
Nike announced this week. If currency balances were to become worthless computer entries and didn’t guarantee buying essential stuff, Moscow would be rational to stop accumulating them and stockpile physical wealth in oil barrels, rather than sell them to the West. At the very least, more of Russia’s money will likely shift into gold and Chinese assets.

Indeed, the case levied against China’s attempts to internationalize the renminbi has been that, unlike the dollar, access to it is always at risk of being revoked by political considerations. It is now apparent that, to a point, this is true of all currencies.

The risk to King Dollar’s status is still limited due to most nations’ alignment with the West and Beijing’s capital controls. But financial and economic linkages between China and sanctioned countries that are only allowed to accumulate reserves—and, crucially, spend them—there will necessarily strengthen. Even nations that aren’t sanctioned may want to diversify their geopolitical risk. It seems set to further the deglobalization trend and entrench two separate spheres of technological, monetary and military power.

China itself owns $3.3 trillion in currency reserves. Unlike Russia, it cannot usefully hold them in renminbi, a currency it prints. Stockpiling commodities is an alternative. The conundrum creates another incentive for Beijing to reduce its trade surplus by reorienting its economy toward domestic consumption, though it has proven challenging.

What can investors do? For once, the old trope may not be ill advised: buy gold. Many of the world’s central banks will surely be doing it.

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Stopping Sewage in London’s River Thames Draws Green Bond Demand

Ronan Martin
Thu, March 3, 2022, 

(Bloomberg) -- The green bond market just got one of its biggest challenges yet -- cleaning up London’s River Thames.

A sale of the notes aims to help to fund upgrades to the city’s Victorian-era sewers, as population growth in London heaps increasing pressure on them. Designed to serve about 4 million people, the sewers instead handle waste from more than double that number, leading to multiple sewage overflows every year.

Bazalgette Finance Plc sold 300 million pounds ($400 million) of green bonds to fund construction of a 25-kilometer tunnel to prevent millions of tonnes of sewage overflowing into the river. The 12-year notes were priced at 130 basis points above U.K. gilts, drawing investor orders of more than four times the amount on offer, according to a person with knowledge of the sale, who asked not to be named.

A spokesman for Thames Tideway didn’t immediately respond to a Bloomberg News request for comment.

The bond proceeds will be given to Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd for the ongoing construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which is expected to be completed in 2023, according to the Tideway website. The 66 meter-deep tunnel is more than seven meters wide and will cost an estimated 4.2 billion pounds ($5.6 billion) at completion, according to an investor presentation seen by Bloomberg News.

Thames Water Fined GBP4m for ‘Utterly Disgusting’ Sewage Blunder

The sale is Europe’s first green bond deal since Feb. 16 and one of the the first non-financial offerings since Feb. 23, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Marketwide sales of publicly-syndicated debt have stalled in recent days amid widespread global volatility triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

All of the revenues financing the construction of the tunnel are from green assets, according to the investor presentation. Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Royal Bank of Canada and SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. are arranging Bazalgette Finance’s sale.

Drought-Riven Chile Makes World First in Environmental Bonds



Caleb Mutua, Augusta Saraiva and Christopher DeReza
Wed, March 2, 2022, 3:22 PM·3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Chile issued bonds tied to sustainability goals, the first nation in the world to do so, as the country wracked by a decade-long drought looks to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and obtain cheap financing.

The government sold $2 billion in dollar-denominated, sustainability-linked bonds maturing in 20 years, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The offering yields 2 percentage points above Treasuries after initial discussions in the area of 2.4 percentage points, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the details are private.

Chile’s government is already the biggest issuer of environmental, social and governance bonds in Latin America, with $31 billion in sales, and is now looking to boost its green credentials still further. The sustainability-linked bonds pay a set penalty to investors if the seller fails to meet certain targets -- in this case tied on greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy generation.

The interest rate payable on the notes will be increased by either 12.50 or 25 basis points unless Chile meets its ESG goals, the person said.

The SLB offering completed the sale of $2 billion in ESG bonds the country had planned to issue last month, adding to the $4 billion raised in that format already this year. That would conclude this year’s $6 billion external markets issuance target, Cristobal Gamboni, head of the Finance Ministry’s newly created Green Finance Office, said in a February interview.

The deal is already getting strong investor demand, Gamboni said in a written response to questions Wednesday. Chile might end up issuing less debt than projected this year as the nation has raised $5 billion more than expected in revenue, he added.

Booming Market

Sustainability-linked debt is one of the fastest-growing subsets of ESG debt. Global sales of the so-called SLBs hit a record $110 billion last year, compared with $11 billion issued in 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Moody’s ESG Solutions is forecasting issuance of the debt to reach $200 billion this year.

SLBs are growing in global popularity because they can be used by a wider pool of borrowers, including those without big environmental projects, allowing them to tap a growing ethical fund industry and get cheaper borrowing costs.

Yet sovereigns have been slow to enter the market, partly due to problems setting trackable ESG goals known as key performance indicators, given the governance processes required, according to Nathalie Larrouse, climate and ESG capital markets Director at NatWest Markets. Chile’s SLBs are the first from a nation, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“With the improvement of data and experiences drawn from the corporate sector, we see an interesting future for SLBs in the sovereign space, particularly in the emerging markets,” said Larrouse.

Chile has been suffering from a drought for more than a decade as the northern desert expands ever further south in a move linked by many to global warming, adding to pressure on the government to take action over greenhouse gas emissions. In the last decade, there has been an explosion in the use of solar panels and wind farms as the government sets new emission targets.

BNP Paribas SA, Credit Agricole CIB, and Societe Generale managed the bond sale, the person said.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Why the stock market refuses to plunge on Russia-Ukraine crisis

Brian Sozzi

·Anchor, Editor-at-Large

Wed, March 2, 2022

All in all, the stock market is hanging tough in what has been a turbulent two weeks for humanity.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 600 points on Wednesday as of this writing. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are nearing gains of 2%. All three major indexes are nicely off the lows hit by the close of trading on Feb. 23, a mere hours before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Every member of the FAANG [Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet] cohort has gained in the last five trading days as luck would have it, paced by a nearly 7% increase in Alphabet.

And believe us, there are many things trying very hard to bring the major stock indexes to their collective knees.

Oil prices ripped through $110 a barrel on Wednesday as the war between Russia and Ukraine intensified. Western company after Western company are saying see you later to Russia in light of its action. One of the latest names is credit card giant American Express.

These actions by the West has some Wall Street strategists telling Yahoo Finance Live the Russian economy is poised to nosedive into a deep, protracted recession.

Meanwhile top emerging market investors such as Mark Mobius tell us Russia may be uninvestable for more than a year, and putting money to work in other emerging markets like China and Brazil are not without heightened risk.

And as oil prices spike — and it can be considered a spike (leading to a potential super-spike as Goldman Sachs chief commodities strategist Jeff Currie explained to us) — gas prices in America keep on rising, rising and rising further. The average price of petrol in California is approaching $5 a gallon, the highest in the country.

The extra money gas inflation will siphon out of the pockets of consumers is real. That's money that could be spent at Macy's for a new pair of jeans. That's extra money it will cost a FedEx to ship a package due to higher fuel expenditures. And what is FedEx likely to do about it? Jack up prices further on the beat-up wallets of consumers.

Despite the litany of issues — which naturally could hammer corporate profits in 2022 — there is the good ole' stock market hanging tough. Why is that the case you ask? I am glad you did ask.

Market pros say that investors are looking beyond all the headline chaos and remain fixated on the king daddy of factors that tend to upset stock price valuations.

Higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve. Weird stuff, right?

"One of the reasons why the stock market has held up so well is belief that the Fed will not be as aggressive in their new tightening policy as some were thinking they would be before the crisis in eastern Europe erupted. So if we get some positive reinforcement on this subject, the stock market could hold up (or even bounce) for a while," said Miller Tabak chief markets strategist Matt Maley.

Maley is on the mark here, judging by the positive reaction in stock prices to fresh commentary from Fed chief Jerome Powell in his testimony to lawmakers today.

“The bottom line is we will proceed but we will proceed carefully as we learn more about the implications of the Ukraine war,” Powell told the House Financial Services Committee.

Yahoo Finance Fed correspondent Brian Cheung points out Powell said he supports increasing short-term interest rates by 0.25% in the next policy-setting meeting on March 15 and 16.

Coming into March, most market experts were bracing for a 50-basis rate hike at the March meeting followed by eight to 10 more increases in rates into year-end. But Powell has officially reset the narrative, and investors love it.

So there you have it, folks.

Inflation is running rampant. Profit margins are under attack. Vladimir Putin is playing terror to the world. And yet, there are markets fixated on rate hike comments from one of the most powerful people in the financial industry in Powell.

No one said investing made sense. It doesn't make sense now, and it will unlikely make sense tomorrow. Rest assured, however, that at some point soon markets will move beyond rate hike fears and refocus on geopolitical and macroeconomic risks.

When that happens, those aforementioned Feb. 23 lows for stocks could be in play. You have been warned.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

BUY CANADIAN 😈 
Exclusive - U.S. utilities push White House not to sanction Russian uranium


 Uranium pellets are seen on a production line at Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk

Tue, March 1, 2022

By Ernest Scheyder and Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) - The U.S. nuclear power industry is lobbying the White House to allow uranium imports from Russia to continue despite the escalating conflict in Ukraine, with cheap supplies of the fuel seen as key to keeping American electricity prices low, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The United States relies on Russia and its allies Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for roughly half of the uranium powering its nuclear plants - about 22.8 million pounds (10.3 million kg) in 2020 - which in turn produce about 20% of U.S. electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the World Nuclear Association.

Washington and its allies have imposed a series of sanctions on Moscow in the past week as Russian forces pushed deeper into neighboring Ukraine, though the sanctions exempt uranium sales and related financial transactions.

The National Energy Institute (NEI), a trade group of U.S. nuclear power generation companies including Duke Energy Corp and Exelon Corp, is lobbying the White House to keep the exemption on uranium imports from Russia, the sources said.

The NEI lobbying aims to ensure that uranium is not caught up in any future energy-related sanctions, especially as calls intensify to sanction Russian crude oil sales, the sources said.

"The (U.S. nuclear power) industry is just addicted to cheap Russian uranium," said one of the sources, who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the situation.

Duke and Exelon, two of the largest U.S. utilities, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Washington-based NEI said that it supports a diversity of uranium supply, including the development of U.S. facilities to produce and process the fuel.

"While Russia is a significant global supplier of commercial nuclear fuel, U.S. utilities contract with a worldwide network of companies and countries for their fuel requirements to mitigate the risks of potential disruption," said Nima Ashkeboussi, NEI's senior director of fuel and radiation safety.

The Biden administration has said it is working to keep American energy costs low.

"We are listening to all inquiries from industry and will continue to do so as we take measures to hold Russia accountable," a White House official said when asked about the uranium lobbying.

Uranium is used as a fuel inside reactors to achieve nuclear fission to boil water and generate steam that spins turbines to generate electricity.

There is no uranium production or processing in the United States currently, though several companies have said they would like to resume domestic production if they can sign long-term supply contracts with nuclear power producers. Texas and Wyoming have large uranium reserves.

Australia and Canada also have large reserves of uranium and there is ample processing capability there and in Europe. But Russia and its satellites are the cheapest producers.

The U.S. nuclear power industry's use of Russian uranium is likely to spark further questions about where and how the United States procures the materials needed to supply high-tech and renewable-energy products, a dependency that President Joe Biden singled out last week as a national security threat.

Russia's uranium production is controlled by Rosatom, a state-run company formed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. The company is an important source of revenue for the country.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2020 proposed spending $150 million to create a strategic uranium reserve, and Biden administration officials have expressed support for the idea.

Other utilities around the globe have already begun looking beyond Russia for supply. Swedish power company Vattenfall AB said last week it would stop buying Russian uranium for its nuclear reactors until further notice, citing the Ukrainian conflict.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder and Trevor Hunnicutt)

Home - Cameco

https://www.cameco.com

Cameco is one of the largest global providers of the fuel needed to energize a clean-air world. Our tier-one operations have the licensed capacity to produce more than 53 million pounds (100%

NUKE NEWS

Hanford, WA ‘shooting’ alert was a false alarm, but the panic and anxiety were real



The Tri-City Herald Editorial Board
Wed, March 2, 2022

The Tri-Cities was on high alert Tuesday after reports of possible shots fired at the Hanford site spread a subdued, yet terrible panic throughout the community.

The Tri-City Herald provided updates as frequently as possible while Hanford Patrol and other Tri-City law enforcement officers checked out the possible danger. Fortunately, police officials eventually determined the shooting was a false alarm.

And while Tri-Citians were relieved in the end, the experience still left people shaken.


It was only a few weeks ago when a routine day was shattered by a deadly shooting at the Richland Fred Meyer. The man charged in that case, Aaron C. Kelly, 39, was reportedly spiraling mentally in the weeks and months ahead of the Feb. 7 shooting. He has since been ordered by Benton County Superior Court to undergo a mental health evaluation.

We said at the time of Kelly’s arrest that mental health services in the Tri-Cities are woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the community’s growing population, and that Benton and Franklin counties must assure the public that progress is being made to remedy this deplorable situation.

Last year both the Benton and Franklin county commissions made the smart move to tack on an extra penny to every $10 in sales in order to put money toward a substance abuse recovery center and mental health facility in the Tri-Cities.

As it happens, commissioners on both sides of the river met recently to form a bi-county advisory committee to help direct how to use that extra tax money for mental health and detox services.

The advisory board will include 16 voting members and 7 non-voting members coming from a variety of backgrounds that include law enforcement, mental health officials, substance abuse experts, people with related life experiences and other citizens.

While talks are still underway between Benton County and LifePoint Health to turn the old Kennewick General Hospital building into a safe place for people to go for addiction and mental health treatment, it is encouraging that efforts are moving forward to see what other services might be made available through the new tax.

Several communities have mobile crisis teams that go to people in need of help. Typically, the response team gets referrals from citizens who personally know someone in distress, or who see someone on the street in obvious need of help.

Once crisis team members make contact, they can guide those who are struggling. They can help get them meals, shelter, clothing, medical treatment and other basic needs. The best thing about the service is that people in need can finally get plugged in to the social service network.

This is the kind of service that the Tri-Cities could implement while waiting for the recovery center to be completed. And this is just one example. Once the advisory board gets going, who knows what other creative approaches might be suggested?

The Tri-Cities is the only major metropolitan area in Eastern Washington without a detox center, which means the jails in Benton and Franklin counties often end up being the default location for addicts.

The jails also end up with far too many people who should be in a bed in a mental health facility instead of a cot in a cell.

We hope that Benton County and LifePoint Health, which owns Trios Health in Kennewick and Lourdes Health in Pasco, will be able to come to an agreement soon so the community can get the mental health facility and detox center it so desperately needs.

With the new center and an advisory board guiding the community approach to mental health services, the Tri-Cities will be able to make a huge difference in the lives of many who are suffering.

Adding more treatment options for those living with drug addiction and mental health issues is no guarantee against another random shooting in the Tri-Cities, but it certainly has to help our odds.

County officials are pushing ahead. Now all they need to do is quicken the pace.

Lockdown amid reports of shooting at Washington nuclear facility

Josh Marcus
Tue, March 1, 2022

(Getty Images)

Employees are on lockdown at the Hanford nuclear site in eastern Washington state, where police were called on Tuesday after reports of an active shooter with a shotgun.

Officials have not confirmed whether a shooting did indeed take place, or if anyone was harmed.

“Hanford Patrol continues to search the 2750 E Building,” officials from the Hanford site said in a news release, referring to one of the buildings on the property. “They have not found any evidence of shots fired, and have not found any injured employees.”

The Benton County Sheriff’s Office reported similar findings.

“Law enforcement has searched the building,” they wrote on Facebook. “They have not located any victims inside the building or any evidence at this time of shots being fired. Law enforcement will be conducting additional searches of the building.”

Sheriff Tom Croskrey told reporters on Tuesday that officials are moving to deescalate the police posture at the scene.

Police have recovered a gun from a car at the facility, though it is unclear if the weapon is related to the potential shooting.

Employees received an emergency text message alert after the shooting was called into police.

“Affected employees prepare to run fight hide,” the message read, local news outlet KAPP-KVEW reports. “Employees in nearby buildings are to lockdown and prepare to run fight hide. All others stay away.”

Police officers from the Hanford Patrol, Benton County Sheriff’s Department, as well as the Richland and Kennewick police departments, are on the scene, searching through buildings for the potential shooter.

The site, which used to produce plutonium for US nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Protect, has been decommissioned since the Cold War, and now houses nuclear waste.

Access to the area requires passing through a security checkpoint with an ID badge.

The facilities at Hanford have been undergoing one of the longest-running nuclear cleanup efforts in the world.

The Independent has contacted local police for further information.

What is the Hanford nuclear reservation? Where is it? Here’s what you need to know

Cameron Probert
Tue, March 1, 2022

The 580-square-mile Hanford site is the nation’s largest nuclear waste cleanup project after producing two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium for its nuclear weapons program.

The site in Eastern Washington was created as part of the Manhattan Project, and produced the plutonium that fueled the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of World War II.

Then as the Cold War started, it ramped up production again, producing plutonium through 1987.


Hanford made more than 20 million pieces of uranium metal fuel that were irradiated to produce plutonium at nine nuclear reactors along the Columbia River.

Massive plants in the center of the Hanford Site processed 110,000 tons of fuel to chemically separate out plutonium.

The processing left 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste that remain stored in underground tanks, many of them prone to leaking.

As the Cold War drew to a close, so did production at the site. The final reactor stopped production in 1987.

Then two years later the U.S. Department of Energy started an environmental clean up effort that is expected to continue for decades to come. The remaining weapons grade plutonium has been shipped off site.

Currently, about $2.5 billion a year is spent on maintaining the site and cleanup work.

An overview of the Handford’s 200 areas is illustrated in this Oregon Department of Energy map.

The site is located north and west of Richland, and covers an area that is about half the size of Rhode Island. Most of it is located in Benton County.

The workforce numbers 11,000 people, most of those working for contractors under the federal agency. It is the largest employer in the Tri-Cities, and has its own security and fire departments.

The Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, operates on leased land at the nuclear reservation but is unrelated to the weapons work and cleanup at the site.

NUKE NEWS

4 Hanford contractors awarded $77M in incentive pay. Veteran company does the best

Annette Cary
Tue, March 1, 2022, 

The Department of Energy has awarded $77 million in incentive pay to four contractors for their work at the Hanford nuclear reservation in fiscal 2021.

Three of the contractors were new that year, and none of them earned as high a percentage of pay as their predecessors. They also did not do as well as the fourth contractor, a veteran at the site.

Washington River Protection Solutions, which has held the Hanford site’s tank farm contract since 2008, earned 94% of its available incentive pay, or fee as it is called by DOE.

The company, which is owned by Amentum and Atkins, will be awarded nearly $42 million for its work at Hanford in fiscal 2021.

It’s rating was slightly down from last year, when it earned 95% of available pay, but was well above the performance of the other contractor ratings announced on Monday.

Hanford Mission Integration Solutions earned 87% of its available pay; Central Plateau Cleanup Co. earned 79% of its available pay; and Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration earned 75% of its available pay.

Environmental cleanup is underway at the 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation. The underground radioactive waste storage tanks and the vitrification plant are in the center of the site.

Rather than releasing the complete review, DOE in recent years has made public a scorecard that lists the fee earned and a brief recap of work that was done well and also areas needing improvement.

Not included in the fee awards announced Monday is Bechtel National, which is building and starting up the $17 billion Hanford vitrification plant. It is on a calendar-year review and fee schedule.

The Hanford site adjacent to Richland in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce about two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Now about $2.5 billion a year is spent on cleanup of radioactive and other hazardous chemical waste and contamination at the site.
Washington River Protection Solutions

“Our team safely and consistently overcame challenges related to weather, supply chain and COVID-19 to deliver results,” said John Eschenberg, chief executive of Washington River Protection Solutions.

The tank farm contractor is responsible for 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks, some of them prone to leaking. It also is preparing to feed pretreated waste to the nearby vitrification plant to be turned into a stable glass form for disposal starting by the end of 2023.

Washington River Protection Solutions crews excavate trenches to install electrical wiring and other equipment to support future tank waste retrieval operations. A mini conveyor increases efficiency.

In a major win for the contractor, it got enough work done on the the Tank Side Cesium Removal System, or TSCR, last year to begin pretreating Hanford tank waste last month for eventual delivery to the vitrification plant.

It is the first industrial-scale processing of radioactive tank waste to prepare it for disposal in the 78-year history of the site.

DOE also praised the contractor for retrieving as much was as possible with two technologies from underground Tank AZ-104 and retrieving 77% of the waste in another single-shell tank by the end of fiscal 2021.

The tank farm contractor also completed several construction projects, including installing piping to connect the tank farms to the vitrification plant; replacing the cover on a basin holding liquid waste; and installing a barrier over a tank farm to prevent precipitation and snow melt from driving radioactive contamination already in the soil deeper toward groundwater.

Areas needing improvement included promptly submitting complete notices of construction permit applications to DOE and its regulators and its oversight of a program to insure quality in purchases.
Central Plateau Cleanup Co.

CPCCo was awarded $21 million of available incentive pay for its work as the new cleanup contractor for central Hanford for the eight months it held the contract in fiscal 2021.

It is owned by Amentum, Fluor and Atkins.

Central Plateau Cleanup Co. crews enter the Hanford 324 Building airlock to do radiological surveying and other tasks. They are preparing to dig up of highly contaminated soil beneath the building.

The 79% of available fee it earned compared to 85% of the fee earned by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., its predecessor, in its last full year of work before its contract expired.

“I am especially proud that the department recognized CPCCo’s strong performance despite the challenges inherent in contract transition during the middle of the COVID pandemic while transforming many of our core business practices,” said Scott Sax, contractor president, in a message to employees.

CPCCo has an incentive program that awards employees when the company meets DOE objectives, and workers will receive their share of incentive pay in a March paycheck, he said.

DOE praised CPCCo for completing demolition of the last of the Plutonium Finishing Plant’s highly contaminated Plutonium Reclamation Facility.

It also treated more than 1.7 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater.

DOE said the contractor consistently delivered required reports early and that it maintained excellent safety performance.

Areas needing improvement were in administration, including quickly reporting adverse events to authorities at DOE and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

It also needs to have its accounting, estimating, purchasing and property administrative functions approved to reduce what DOE called “significant” federal oversight.

The contractor earned all but about $370,000 for completing required work, but only about half of the $10.6 million available through a subjective evaluation.
Hanford Mission Integration Solutions

The sitewide services contractor for Hanford earned $14 million for its first eight months of work at Hanford.

Hanford Mission Integration Solutions is comprised of Leidos Integrated Technology, Centerra Group and Parsons Government Services and provides services such as information technology, firefighting, security, utilities, road maintenance, management of the HAMMER training center and preservation of cultural artifacts.

Bryan Hurt, a field support worker with Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, installs cables and antennas on the Hanford site’s 405-foot meteorological tower.

The previous contractor, Mission Support Alliance, received 93% of pay possible during fiscal 2020, compared to the 87% earned by the new contractor.

“With major contract transitions, including our own, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and more, HMIS found much success in 2021,” said Bob Wilkinson, contractor president, in a message to employees.

DOE said the new contractor managed electric, water and sewer utilities and roads for maximum reliability and completed planning for improving the secure entrances to the Hanford site.

Most performance targets for services, such as cybersecurity and water pressure, were met.

The exception was fire systems maintenance, according to DOE.

The contractor earned all but $290,000 for completing specific work in its contract, but lost $1.8 million in possible fee for its scores in its subjective evaluation by DOE.
Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration

The contractor for the 222-S Laboratory, Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration, earned about $977,000 in incentive pay in its first four months of work, or 75% of pay available.

That compares to previous contractor Wastren Advantage, also known as VNS Federal Services, which earned 93% of available pay in the previous fiscal year.

The 222-S laboratory at Hanford

DOE said the new contractor improved turnaround times for industrial hygiene sampling by 60% and it solved performance issues in testing for failed metal analyses to reestablish the laboratory’s accreditation in that area.

Areas needing improvement included meeting due dates for contract requirements, more quickly communicating potential issues to DOE and the quality of its invoices, overtime requests and contract proposals submitted to DOE.

The contracting company was formed by Navarro Research and Engineering and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International.

Holocaust Museum Begs U.S.: Leave Our Shady Russian Oligarch Donor Off Your Sanctions List

Tom Sykes, Barbie Latza Nadeau
Wed, March 2, 2022

BEN STANSALL/AFP 

One of Britain’s richest men, Russian-born Roman Abramovich, widely believed to be a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, has found himself at the center of a sanctions debacle. Asked by Ukraine to sit at the negotiation table in peace talks with Russia, the billionaire is one of the few people on good terms with both sides of the war. But that is not enough to get him out of sanctions, so Yad Vashem, the head of Israeli’s Holocaust memorial and museum, is petitioning the U.S. government to give him a pass, according to The Washington Post.

Quoting a letter to U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides, Yad Vashem and a number of high-ranking Israelis have officially asked the U.S. government to exclude Abramovich from their sanctions, warning that not doing so could be harmful to Jewish institutions that need his money. Abramovich recently donated an “eight-figure” sum to bolster research projects and commission two new editions of the Book of Names that will be overseen by Yad Vashem’s museum.

Abramovich became a dual Israeli citizen in 2018, shortly after he was turned down for a U.K. passport during heightened tensions with the Kremlin after the nerve-agent poisoning of ex KGB officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter by Russian agents.

Abramovich, clearly concerned about the sting of sanctions, is said to be conducting a fire sale of his British assets, including a $260 million London property empire and his multibillion-dollar stake in the Chelsea football club, fearing his assets will be frozen by British lawmakers.

On Wednesday, he released a statement on the team website confirming rumors that the club was now for sale. “In the current situation, I have therefore taken the decision to sell the Club, as I believe this is in the best interest of the Club, the fans, the employees, as well as the Club’s sponsors and partners.” Never mind that keeping it in his wheelhouse would have surely seen it shuttered under the strict sanctions set forth by the British government against oligarchs. He went on to say the sale of the club would “not be fast-tracked but will follow due process.” While no buyer has been named, he wrote, “I will not be asking for any loans to be repaid. This has never been about business nor money for me, but about pure passion for the game and Club.”

As a final note, he said the money from the sale will be donated to a new fund he is setting up. “The foundation will be for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine,” he wrote, without mentioning his best pal Putin or Russia actually leading the war effort. “This includes providing critical funds towards the urgent and immediate needs of victims, as well as supporting the long-term work of recovery.”

Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss preempted the news, saying Wednesday that he was offered the iconic London football club, telling Swiss newspaper Blick: “Abramovich is trying to sell all his villas in England, he also wants to get rid of Chelsea quickly. I and three other people received an offer on Tuesday to buy Chelsea from Abramovich. I have to wait four to five days now. Abramovich is currently asking far too much.”

Wyss said he had not been given an “exact selling price” and would not agree to the deal unless as part of a consortium of partners joining him in the investment. However Blick said the deal is thought to be valued at around $2.5 billion.

The comments by Wyss came after British lawmaker Chris Bryant used parliamentary privilege Tuesday to accuse Abramovich of plotting a speedy selloff of his trophy London properties, including a $200 million home on the city’s most exclusive street, where his neighbors include Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Bryant said in a debate in parliament: “I think [Abramovich] is terrified of being sanctioned, which is why he’s already going to sell his home tomorrow, and sell another flat as well. My anxiety is that we’re taking too long about these things.”

He added he was afraid the billionaire would have “have sold everything by the time we get round to sanctioning him.”

Bryant has been a regular thorn in Abramovich’s side: Last week, he used a parliamentary debate to air passages from a leaked Home Office report that alleged Abramovich was flagged by a 2019 government investigation for links to the Russian state and “corrupt activity and practices.”

The move to sell Chelsea comes after a week of turmoil for the club. Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Abramovich said in a statement: “I am today giving trustees of Chelsea’s charitable foundation the stewardship and care of Chelsea FC. I believe that currently they are in the best position to look after the interests of the club, players, staff, and fans.”

However the proposal appears to have caught trustees by surprise: They promptly reported the move as a “serious incident” to Britain’s Charity Commission.

It was notable for being one of the very few public statements Abramovich has ever made about Chelsea. The second was his confirmation of the club’s sale four days later.

Last year, his fortune was said to be around $15 billion. However that changed with the collapse of Evraz, the London-listed mining giant in which he has a significant stake. It fell by 84 percent in value as sanctions hit, and knocked his wealth, with Forbes putting his real-time net worth Wednesday at $12.6 billion.

Abramovich was born in Saratov, in southwest Russia, and, orphaned at the age of 3, was brought up by his uncle. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he made billions from the former state energy companies he bought up in the 1990s. By 2008, when his net worth peaked at $23 billion, he was Russia’s richest man.

He is not believed to have spent any significant amount of time in the U.K. since 2018, when his application for a U.K. visa was withdrawn.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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