Sunday, December 24, 2023

 CANADA

No to Antisemitism, No to Weaponizing it to Support Israel’s Crimes 

MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt are more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.

— Dimitri Lascaris, 2018

The above tweet was criticized by all the major federal party leaders even though few could argue with it today. After the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) denounced the post as antisemitic, the prime minister, Conservative leader and a cascade of others followed suit.

In a betrayal worth reflecting on, many leftists and self-proclaimed solidarity activists echoed the anti-Palestinian lobby’s criticism. Rather than focusing on Canada’s complicity in apartheid, they prioritized Jewish sensitivities. In so doing they reinforced a political climate that’s enabled the killing of over 20,000 Palestinian while agonizing about a generally privileged Canadian Jewish community.

While it was obvious at the time, today no serious person could argue that Levitt and Housefather weren’t “more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.”  Levitt left the party two years later to campaign full-time in favor of apartheid as CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Among a slew of examples, Levitt recently suggested Trudeau was antisemitic for expressing opposition to the killing of babies. He tweeted that the PM’s comments “fan the flames of Jew-hatred” and told CBC they “further fuel antisemitism and lashing out at Jews in Canada.”

After Canada recently voted with the vast majority of the world for a ceasefire at the United Nations, Housefather repeatedly condemned his own government to the media. A month ago, the MontrĂ©al MP also criticized Trudeau for his statement opposing the killing of babies. At the time CBC’s At Issue panel reported that Liberal MPs (presumably Housefather) had privately threatened to quit the party if Trudeau called for a ceasefire. He subsequently went on a solidarity trip to Israel. Alex Boykowich aptly dubbed Housefather “objectively Netanyahu’s man in the Canadian government/parliament.”

Levitt and Housefather care far more about Israel than Trudeau or the Liberal party. As I detailed, there was already a bevy of evidence at the time of Lascaris’ statement that Housefather and Levitt were obsessed with Israel and prioritized defending its crimes over their own party. But the immediate background to the 2018 tweet uproar made the condemnation completely outrageous.

After a demonstration opposing B’nai B’rith’s smears against the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Lascaris called on Housefather and Levitt, CIJA, and others who had defended B’nai B’rith on the eve of the protest, to publicly repudiate two of that group’s supporters who called for a number of Muslim and brown politicians to be killed in a video detailing their participation in a counter protest to the rally against B’nai B’rith. Lascaris tweeted about the two B’nai B’rith supporters who “called for the death penalty to be imposed on Justin Trudeau & Liberal MPs Iqra Khalid, Omar Alghabra & Maryam Monsef” and asked Levitt and Housefather “to denounce” the threats “but shamefully, they’ve said nothing.” Then Lascaris tweeted: “ MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt are more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.”

In response CIJA tweeted: “Yesterday, CJPME [Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East] Chair Dimitri Lascaris accused Jewish MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt of being disloyal to Canada. This is the literal definition of antisemitism under the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition. Will CJPME publicly retract & apologize for this antisemitic smear?” Soon thereafter a slew of MPs, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, Justin Trudeau, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and others jumped to Housefather and Levitt’s defense or directly smeared Lascaris.

Despite all this being immediately detailed, a number of leftist voices followed the Israel lobby, focusing on “tropes” rather than Canada’s role in enabling an apartheid state waging unrelenting violence in (according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Israel has attempted more – over 2,700 – international assassination missions then any country since World War II).

In a post-mortem on Lascaris’ narrow defeat in the 2020 Green Party leadership race The Breach founder Dru Oja Jay wrote “it should also be said that in 2018, Lascaris questioned the loyalty of two extremist pro-Israel Jewish MPs in a tweet. Questioning the loyalty of Jewish politicians is an anti-semitic trope with a long history. While he has condemned anti-semitism broadly and while there’s no doubt that charges of anti-semitism are used to silence advocates for Palestinian human rights (which Lascaris is), his refusal to back away from his remarks gave that line of attack levels of legitimacy that they would have otherwise lacked.”

The next year another Breach editor, Martin Lukacs, reiterated the point in an email claiming my defence of Lascaris was antisemitic. He wrote, “your defence of Dimitri Lascaris’ obtuse and offensive dual loyalty charge a few years ago against Canadian Liberal politicians followed a similar dynamic. In your writing, you seemed to either be ignorant of this classic trope of anti-Semitism, or you simply choose to ignore the connotations of what he wrote about.” (In response to the remarkable onslaught I immediately published “Canadian Zionists’ Unprecedented Smear Campaign against Dimitri Lascaris” and followed up with “CIJA, B’nai B’rith smear Palestine activist instead of racists, antisemite”. These articles emboldened Independent Jewish Voices and Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig to defend Lascaris and paved the way for the public letter backing Lascaris headlined “Prime minister owes human rights activist an apology”, which was signed by Noam Chomksy, Roger Waters, Chris Hedges and others.)

I rehash this history because many leftists, even those who call themselves anti-Zionist, have directly contributed to Canada’s deeply anti-Palestinian political climate. By prioritizing Jewish sensitivities about ‘tropes’, they’ve emboldened the Housefathers and Levitts of the world and further tilted the political terrain against those opposing Canada’s vast complicity in Israel’s horrors.

It also demonstrates how anti-Palestinian lobby groups set the agenda. If CIJA hadn’t created a brouhaha over Lascaris’ post, few would have seen the tweet, let alone complained about it years later. On principle leftists should be allergic to allowing an apartheid lobby that seeks to destroy left-wing movements set the tone on anything Palestine related.

Canadian political culture fixates on the sensitivities of Jews here rather than how Canada enables Israeli barbarism. Part of this reflects the dominance of nationalism. What happens here – or to Canadians abroad – is prioritized by the political and media establishment. You see this with the recent discussion of the uptick in hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs or Jews. While all acts of bigotry should be condemned, nothing that has transpired in Canada over the past 10 weeks remotely compares to the horrors in Gaza.

There’s also a specifically Jewish element to the fixation. With outsized influence in Hollywood and other domains, Jewish cultural influence is significant. Additionally, the Nazi Holocaust is a definitive historical reference point, which has intertwined anti-Jewishness with the ultimate evil.

It’s true that in Canada Jews are significantly over-represented as victims of hate crimes and there is a history of legalistic antisemitism, including McGill’s quotas on Jewish students between the 1920s-40s, “none is too many” WWII immigration policies and prejudicial land covenants targeting Jews and others into the 1950s. But there’s nothing in Canadian history approaching the antisemitism of Eastern Europe, let alone Nazi Germany. Additionally, today Jews are over-represented in positions of wealth and influence in Canada.

None of this is to say antisemitism does not exist. It does and when people express hatred for Jews simply being Jews we should condemn it. But being Jewish should not protect someone from criticism for supporting crimes against humanity such as apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Being Jewish should not protect someone for their anti-Palestinian racism. The self-proclaimed “Jewish state” can and should be criticized for its actions. If that offends some Jewish Canadians that is their problem.

Hypersensitivity regarding antisemitism is unwarranted when it is being so aggressively mobilized to enable horrors against Palestinians. Conscientious individuals must question how they uphold a political climate that enables Canadian complicity in the slaughter in Gaza.


Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.


UK

Palestinians’ Superior Right to Self-defence is Ignored, as Usual


UK’s Cameron/Sunak claptrap turns international law on its head


The UK’s leaders are tying themselves in knots in their desperate attempt to defend the indefensible.

In a debate on Israel and Palestine in Parliament last week, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs Leo Docherty got up and said:

There is no scenario in which Hamas can be allowed to control Gaza again. That is why we are not calling for a general ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to regroup and entrench their position. I am pleased to say that the government’s position is shared by the Opposition Front Bench. Instead, we are focused on urging respect for international law…

What a fatuous statement. If the UK government had any concern for international law Israel would not have been allowed to breach it continuous and with impunity for the last 75 years and the horrendous slaughter we’ve all been watching would never have happened.

As a foreign office minister, Docherty should be aware that Hamas is the legitimate government in Gaza, having won the last election fair and square. Israel, the US and UK might not like the result but that’s beside the point. What Docherty and his colleagues are contemplating is coercive regime change, which is hardly in line with international law or Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Meanwhile, David Cameron, hurriedly parachuted in from outside Parliament as our new Foreign Secretary and breaching all democratic niceties, was telling everyone that there can be no resolution to the conflict in the Middle East if Hamas is still “armed to the teeth” and capable of attacking Israel. And he defended the UK’s decision to abstain on the UN vote for a Gaza ceasefire on the grounds that the UN was calling for an immediate armistice plus a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and “those two things don’t go together… If you have an immediate ceasefire but Hamas [is] still armed to the teeth, launching rockets into Israel, wanting to repeat 7 October, you’ll never have a two-state solution.

“Long-term security I think requires there to be a state for Palestine as well,” he said, sounding wonderfully generous, adding that he did not agree with “disappointing” comments made by Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on Wednesday 13 December that Tel Aviv would not back a two-state solution.

Had he been paying attention Cameron would know that the apartheid regime, from its very inception in 1948, has refused to contemplate the existence of a Palestinian state. That would thwart Israel’s ambition to establish sovereignty over the entire territory “from the river to the sea”, which is the express aim of Hotovely’s (and Netanyahu’s) vile party, Likud.

Britain, on the other hand, promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continues to sidestep the issue while forever prattling on about a two-state solution.

Cameron is also saying that Israel “must take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable”. But his lordship should be telling Israel to do much more than that. To comply with international law Israel must remove its settlers and its thuggish military from the West Bank altogether, remembering that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem (and the Old City) and Gaza.

What needs eliminating is the threat posed by Israel

As I write, Cameron is changing tack slightly and now calling for a “sustainable” ceasefire because it has dawned on him that “too many civilians have been killed” by Israel. A joint article in the Sunday Times by him and German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock comes amid growing pressure on Israel over its methods in the war on Gaza. It states: “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward. It ignores why Israel is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked Israel and still fires rockets to kill Israeli citizens every day.”

The usual misinformation. They ignore why the Palestinians are compelled to defend themselves, i.e. the brutal and murderous decades-long illegal occupation by Israel using military force.

“Hamas must lay down its arms,” say Cameron and Baerbock. And in a tepid warning to Israel, the two foreign ministers say: “Israel has the right to defend itself but, in doing so, it must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel will not win this war if its operations destroy the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. They have a right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.”

But do they really? Where in international law does it say that an illegal occupier (such as Israel) can claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it illegally occupies?

Under UN Resolution 37/43, however, the Palestinians, as victims of illegal military occupation, have an unquestionable right to eliminate the threat posed by Israel in their struggle for “liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

Resolution 37/43 also condemns “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region”.

The Palestinians’ right to armed struggle in self-defence is also confirmed in UN Resolution 3246, which calls for all States to recognise the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation and to offer them moral, material and other forms of assistance in their struggle to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

Resolution 3246 reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle, and demands full respect for the basic human rights of all individuals detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle for self-determination and independence, and strict respect for article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

There’s no sign that Cameron and the rest of the UK government understand any of this.

And what right does the UK have to prevent Palestinians choosing their own government? None. The correct way to “eliminate the threat posed by Hamas” is to require Israel to end its occupation.

International law trampled to suit Israeli plans for domination

It is ludicrous to keep repeating that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has made that abundantly clear. Western governments and Western Christendom seem paralysed. The presumption must be that Biden and Cameron (both self-proclaimed Zionists, as were most of their predecessors) are overly sympathetic towards Israel and happy to trample international law to ensure the success of the apartheid regime’s criminal enterprise.

Many in the UK question why our parliamentarians are so concerned about the 1,200 Israeli dead following Hamas’s breakout attack and the 200-odd hostages when they couldn’t care less about the 10,651 Palestinians (including 656 women and 2,270 children) slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years before 7 October. Or the 7,200 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, including 88 women and 250 children. Over 1,200 are held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial and denied due process.

An authority on international law, Dr Ralph Wilde, has produced a legal opinion on the Israeli occupation which might be helpful in putting an end to Cameron’s & co’s claptrap.

He points out that:

  • There’s no valid basis in international law for the occupation and it is an unlawful use of force, an aggression, and a violation on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. And aggression is a crime on an individual level for senior Israeli leaders. “As a result, the occupation is existentially illegal and must end immediately.”
  • What’s more, an end to the occupation cannot be delayed by Israel’s failure to agree to the adoption of a peace agreement or by the unreadiness of the Palestinian people, by ‘facts on the ground’, or by waiting for the approval of the UN, the Quartet, the White House, the British Foreign Office or anybody else. Every day the occupation continues is a breach of international law.
  • Palestinian people are treated in international law as a collective entity with rights, notably the right of self-determination and the right to freely choose whether or not to enter into international agreements. Palestine is what’s called a Self-determination Unit. The territory it covers is everything that is ‘not Israel’, legally, and includes Al-Quds/Jerusalem in its entirety, the rest of the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
  • Israel’s recognition and UN membership did not include sovereignty over any part of Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Palestinians also enjoy the right of external self-determination (i.e. freedom from external domination) which has been universally accepted and affirmed by states and UN institutions including the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the International Court of Justice.
  • And Palestine is a state in the international law sense because (a) there’s a presumption in favour of statehood for people with a right of external self-determination; and (b) a large majority (138) of the world’s states collectively recognized Palestinian statehood when the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’. This had the effect of establishing statehood.
  • External self-determination is a right to be free of any external domination, including occupation or other forms of non-sovereign territorial control which prevent the full exercise of that right. Such domination must end so that this right can be exercised.
  • The right operates and exists simply and exclusively by virtue of the Palestinian people being entitled to it. It is not something that depends on anyone else agreeing to it, such as Israel, the Quartet, the UN, other states, etc. It is a right; so there is no need for Palestinians to negotiate or compromise with Israelis as the price for ending their occupation.
  • Israel’s exercising control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, preventing the Palestinian people from full and effective self-governance, has for decades been a fundamental impediment to the realization of the right of self-determination which the Palestinian people are entitled to enjoy under international law. And there was no actual or imminent armed attack that justified the occupation as a means of self-defence prior to 7 October.
  • Furthermore, there is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
  • Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involvedAnd it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force, over those areas of the West Bank.

Advice to Messrs Sunak, Cameron and Docherty is surely to first get on the right side of international law – and human decency – and recognise Palestinian statehood without any more foot-dragging. Furthermore, to join with other states and tell Israel, firmly, that all cooperation, collaboration and favoured nation privileges are cancelled until the apartheid regime ends its illegal occupation, removes its squatters, lifts its siege, ceases interference with free movement and fulfils its obligations under the UN Charter and resolutions. And completes a probationary period demonstrating good behaviour before being welcomed back into the community of nations.

Otherwise, what is international law worth? Our political leaders must realise that the British public don’t want a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wholesale destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and is as hateful, racist and disrespectful of human rights and norms as Israel has been for as long as most of us can remember.


Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can be read on the internet by visiting radiofreepalestine.org.uk. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Jesus, Gaza, and the Murder of Useless People


Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem.  He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas.  But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.

The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods.  There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes.  No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase.  No credit card bills that come due in the new year.  No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.

Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life.  That hope was improbable but possible with faith.

These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories.  They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected.  They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.”  They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age.  They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.

Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .

To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washinton, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.

Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.

A few days ago my wife and I were caring for our son’s two dogs.  Down the hill as night came on, the town set off fireworks – those bombs bursting in air (Oh how lovely is war!) – to celebrate and encourage people to buy holiday gifts, what can only fairly be described as acquisitive consumer madness that many realize yet have accepted as an essential part of the Christmas message.  As the fireworks exploded loudly, the dogs started to quake uncontrollably and we had to hold them tight to comfort them.

Yes, they are animals, but sentient animals with deep feelings; and yes, they are not children in Gaza quivering in fear as the Israelis bomb them night and day in savage attacks.  But as we held those frightened dogs, feeling their hearts beat fast as they gasped for breath, the visceral sense of what those Palestinians must be feeling, as they hold their trembling children who are butchered as useless objects, overwhelmed me.  As they are “thinned out,” as Netanyahu is reported to have said, I felt sick at heart to be living safely in a country that finances and supports such slaughter.  A country in which buying and selling is the real religion, people have become commodities, and Christmas has become the celebration of such grotesqueries.

I keep thinking of the difference between human beings and things; life and death; money and power; acquisitiveness and poverty; and, as Norman O. Brown puts it in Life Against Death, “an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption.”

In his classic study, Brown makes clear that it is erroneous to think that the secular and the sacred are exclusive opposites, as if the secular has replaced the “irrational” beliefs of religion with clean science and logical thinking; has banished irrational superstitions with abstract, objective, quantitative, and impersonal thinking.  On the contrary, he argues that the whole modern secular money complex – the spirit of capitalism – is rooted in the psychology of guilt and the secular sacred.  He writes:

The psychological realities here are best grasped in terms of theology, and were already grasped by Luther. Modern secularism, and its companion Protestantism, do not usher in an era in which human consciousness is liberated from supernatural manifestations; the essence of the Protestant (or capitalist) era is that the power over this world has passed from God to God’s negation, God’s ape, the Devil. And already Luther had seen in money the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic. The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

Things, just like money, beyond a certain minimum necessary for a simple life of use, do not, as everyone knows, bring happiness.  This is because they are dead – excrement – the Devil’s favorite toy.

Take all those useless and superfluous objects people exchange during the holiday season.  The disposable gifts that are purchased to ease the guilt of giving and receiving.  Or such “objects” as an autograph of a famous person, an art work such as Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn that sold at auction last year for $195 million, Babe Ruth’s bat, Princess Diana’s evening dress ($1,148 million at auction), antlers over a fireplace and trophies of all sorts – the examples are manifold – they serve to confer on their owners a sacred prestige (etymology = deception, illusion) that is pure magic.  Like vast piles of money, they are talismanic protectors against death.  Their magical properties are irrational and rarely acknowledged, for to do so would reveal the absurdity of their acquisition and the pathetic nihilistic core of their owners.  They are outward signs of inward barrenness, yet for those who possess these useless objects they are magic ordure.

The more expensive the objects the more social power they mystically confer, since the message is that the owner can always give it up for a pot of gold but doesn’t have to since they are sitting on a lot more gold, which is really a pot of shit.  In other words, wealth, its possession and the avid desire for it, signifies power over people and that power includes using them in many ways, including their labor, and killing them if one chooses, quickly or slowly, overtly or deviously, directly or indirectly, for some people are useless objects, inferior people.

Such power is central to politics and warfare, as a quick glance at the wealth of war-promoting politicians will reveal.

It is central to the widespread thinking today that the world is filled with useless people who must be disposed of one way or the other.

It is a fundamental tenet of the World Economic Forum, the Gates-Rockefeller et al. crowd, and the racist eugenics promoters today and yesterday.

It is behind the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) biological weapons gain-of-function research, the Covid-19 propaganda, and the CIA’s and Defense Department’s distribution of the mRNA countermeasures (“vaccines”).

It is central to the hideously obscene profits of the medical military-industrial complex and the world-wide arms industry.

It is central to the genocide taking place in Gaza.  For the Israeli rulers, the problem is that the Palestinians exist, so they must be exterminated.

It’s still the same old story told differently down through the ages.

Hitler enacted it against the Jews.

Once long ago, it was a Palestinian Jewish boy born in a manger destined to make trouble for the rulers of the empire who had to be eliminated one way or another.  Today that child of God is any Palestinian child, destined, we are told by the rulers of Israel, to grow into a terrorist animal.

Christmas is about a birth, the birth of a boy who would become a man who sided with the outcasts, the poor, the forsaken, the gentle, and the peacemakers.  His birth and life was a rebuke to the powerful and the rich who lord it over the innocent, the killers, those who profit at the expense of others, who amass wealth and useless possessions to parade their power, a show of power which, unknown to their self-obsessed minds, is a sign of their spiritual nullity.

I have nothing against Santa.  I once sat on his lap and he seemed nice to my four year-old mind.  He was fat and jolly.  He told me I would get what I wanted for Christmas.  But he forgot to tell me what Christmas was really about.

That is what I want.  To remember.


Edward Curtin writes and his work appears widely. He is the author of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies. Read other articles by Edward, or visit Edward's website.


https://dissidentvoice.org/

SCI-FI-TEK

JET retires - after 40 years and 105,929 pulses

21 December 2023


The pioneering Joint European Torus (JET) has performed its final fusion research experiments just over four decades after it delivered its first pulse on 25 June 1983

(Video: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority/EUROfusion)

JET, which is in Culham, near Oxford in the UK, performed its final day of plasma experiments on Monday and subsequently delivered its 105,929th and final pulse, in which JET ❤️ was engraved into one of its tiles.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority said that even on its final day of plasma it "continued to push scientific boundaries, firstly attempting an inverted plasma shape for the first time at Culham before deliberately aiming electrons at the inner wall to improve understanding of beam control and damage mechanisms".

As with its many previous experiments, the findings will help the development of the multinational ITER fusion project in southern France.

The foundation stone for JET was laid in 1979 and at that stage it was an 11-nation project comprising Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, France, Netherlands, West Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. In recent years it has been operated by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, with scientists from 28 European countries using it to conduct research into the potential for carbon-free fusion energy in the future through work coordinated by the EUROfusion consortium which manages and funds European fusion research activities on behalf of Euratom, which, post-Brexit, the UK is no longer a member of.

JET, where temperatures can reach levels 10 times hotter than the centre of the Sun, has achieved a number of landmarks over the years, holding the title of the largest reactor of its type in the world, achieving the world's first controlled release of fusion energy, while 1997 saw it set a record thermal power output of 16 megawatts. Last year researchers doubled previous records by producing a total of 59 megajoules of heat energy from fusion over a five second period.

Following its retirement JET moves on to repurposing and decommissioning, a process expected to last until about 2040.


(Image: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority/EUROfusion)


UKAEA CEO Ian Chapman, who was among those gathered in the control room (pictured above) for the final plasma experiment, said: "This is the final milestone in JET's 40-year history. Those decades of research using JET by dedicated teams of scientists and engineers have played a critical role in accelerating the development of fusion energy."

 

What is nuclear fusion?


Fusion powers the Sun and stars as hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, and matter is converted into energy. Hydrogen, heated to very high temperatures changes from a gas to a plasma in which the negatively-charged electrons are separated from the positively charged atomic nuclei. Normally, fusion is not possible because the strongly repulsive electrostatic forces between the positively charged nuclei prevent them from getting close enough together to collide and for fusion to occur.

However, if the conditions are such that the nuclei can overcome the electrostatic forces to the extent that they can come within a very close range of each other, then the attractive nuclear force (which binds protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei) between the nuclei will outweigh the repulsive (electrostatic) force, allowing them to fuse together. Such conditions can occur when the temperature increases, causing the nuclei to move faster and eventually reach speeds high enough to bring them close enough together to fuse, causing a release of energy.

JET is a tokamak fusion system with a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber where, under the influence of extreme heat and pressure, gaseous hydrogen fuel becomes a plasma. The charged particles of the plasma can be shaped and controlled by massive magnetic coils placed around the vessel to confine the hot plasma away from the vessel walls.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Japan-US ties stronger than ever, minister says amid US Steel scrutiny

Reuters | December 22, 2023 |

Kimitsu Steel Works, an ironworks in Chiba, Japan, established in 1965 by Nippon Steel Corporation. 
(Reference image by Takato Marui, Wikimedia Commons.)

Japanese Industry Minister Ken Saito said on Friday that US-Japanese ties were “stronger than ever”, although he declined to comment directly on growing scrutiny in the United States of a proposed deal for Nippon Steel to buy US Steel.


Speaking at a media conference, Saito said he was aware of a statement by the US National Economic Council director that the purchase deserves “serious scrutiny”, but would not comment directly on private deals.

“I believe Nippon Steel simply needs to take the proper steps in the procedure,” he said. “In any case, the Japan-US alliance is stronger than ever … and it is important to work together in the field of economic security.”

The White House on Thursday said Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion proposed acquisition of US Steel needed to be carefully scrutinized given the company’s core role producing a material that is critical to national security.

The strongly worded White House statement comes amid growing criticism of the proposed deal by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers and the powerful United Steelworkers union, the main union at the third-largest US steel company.

Nippon Steel said in a statement it believes the acquisition will be beneficial to all stakeholders. Akira Amari, a lawmaker from the ruling party, said the government would be willing to help the company, if asked, adding that Nippon Steel “should dispel concern over employment as soon as possible”.

The deal comes before an expected rise in interest rates which would raise financing costs for companies, said one Japanese banker who worked on the deal and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Nippon Steel management has defended the chunky premium it is paying for the iconic US steelmaker as it looks to grow overseas revenue.

“It’s a miracle it came up for sale. This is the kind of deal you don’t see even once in a lifetime,” said another banker.

The growing backlash against a buyer from one of Washington’s closest allies comes as the US has been moving to deepen cooperation on supply chains to counter the growing technological prowess of China.

The White House’s response follows a request from the union for scrutiny of the deal and is not a surprise or a move that affects the US-Japan alliance, an official from Japan’s industry ministry said.

Nippon Steel will follow procedure and provide explanation as required, the official added.

US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel had welcomed the deal shortly after its announcement on Monday, saying in an X social media post the two companies were “defining the future of the key steel industry and forging a strong bond as they face a more competitive environment.” He added that the deal would “deepen the bonds” between the US and Japan.

A US embassy spokesperson said on Friday the ambassador had no further comment on the deal.

(By Makiko Yamazaki, Ritsuko Shimizu, Yuka Obayashi, Chang-Ran Kim, Yukiko Toyoda, Maki Shiraki, Leika Kihara, Kentaro Sugiyama and Sam Nussey; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Edmund Klamann and Michael Perry and Miral Fahmy)

Production begins at three US uranium mines


22 December 2023


Energy Fuels has commenced production at three of its permitted and developed uranium mines in Arizona and Utah in response to strong market conditions. The company also expects to begin production at two additional mines in Colorado and Wyoming within a year.

Energy Fuels' White Mesa mill in Utah is the only currently operating conventional uranium mill in the USA for ore from underground mining operations. (Image: US NRC/Energy Fuels)

Production will be fully ramped up at the Pinyon Plain, La Sal and Pandora mines by mid- to late-2024, by which time Energy Fuels said it expects to be producing uranium at a run-rate of 1.1 to 1.4 million pounds per year, but will be stockpiled at the company's White Mesa mill in Utah for processing in 2025 "subject to market conditions, contract requirements and/or Mill schedule".

Energy Fuels' December 2022 technical report for Pinyon Plain, in Arizona, estimates total proven and probable reserves of 1,567,800 pounds U3O8. Pandora and La Sal are both part of the La Sal Project complex of uranium/vanadium mines in eastern Utah, which has estimated uranium resources of 4.3 million pounds U3O8, all in the inferred category. Reserves have not been reported for La Sal (mineral reserves are the economically mineable part of mineral resource).

The company said it is also preparing the Whirlwind (Colorado) and Nichols Ranch (Utah) mines  to commence uranium production within one year, which it says would increase its uranium production to over 2 million pounds of U3O8 per year starting in 2025, "if strong market conditions continue as expected". It also plans to advance permitting and development on the Roca Honda (New Mexico), Sheep Mountain (Wyoming) and Bullfrog (Utah) projects, which it says could expand the company's uranium production to up to 5 million pounds U3O8 per year in the coming years. It also expects to produce 1-2 million pounds of vanadium per year.

In the meantime, it will continue to produce uranium from its alternate feed recycling programme - expected to total about 150,000 pounds U3O8 (57.7 tU) in 2024 - while it stockpiles ore from its conventional mines. It also said it expects to commence an ore buying programme from third-party miners in 2024.

The company said its decision to ramp up uranium production was driven by market and policy factors including strengthening spot and long-term uranium prices; increased buying interest from US nuclear utilities; US and global government policies supporting nuclear energy to address global climate change; and reducing US reliance on Russian and Russian-controlled uranium and nuclear fuel.

The company said it expects to sell 200,000 pounds U3O8 into its existing portfolio of long-term contracts during 2024 - this is expected to occur during the first quarter of the year. It also noted that a "utility customer" has the option to purchase an additional 100,000 pounds U3O8 from the company in 2024. Energy Fuels "holds uncommitted inventory and, with the benefit of future production, will continue to evaluate additional spot and/or long-term uranium sales opportunities during 2024 and beyond," it said.

"Due to the substantial increase in uranium prices, US government support for nuclear energy and nuclear fuel, and a global focus on reducing carbon emissions, Energy Fuels is resuming large-scale uranium production," CEO Mark Chalmers said, adding that current uranium spot prices of "near USD90 per pound" are at their highest since 2007. "Energy Fuels has made the required investments over the past several years to prepare for today's uranium markets, and we are uniquely positioned to successfully resume US uranium production in 2024. This is evidenced by our production of roughly two-thirds of all uranium produced in the US over the past five years."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News


Energy Fuels starts production at three uranium mines as metal prices rise

Reuters | December 21, 2023 | 

Pinyon Plain mine in Arizona. (Image courtesy of Energy Fuels).

US-based Energy Fuels said on Thursday it had started production at three of its permitted and developed uranium mines in Arizona and Utah, encouraged by higher prices of the heavy metal.


Shares of the company rose 2% to $7.10 in premarket trading.

The company is also preparing two more mines in Colorado and Wyoming for expected production within a year and advancing permitting on several other large-scale US mine projects to increase uranium production in the coming years.

“Due to the substantial increase in uranium prices, US government support for nuclear energy and nuclear fuel, and a global focus on reducing carbon-emissions, Energy Fuels is resuming large-scale uranium production,” CEO Mark Chalmers said in a statement.

Uranium spot prices are currently near $90 per pound – the highest level seen since 2007, when it reached $135 per pound, or over $200 per pound on an inflation-adjusted basis, Chalmers added.

Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium as lawmakers seek to add pressure on Moscow for its war on Ukraine, although the measure has waivers in case of supply concerns for domestic reactors.

Energy Fuels said it expects to be producing uranium at a run-rate of 1.1 million to 1.4 million pounds per year, once production is fully ramped up at the three mines – Pinyon Plain, La Sal and Pandora – by mid- to late-2024.

(By Roshia Sabu; Editing by Devika Syamnath)




Work begins to dismantle Garigliano reactor vessel

22 December 2023


Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari SpA (Sogin) has begun the process of dismantling the pressure vessel of the boiling water reactor, which the company says is the most complex dismantling activity in the decommissioning of the boiling water reactor plant.

Removing the vessel head marks the start of the final phase of decommissioning of the boiling water reactor (Image: Sogin)

Working with its subsidiary Nucleco, Sogin said it has now removed the top part of the vessel as it enters the final phase of the nuclear decommissioning of the Campania site.

Removing the vessel head means that the rest of the vessel can now be submerged in the reactor channel. This will provide a natural radiation shield for subsequent dismantling operations which will be carried out under water, Sogin said.

Preparatory activities carried out before the removal of the vessel head included restoring auxiliary electrical, ventilation and control systems to the reactor building, as well as the circuit to flood the reactor channel. The removal of the vessel head was carried out under the supervision of Italy's National Inspectorate for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection.

Work to remove equipment from the upper part of the reactor vessel is set to be completed in early 2024, after which Sogin said it will start the dismantling work on the vessel and the systems and components of the reactor building.

Garigliano, a 150 MWe boiling water reactor, was connected to the grid in January 1964 and was shut down in 1982. Italy decided to phase out nuclear power in a referendum that followed the 1986 Chernobyl accident and Sogin was established in 1999 to take responsibility for decommissioning the country's former nuclear power sites and locating a national waste store.


IAEA continues to seek reactor rooftop access at Zaporizhzhia

22 December 2023

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts were told that security concerns meant they would not be going ahead with their planned access to the reactor rooftops at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on 19 December.

This picture was taken during an IAEA visit in June (Image: IAEA)

According to the latest update on the situation from IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, no alternative date has yet been provided. IAEA teams have previously had access to the roofs of reactors 2, 3 and 4, but not the three other units.

He said that the agency's team at the site, which has been under Russian military control since early March 2022, also had a request to visit the north-western part of unit 5's turbine hall rejected, adding that there has been no access to the north-western part of any of the six turbine halls since mid-October. They are also waiting to be able to see the maintenance plan for 2024.

In the past week the team have visited the reactor hall and electrical safety system rooms of unit 3 and the main control room of unit 5, and visited the site's 750kV electrical switchyard, the on-site water treatment facility, the cooling pond and towers, inlet and outlet channels. They have reported continuing to hear explosions outside of the site, which is on the frontline of Russian and Ukrainian forces.

Belarus 'could be a world leader in nuclear energy share'

21 December 2023


Belarus is considering building a second nuclear power plant, or a third unit at its existing one, and could become one of the leading countries in terms of the proportion of its energy being nuclear-generated, Energy Minister Viktor Karankevich has said.

(Image: Belta)

According to the official Belta news agency, Karankevich noted that, with the commissioning of the second unit at the country's first plant, more than a quarter of Belarus's electricity is now generated by nuclear, and only five countries get more than 40% of their total generation from nuclear.

He said that a decision on more nuclear would depend on evaluation of future electricity consumption: "The construction of the second nuclear power plant or the third unit [of the existing nuclear power plant] is under consideration now ... experts and government agencies are now looking into the matter and are preparing rationalising materials. We are looking into organisational, technical, and economic matters.”

"We intend to reach 44 billion kWh of electricity in 2025. By 2030 we have to reach 47 billion kWh ... as we decide in favour of the second nuclear power plant or the third unit, we have to analyse the year 2040 instead of 2030 or 2035. We have to evaluate how the manufacturing sector will develop, how much electricity Belarusian households will use, how electricity consumption volumes will change."

In a press conference at Belta he said that the energy produced by the two units at the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant was about 55 million kWh of electricity a day. He also said that tours of the plant were proving increasingly popular, with 3,500 visitors in 2022.

The Belarus nuclear power plant is located in Ostrovets in the Grodno region. A general contract for the construction was signed in 2011, with first concrete in November 2013. Rosatom began construction of unit 2 in May 2014. There are now six VVER-1200 reactors in operation in total, with four in Russia. The first Ostrovets power unit was connected to the grid in November 2020 and, the energy ministry says, the plant will produce about 18.5 TWh of electricity per year, equivalent to 4.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas, with an annual effect on the country's economy of about USD550 million. The second unit was put into commercial operation on 1 November.

The six unit nuclear power plant has one unit - unit 4 - in hot shutdown to produce steam and heat for safety and other functions at the plant and the associated town of Energodar where most of the staff live. The IAEA has in the past urged alternative methods to provide the heat and steam required, so that all six reactors could be in cold shutdown.

In Thursday's update Grossi said that four new mobile diesel boilers were being installed to generate additional steam in addition to nine mobile boilers which are already on site and being used to provide heating.

Grossi said: "Nuclear power plants need significant amounts of steam to conduct important operational activities at the sites. This remains the case also for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, even though it has not produced electricity for well over a year now. The IAEA has encouraged the plant to install diesel boilers for this purpose and we welcome the planned additional capacity."

For access to external power the site currently relies on the one functioning 750 kV power line and one back-up 330 kV line. There have been eight times during the conflict where the plant has had to reply on emergency diesel boilers after losing access to external power.

The IAEA said that it had also completed the 33rd delivery of nuclear safety and security equipment to Ukraine, using contributions from Australia, and the agency reported that teams at the country's other nuclear energy plants - Rivne, Khmelnitsky, South Ukraine - and the Chernobyl site, said "nuclear safety and security is being maintained despite challenging circumstances".

France and Sweden plan nuclear cooperation

21 December 2023


France and Sweden have signed a declaration of intent to develop long-term cooperation in the field of nuclear energy.

(Image: @AgnesRunacher on X)

The declaration was signed in Brussels on 19 December by Sweden's Deputy Prime Minister and Energy & Industry Minister Ebba Busch (pictured above, left) and France's Energy Minister AgnĂ©s Pannier-Runacher (above right).

The declaration calls for the two countries, among other things, to exchange experiences regarding financing models for the expansion of new nuclear power and encourage increased cooperation between the Swedish and French nuclear power industries. In addition, the countries will exchange technical experience in reactor maintenance, as well as lifetime and power upgrades of existing nuclear power reactors.

It says France and Sweden will "promote a regulatory, industrial and financial framework favourable to the realisation of nuclear installation projects with a high level of safety and ensuring institutional support for nuclear energy in compliance with the principle of technological neutrality and with the objective of strengthening Europe's sovereignty and energy security".

In the field of the nuclear fuel cycle, the countries will seek to reinforce the security of supply of nuclear materials and fuels "by endeavouring to promote cooperation between their industries to diversify supply and reduce EU dependence on Russian nuclear materials and services". They will also aim to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the field of used fuel management, radioactive waste management and the associated logistics operations.

The countries noted the close relations that exist between their nuclear regulators, the French Nuclear Safety Authority and the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority.

"Increased international cooperation on nuclear power is central to enabling a massive expansion of nuclear power in Sweden by 2045," Busch said. "France, like Sweden, has great experience in the nuclear power field and I look forward to strengthening the Swedish-French cooperation."

Last month, the Swedish government unveiled a roadmap which envisages the construction of new nuclear generating capacity equivalent to at least two large-scale reactors by 2035, with up to ten new large-scale reactors coming online by 2045.

IAEA oversees removal of disused sealed radioactive sources from Chile

21 December 2023


A record number of 31 disused sealed radioactive sources (DSRSs) have been transferred from Chile to a recycling facility in Europe as part of an International Atomic Energy Agency multi-regional project to enhance nuclear security and radiation safety.

Secure transportation was a key part of the process (Image: (Photo: Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission)

Most radioactive waste arising from nuclear applications consists of DSRS. Radioactive sources are used in different devices in medical, industrial and agricultural facilities. They have to be accounted for and when they are no longer usable, they have to be recovered, dismantled, stored and, in some cases, prepared for transportation. The removed DSRSs - mostly cobalt sources used for cancer treatment in Chile - have been in temporary storage since the end of their use in 1992.

The IAEA said that the DSRSs "represent about half of the radioactive material received yearly in waste management facilities from different activities around the country".

Luis Huerta Torchio, director of the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission (CCHEN), said: "The removal of these sources has multiple benefits for the CCHEN and the whole country, and it is in line with the circular economy objectives, in terms of recycling and reuse. The removal has significantly reduced the risk for any type of incident associated with these disused sources. In addition, it freed up to 30 per cent of space in the national storage facility used for disused radioactive sources, and subsequently extended the possibility of its use for about ten more years."

Olena Mykolaichuk, director of the IAEA’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology division, said: "The IAEA technically oversaw the removal of the sources from Chile to ensure that it was performed safely and securely. An operation of this scale cannot succeed without the dedicated efforts of organisations like CCHEN, skilled contractors, and the regulatory bodies involved - the experience gained is invaluable and represents a model that can be applied for future projects in other countries."

The three-year IAEA Multi-Regional Project on Sustainable Management of Disused Sealed Radioactive Sources, funded by Canada, began in 2019 with 11 Latin American, African and Pacific countries in its first phase. A second phase began in November 2022 with 24 more countries taking part.

Hildegarde Vandenhove, director of the IAEA's Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety, said: "The increase in the number of participating countries indicates the success of the first phase of the project, the global interest in the safe and secure handling of DSRSs and, at the same time, the amount of work that remains to be done in this field."

The operational plan for Chile was agreed in December 2021 and involved the verification of the radioactive sources, appropriate packaging for transport, transportation and shipment to the recycling facility. The first 17 DSRSs were exported in October 2022 and 14 more in July this year.


First FY2024 recipients of GAIN vouchers announced

21 December 2023


The federally funded vouchers aim to accelerate the innovation and application of advanced nuclear technologies by providing companies access to the extensive nuclear research capabilities and expertise of the US Department of Energy's national laboratory complex.

ARC Clean Technology, developer of this 100 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor, is one of the recipients (Image: X/@GovNuclear)

GAIN - Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear - is an initiative launched in 2016 by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy which helps businesses overcome critical technological and commercialisation challenges of nuclear energy technologies through a voucher system, giving stakeholders access to the DOE's R&D facilities and infrastructure to support the cost-effective development of innovative nuclear energy technologies. All awardees are responsible for a minimum 20% cost-share, which could be an in-kind contribution.

The recipients of the first GAIN vouchers for 2024 are:

  • Westinghouse Electric Company, to work with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to perform irradiation testing and associated post-irradiation examination on a ceramic matrix composite for potential use in the eVinci microreactor. 
  • SHINE Technologies, to partner with Argonne National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory to assess sensor technologies and their placement in a fuel recycling system to ensure nuclear materials are adequately tracked. 
  • Aalo Atomics, to collaborate with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to evaluate modelling and simulation capabilities for the fuel and core system of the Aalo-1 microreactor which is inspired by INL's planned MARVEL reactor. 
  • ARC Clean Technology, Inc, to work with Argonne National Laboratory to update its simulation software with additional passive heat removal capabilities to better model its sodium-cooled reactor design. 
  • Global Nuclear Fuels - Americas, to partner with Argonne National Laboratory to confirm the viability of their electroreduction technology to convert uranium oxide fuel stock into a metal that can be used for advanced reactor fuel. 
  • Boston Atomics, to collaborate with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on a design review of an in-vessel fuel handling machine for a horizontally oriented integrated reactor and steam generator. 
  • Energy Northwest, to work with Argonne National Laboratory to use climate forecasting for the next century to inform the design and selection of future nuclear reactor cooling systems and their impacts on electricity cost. 

GAIN's announcement contains links to further information on all the proposals that have been selected to receive vouchers.

Four rounds of GAIN Nuclear Energy Vouchers are planned for FY2024.

Ukraine's centralised fuel storage facility fully operational

20 December 2023


Energoatom and Holtec have announced that Ukraine's new Centralised Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF) is up and running receiving used nuclear fuel from the country's nuclear power plants.

Kotin and Holtec International vice president for Ukraine Riaz Awan at the CSFSF site, with HI-STORM casks in the background (Image: Energoatom)

Construction and commissioning of the facility continued despite the on-going war with Russia, which included Russian forces controlling the Chernobyl nuclear site for more than a month in February and March 2022.

Energoatom said that the new facility will save USD200 million a year which it previously had to pay for the used fuel to be transported and stored in Russia. It will also avoid the risk of having to interrupt operation of plants because of a lack of capacity to safely store used fuel.

The CSFSF, located in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, is a dry storage site for used nuclear fuel assemblies from the country's VVER-1000 and VVER-440 reactors. It is designed to have a total storage capacity of 16,530 used fuel assemblies, including 12,010 VVER-1000 assemblies and 4520 VVER-440 assemblies. Contracts were signed for its construction with USA-based Holtec International in 2005, though construction only began in 2017.

Energoatom President Petro Kotin said, during a visit to the CSFSF: "The safe, reliable and secure operation of the storage facility is critically important for ensuring the uninterrupted supply of electricity to our citizens... [and] also achieves one of the most important goals in strengthening the energy independence of our country. At the same time, cost savings for the removal and dry storage of spent nuclear fuel from domestic nuclear power plants this year alone have already fully covered the costs of the construction."

Holtec President and CEO Kris Singh said: "Approximately two decades ago, Ukraine began its long quest to establish a supremely safe consolidated interim storage facility to take full control of its used nuclear fuel. That journey has finally come to fruition ... the successful transport and storage of spent nuclear fuel by Energoatom from its operating nuclear reactors to the Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility is a fitting symbol of Ukraine’s resolve to achieve complete operational independence in regard to management of its spent fuel discharged by the country’s fleet of reactors and provide a safe and economic solution for long-term management of used nuclear fuel at its domestic centralised storage facility. This facility now has made Ukraine an international leader in consolidated storage of spent nuclear fuel."

He said Holtec's "high-capacity Double Wall Multi-Purpose Canisters and the world’s most thermally efficient transport cask HI-STAR 190 will become Ukraine’s workhorse to transport the country’s used fuel from its nine reactors to the nation’s consolidated interim storage facility". Although the design life of the new facility is 100 years he said he expected it "to be many times longer".

Most of the equipment for the centre was manufactured at Holtec facilities in the USA, although contractors in Estonia, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands were also involved. Energoatom and Holtec have plans to create a joint venture enterprise to develop a manufacturing and technology centre in Ukraine to localise production of equipment for the storage and transportation of used nuclear fuel and also for equipment for Holtec's small modular reactor.

Kotin said: "Ukraine always strives to demonstrate its innovative leadership in the field of clean energy with the help of advanced technologies, to take concrete steps in the direction of energy independence and diversification, to ensure reliable energy supply for its citizens. We must use advanced and absolutely safe nuclear technology, as our nuclear power generates more than 55% of the country's electricity. This joint cooperation with Holtec provides Ukraine with an excellent opportunity to become a leader in the field of global nuclear energy."

Ukraine currently has nine operating reactors at South Ukraine, Khmelnitsky and Rivne nuclear power plants. A further six units at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have been under Russian military control since early March 2022.

Regulator accepts Diablo Canyon licence renewal application

20 December 2023


Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) can operate the two-unit Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California beyond the expiry of their current licences (2024 and 2025, respectively) following the acceptance of PG&E's licence renewal application by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Diablo Canyon (Image: PG&E)

PG&E filed the application on 7 November, seeking to extend the plant's operating licences by an additional 20 years.

"The NRC staff has determined the application contains sufficient information to formally docket the application and begin its detailed safety and environmental reviews," the NRC said on 19 December. "With the docketing of the application, the reactors' licences will remain in effect under an exemption to agency regulations until the agency's review is complete."

PG&E originally applied to renew the licences in November 2009, but withdrew the application in 2018 after agreeing to close the plant at the end of its current licences. At that time, it was thought that the plant's output would no longer be required as California focused on an energy policy centred on efficiency, renewables and storage. However, in September 2022 - as California's energy grid saw its highest-ever peak demand during a record-breaking heatwave - the state passed a law allowing the units to continue to operate until 2030 to ensure a reliable energy system.

Normally, NRC regulations allow a reactor's operating licence to remain in effect beyond its expiry date provided that the licensee has already applied for a renewal at least five years prior to expiration, which the NRC calls "timely renewal".

PG&E asked the NRC to resume its review of the licence renewal application, but in January the regulator ruled that a new application would need to be submitted. This meant that PG&E could not meet the timely renewal requirement, and therefore it needed to seek the exemption. Such an exemption, allowing the two units to continue operating while the NRC considers PG&E's application to renew the plant's licence, was granted in early March.

Last week, Californian regulators agreed to extending the operations of the Diablo Canyon plant for an additional five years, to 2030. The California Public Utilities Commission's (CPUC's) approval is subject to three conditions: the NRC must continue to authorise the plant to operate; a USD1.4 billion federal loan agreement must not be terminated; and that the CPUC does not make a future determination that extended plant operations "are imprudent or unreasonable".

"PG&E remains committed to complying with energy policies to ensure the state has the option to keep DCPP online past 2025 to ensure electricity reliability as California continues toward its clean energy future," said Maureen Zawalick, DCPP Vice President. "We are grateful for the opportunity to continue providing homes and businesses across California with safe, clean, and affordable power."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Milei looks to cut costs for Argentina’s miners in broader deregulation push

“From today on, it’s prohibited to prohibit exports” 

Bloomberg News | December 21, 2023 | 

Javier Milei. Credit: Vox España | Wikimedia Commons

President Javier Milei wants to turn Argentina’s lithium and copper rush into an investment bonanza — starting with cutting red-tape.


Milei, a libertarian who took office on Dec. 10 vowing to free up Argentina’s tightly controlled economy, unveiled a package of deregulation measures late Wednesday that would help a slew of industries. He singled out cutting costs for mining companies that in recent years have been lured to vast deposits in the Andes as the transition to clean energy spurs demand for battery metals.



“Mining is another area with great potential in the country that is notably underdeveloped,” reads the presidential decree outlining the reforms. “To that end, we must eliminate costs.”

Milei plans to do that by revoking two laws enacted in the 1990s — the National System for Mining Trade and the National Mining Data Bank. Both require firms to provide reams of data to the government.

He’s also planning to do away with customs restrictions. The previous government sought to keep some lithium production for local use to develop a downstream industry.

“From today on, it’s prohibited to prohibit exports,” Milei said.

To be sure, his measures could yet face opposition in congress, where his party is a minority. Even if the red-tape burden is eased for mining, a far bigger challenge remains for Milei in the form of lifting capital and currency controls.

Argentina is the world’s fastest-growing producer of battery-grade lithium. It also has several big copper projects in the works, although no major operating mines.

(By Jonathan Gilbert)
GEMOLOGY
Diamond output of sanctions-hit Alrosa down in 2023, stockpiling likely

Reuters | December 22, 2023 |

Alrosa rough diamonds. (Image by Alrosa.)

Russian sanctions-hit diamond producer Alrosa said on Friday that its 2023 output fell by 2.8% year on year to 34.6 million carats, matching its initial production plan “despite the negative external environment”.


Alrosa, the world’s biggest producer of rough diamonds by volume with 30% of the market, was hit by US sanctions in 2022 when Moscow invaded Ukraine and is now facing a further hit from the G7 countries’ 2024 plan to ban imports of Russian gems.

“Alrosa seems to be proceeding as if the sanctions will not derail its business. They are holding production relatively steady and continue to commit to longer-term capex as is the case with redevelopment of the Mir mine,” diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky said.

Zimnisky estimates that Alrosa has been stockpiling part of its production over the last two years and that the company’s 2023 diamond sales fell 25-30% from the pre-sanction levels due to the high market stocks.

Alrosa, which competes with De Beers – the world’s largest producer by value, has not disclosed its sales since the sanctions were imposed.

All global miners were affected between mid-October and mid-December when India, home to 90% of the world’s diamond cutting and polishing industry, suspended imports to manage accumulated stockpile amid weak demand.

As India resumed rough diamond imports on Dec. 15, the global diamond industry faces a recovery in 2024, Zimnisky said.

“The supply overhang seems to be much more under control coming out of 2023, and diamond prices seem to have stabilised with certain categories even advancing in recent weeks,” he said.

India was the largest buyer of the Russian diamonds in 2023, customs figures accessed through Trade Data Monitor show, with significant supplies also going to Belgium, Hong Kong and Armenia. Russia has not disclosed its export or import data since it invaded Ukraine.

(By Polina Devitt; Editing by Jan Harvey and Nick Macfie)