Uranium in Canyon Country: Part 2 of 2: Who benefits from uranium mining? Grand Canyon News, By Erin Ford , 27 Mar 18, GRAND CANYON, Ariz. — There are currently 831 mining claims in the roughly 1 million acres withdrawn by former Interior Secretary in 2012, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
There may be a healthy profit to be made on the claims, as legal action by mining industry groups and a recommended review of the ban by the Forest Service seems to indicate. But who is making the profit?
The BLM’s report indicates that only about 2 percent of the 831 mining claims are held by U.S.-based companies – those belong to Liberty Star Uranium and Metals in Tucson, Arizona. The rest, discounting privately-held claims (5 percent), belong to foreign-based companies. Of the remaining 93 percent, companies based out of Canada hold 712 claims (86 percent) and a UK-based Vane Minerals holds 60 claims (7 percent).
Uranium production in the U.S. has not been a profitable enterprise since the bottom fell out of the uranium market in the early 1990s. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), there are currently 61 nuclear-based power plants in the U.S. — no new plants have been commissioned since the near-catastrophic incident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island facility in 1979. The end of the Cold War in 1991 meant that proliferation of nuclear weapons was suspended, a pact that remains largely in place. As a result, demand for uranium fell sharply, prices bottomed out and uranium extraction became a pricey enterprise with low return on investment.
………Where’s the profit?
In a petition filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), Energy Fuels Inc., a Canadian company with a 12 percent stake in uranium mining claims around Grand Canyon, asserts that the commercial uranium stockpile was 6 percent higher than 2015 levels.
If demand is lower and supplies are higher, how do these companies plan to profit off increased mining activity?
The answer may lie in three things: President Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda, potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling and Energy Fuels’ petition to the DOC……….
Who benefits?
Energy Fuels, Inc. recently filed a petition with the DOC for relief under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. In simplest terms, the company is asking the administration to issue a buy American requirement by limiting uranium imports as a threat to national security. The premise is the same as the tariffs to be potentially imposed on steel and aluminum imports — to revive a U.S.-based industry by steeply taxing competitors or eliminating them altogether.
But Reimondo points out that uranium mining isn’t a strong economic driver in northern Arizona, and even if it was, the U.S. doesn’t reap any rewards. The government, which receives royalty payments from industries that extract minerals or other commodities from federal lands, doesn’t receive royalties from uranium mining.
Comparatively, the tourism and travel economy pumps more than 900 million into the region each year, and supports nearly 20,000 jobs, according to a joint 2011 report by the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Forest Service and BLM. The report also estimates that uranium mining could support only about 650 local jobs — and those jobs aren’t permanent. Once a mine is depleted, on-site jobs will evaporate. Energy Fuels says its Canyon mine, which is currently permitted to operate near Red Butte about six miles from the South Rim, is expected to employ about 60 people at peak production.
Some cities and states are taking their own initiative to protect the world from a U.S. trigger finger. And they’re mostly led by women.
Dropping an atomic bomb doesn’t happen as fast as it does in the movies. There’s no room with a red, shiny “nuclear button” primed for the pressing. But in the U.S., launching a nuclear weapon does depend on just one trigger finger: The President’s.
Peace builders, activists, and congressional leaders have tried unsuccessfully to take away this unilateral ability since the Cold War, when nuclear war with Russia felt imminent daily. Now, the threat looms again, as tensions between North Korea and the U.S. simmer—and a new group of local legislators are taking the lead.
A broad coalition of representatives, delegates, and state senators from eight states (California, Georgia, Vermont, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Iowa) have begun pushing resolutionsthat put additional pressure on Congress to stop the president’s first-strike powers. And cities such as Northampton, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and counties across Washington State have drafted local resolutions of their own.
ONCE a conventionally armed attack submarine, the US navy’s Virginia-class underwater vessels will now be capable of firing nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
US navy director of undersea warfare Rear Admiral John Tammen said the enhancement would see the submarine shifting into a nuclear deterrence role, reports The Maven.
“While Virginia-class submarines can use conventional deterrence to keep adversaries in check, a sub-launched cruise missile with a nuclear warhead would be incorporated into Virginias and give national command authority additional escalation control,” he said.
The current administration called for the weapon in the Nuclear Posture Review, with hopes it would benefit the Pentagon’s current nuclear weapons deterrence range. Currently only larger ballistic missile submarines are equipped to fire nuclear weapons.
As it stands, Virginia-class attack submarines are armed with tomahawks, which are long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missiles, and torpedoes, which are self-propelled weapons with explosive warheads.
US nuclear stockpile decreasing in size, but not capability, Defense News, By: Daniel Cebu , 27 Mar 18 WASHINGTON — The number of nuclear warheads kept in U.S. stockpiles decreased by nearly 200 since the end of the Obama administration, according to information released by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists. This reduction brings the total number of warheads down to 3,822 as of September 2017.
Trump’s new top security adviser wants to bomb Iran and tear up the nuclear deal, Business Insider BEN BRIMELOW, MAR 24, 2018,
Former US ambassador to the UN and noted foreign policy hawk John Bolton has been selected by President Donald Trump to become his newest national security advisor.
Bolton has expressed extremely hawkish views on Iran, including advocating for direct military action against the country and the tearing up of the nuclear deal on multiple occasions.
Because of his hawkish views, some consider Bolton’s appointment a betrayal of Trump’s base, since he campaigned on a platform of non-intervention.
John Bolton: We Must Bomb Iran Now
Newly appointed national security advisor John Bolton is perhaps the most hawkish, andpotentially “dangerous,” person that will be in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Bolton, who served as the US ambassador to the UN under former President George W. Bush, tried to distance himself from his previous comments after the announcement of the new position – but if the past is any indication, he will likely continue to be a major defence hawk.
Yes, John Bolton Really Is That Dangerous, NYT By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, MARCH 23, 2018
The good thing about John Bolton, President Trump’s new national security adviser, is that he says what he thinks.
The bad thing is what he thinks.
There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war. His selection is a decision that is as alarming as any Mr. Trump has made. His selection, along with the nomination of the hard-line C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, as secretary of state, shows the degree to which Mr. Trump is indulging his worst nationalistic instincts.
Mr. Bolton, in particular, believes the United States can do what it wants without regard to international law, treaties or the political commitments of previous administrations.
He has argued for attacking North Korea to neutralize the threat of its nuclear weapons, which could set off a horrific war costing tens of thousands of lives. At the same time, he has disparaged diplomatic efforts, including the talks planned in late May between Mr. Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. He not only wants to abrogate the six-party deal that, since 2015, has significantly limited Iran’s nuclear program; he has called for bombing Iran instead. He has also maligned the United Nations and other multilateral conventions, as Mr. Trump has done, favoring unilateral solutions.
Over a 30-year career in which he served three Republican presidents, including as United Nations ambassador and the State Department’s top arms control official, Mr. Bolton has largely disdained diplomacy and arms control in favor of military solutions; no one worked harder to blow up the 1994 agreement under which North Korea’s plutonium program was frozen for nearly eight years in exchange for heavy fuel oil and other assistance. The collapse of that agreement helped bring us to the crisis today, where North Korea is believed to have 20 or more nuclear weapons. ……….
Mr. Bolton is certain to accelerate American alienation from its allies and the rest of the world. Congress may not be able to stop his appointment, but it should speak out against it and reassert its responsibilities under the Constitution to authorize when the nation goes to war.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/john-bolton-trump-national-security-adviser.html
42 Hanford workers contaminated with radiation, Seattle Times, March 24, 2018 The final results of worker tests after a December spread of contamination found that 11 Hanford workers had inhaled or ingested radioactive particles from demolition of the nuclear reservation’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. By Annette Cary Tri-City Herald ioactive contamination from demolition of the nuclear reservation’s Plutonium Finishing Plant.
The final results of worker tests after a December spread of contamination at the plant found 11 Hanford workers had inhaled or ingested radioactive particles, according to information released Thursday
That’s on top of the 31 positive test results after a similar spread of contamination in June at the plant in the center of the nuclear reservation.
Demolition at the plant has been halted since December. It will not restart until the Department of Energy approves a new demolition plan, and a plan is approved and implemented to prevent the airborne spread of small radioactive particles.
The Washington Department of Ecology, a regulator on the project, also has said it will not allow demolition to continue if it is not convinced it can be done safely.
Open-air demolition on the plant began in late 2016 using heavy equipment to tear down its walls. Extensive work already had been done to remove as much contaminated equipment as possible from the plant.
According to a draft report issued earlier in the month by CH2M/Jacobs Engineering with input from the U.S. Department of Energy, an air-monitoring system last fall failed to pick up the spread of radioactive contamination, giving management false assurance that controls were effective.
State monitoring has found that plutonium and americium particles traveled as far as 10 miles from the demolition site, near Richland. Vehicles, office buildings and workers have been tested for traces of radioactive contamination.
A plan for safer demolition has yet to be released.
The project has been troubled with radioactive contamination found outside worker offices at the plant and on worker cars and government vehicles.
Mabna Institute Hackers Penetrated Systems Belonging to Hundreds of Universities, Companies, and Other Victims to Steal Research, Academic and Proprietary Data, and Intellectual Property, USA Department of Justice, 23 Mar 18
An Indictment charging Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38; Ehsan Mohammadi, 37; Abdollah Karima, aka Vahid Karima, 39; Mostafa Sadeghi, 28; Seyed Ali Mirkarimi, 34; Mohammed Reza Sabahi, 26; Roozbeh Sabahi, 24; Abuzar Gohari Moqadam, 37; and Sajjad Tahmasebi, 30, all citizens and residents of Iran, was unsealed today. The defendants were each leaders, contractors, associates, hackers-for-hire or affiliates of the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company that, since at least 2013, conducted a coordinated campaign of cyber intrusions into computer systems belonging to 144 U.S. universities, 176 universities across 21 foreign countries, 47 domestic and foreign private sector companies, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the State of Hawaii, the State of Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children’s Fund……..https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nine-iranians-charged-conducting-massive-cyber-theft-campaign-behalf-islamic-revolutionary
Saudi Prince’s Nuclear Bomb Comment May Scuttle Reactor Deal, Bloomberg By Ari Natter
Fresh scrutiny for plan to build U.S. reactors in Saudi Arabia
Lawmakers say Saudis shouldn’t be allowed to enrich uranium
Opposition to a deal for the U.S. to provide nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia is growing after Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said the kingdom would develop a nuclear weapon if Iran did.
The potential for U.S. companies to participate in the construction of as many as 16 nuclear reactors sought by the kingdom has been seen as a potential lifeline to Westinghouse Electric Co. and others suffering from the flagging nuclear industry at home.
To further that effort, the Trump administration is said to be considering allowing the Saudis the right to enrich uranium, a break from the so-called “gold standard” included in the nuclear-sharing agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which allows power generation but prohibits the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium.
But that idea ran into a buzzsaw during a House hearing on Wednesday, with lawmakers from both parties saying prince’s admission that his country might seek to build nuclear weapons was cause to halt negotiations between the two nations. Energy Secretary Rick Perry met with Saudi officials earlier this month in London to begin talks on the deal. …….https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/saudi-prince-s-nuclear-bomb-comment-may-scuttle-reactor-deal
State Department Approves $1 Billion Arms Sale With Saudi Arabia , Daily Caller HENRY RODGERS Political Reporter 24 Mar 18
The State Department announced it had approved the sales of more than $1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia Thursday, which includes 6,700 missiles.
The announcement comes two days after President Donald Trump met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of a three week trip in the U.S. The Saudi Arabian government requested to purchase 6,700 U.S. built anti-tank missiles as well as supplies and parts for old tanks and helicopters, which the State Department approved.
The sale will “support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by improving the security of a friendly country, which has been and continues to be an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a statementThursday, adding it “will not alter the basic military balance in the region.”
One of the people MBS told about the discussion with Kushner was UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, according to a source who talks frequently to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati rulers. MBS bragged to the Emirati crown prince and others that Kushner was “in his pocket,” the source told The Intercept.
The Washington Post reported this week that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy.” According to the Post, Tillerson once asked staffers in frustration: “Who is the secretary of state here?”
Indeed, Kushner has grown so close to the Saudi and Emirati crown princes that he has communicated with them directly using WhatsApp, a reasonably secure messaging app owned by Facebook and popular in the Middle East, according to a senior Western official and a source close to the Saudi royal family.
UNTIL HE WAS stripped of his top-secret security clearance in February, presidential adviser Jared Kushner was known around the White House as one of the most voracious readers of the President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified rundown of the latest intelligence intended only for the president and his closest advisers.
Kushner, who had been tasked with bringing about a deal between Israel and Palestine, was particularly engaged by information about the Middle East, according to a former White House official and a former U.S. intelligence professional. Continue reading →
Reuters 21st March 2018, U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday to ensure that countries
striking deals with Washington on sharing nuclear power technology abandon
fuel-making activities that could be altered to make material for nuclear
weapons. U.S. Representatives Ilea Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Brad
Sherman, a Democrat, introduced the bill as officials from Saudi Arabia
work with the administration of President Donald Trump on a deal that could
relax safeguards on nuclear proliferation. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-nuclearpower/u-s-lawmakers-launch-bill-bolstering-nuclear-proliferation-safeguards-idUSKBN1GX2YB
FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy restructuring likely, power plants would be closed or sold, Cleveland.com, 23 Mar 18 By John Funk, The Plain Dealer The Perry nuclear power plant, a source of jobs and tax revenues for 30 years in Northeast Ohio, could be shutdown or sold in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding. The FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary that owns the company’s power plants has an accumulated debt of more than $2.8 billion. The old plants cannot generate power as cheaply as new gas turbine plants and wind farms. FirstEnergy has not been able to persuade state lawmakers or federal authorities to create special fees to subsidize its nuclear power plants and has made it clear in recent months that it wants to become a fully regulated company again. A bankruptcy case could be filed within a week. (Plain Dealer file )
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Brutal competitive financial forces are poised to remake FirstEnergy into a utility without power plants and focused solely on delivering electricity.
The Akron-based power company that a decade ago hired former George W. Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson to bullystate lawmakers who were considering a return to state-regulated power prices now appears ready to sell or close its remaining coal and nuclear power plants because the state won’t subsidize them and neither will federal authorities.
Those include Perry nuclear plant in Lake County east of Cleveland and Davis-Besse in Ottawa County near Toledo.
The draconian move may come in a corporate “restructuring” plan that could get under way next week in a federal bankruptcy court, either here or any other federal jurisdiction where the company has offices.
NBC 20th March 2018, With reports of American power plants across the country having their
systems accessed by hackers, one group of scientists are calling out the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Southern California Edison for
their recent decision to remove enhanced cyber-security systems at the San
Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
Daily Energy Insider 20th March 2018, Energy Secretary Rick Perry testified to a Senate panel on Tuesday about the Trump administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) budget request for fiscal year 2019, a plan that prioritizes nuclear security while making
large cuts to energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
The budget proposal, a $500 million increase in funds over FY 2017, promotes
innovations like a new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and
Emergency Response (CESER) and gains for the Office of Fossil Energy.
Investments would be made to strengthen the National Nuclear Security
Administration and modernize the nuclear force, as well as in weapons
activities and advanced computing.
