Growing opposition to nuclear power in Rwanda
 Rwanda: Opposition grows to Russian-backed nuclear plantsLawmaker voices fears about safety of nuclear plants in densely populated Rwanda, but top official says nuclear is inevitable. KIGALI, Rwanda, 29 Nov 20, Plans by the tiny landlocked African country of Rwanda to build nuclear reactors with Russian help are facing stiff opposition in the country. Frank Habineza, a lawmaker and member of the Democratic Green Party, has warned that nuclear energy could do the country more harm than good. “Living near a nuclear energy plant is like living near a nuclear bomb which can explode and cause destruction of life and property to the nation and its neighboring countries,” he said. He said in light of Rwanda’s high population density, there is no place to set up the plant without compromising the safety of Rwandans and their neighbors. After Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom Global reached an agreement last year to set up the plant by 2024, the Rwandan cabinet approved establishment of the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board – an institution to coordinate nuclear science and technology activities in the country. In December 2018, Rwanda and Russia agreed on a roadmap for an inter-governmental agreement on the use of nuclear energy…… After Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom Global reached an agreement last year to set up the plant by 2024, the Rwandan cabinet approved establishment of the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board – an institution to coordinate nuclear science and technology activities in the country. In December 2018, Rwanda and Russia agreed on a roadmap for an inter-governmental agreement on the use of nuclear energy. …………. Experts say, however, it takes 10 years and billions of dollars to commission a nuclear power station. They argue that off-grid renewable projects are safer than nuclear energy, as they do not involve environmentally hazardous radioactive waste, and no huge financial costs are incurred in connection to the national grid. Experts raise concerns Lawmaker Habineza said nuclear energy is an old technology with proven risks to the environment. He said many developed nations such as Germany and Sweden are de-nuclearizing due to the dangers involved. “Nuclear waste and water pollution from a nuclear plant would cause serious environmental challenge to the country, its neighbors, and the world at large,” he argued. “More than that, raw materials needed to operate the nuclear center, such as uranium, emit harmful levels of radiation, which pose a great risk to the population and the environment.”….. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/rwanda-opposition-grows-to-russian-backed-nuclear-plants/2059467 |
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NuScam pushing to sell its ”small” nuclear reactors to South Africa
S. Africa Regulator to Consider Approving Nuclear Power Plan, Bloomberg, By Antony Sguazzin,10 November 2020,-
- Program envisages addition of 2,500 megawatts of atomic power
- Country’s renewable-energy lobby opposes expansion of industry
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa will on Nov. 11 consider approving the procurement of 2,500 megawatts of nuclear power, marking another step toward the expansion of the industry.
The regulator will consider approving a so-called section 34 determination for the program, which enables the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy to undertake a bidding process for private producers to build nuclear-power facilities, it said in a Twitter posting outlining the agenda for the meeting.
South Africa, which destroyed its atomic weapons prior to the end of apartheid, already operates Africa’s only nuclear-power plant, the 1,800 megawatt Koeberg facility in Cape Town, as well as the Pelindaba research facility north of Johannesburg.
While the expansion of nuclear power has the support of the ministry and labor unions, it’s opposed by environmentalists and backers of the country’s expanding renewable-energy program.
NuScale Power LLC, a U.S. nuclear-energy firm, has said it will propose small, modular reactors for installation in South Africa. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp. has announced that it will support a bid by NuScale, approving the procurement of 2,500 megawatts of nuclear power, marking another step toward the expansion of the industry.
The regulator will consider approving a so-called section 34 determination for the program, which enables the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy to undertake a bidding process for private producers to build nuclear-power facilities, it said in a Twitter posting outlining the agenda for the meeting.
South Africa, which destroyed its atomic weapons prior to the end of apartheid, already operates Africa’s only nuclear-power plant, the 1,800 megawatt Koeberg facility in Cape Town, as well as the Pelindaba research facility north of Johannesburg.
While the expansion of nuclear power has the support of the ministry and labor unions, it’s opposed by environmentalists and backers of the country’s expanding renewable-energy program. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/south-african-regulator-to-consider-approving-nuclear-power-plan
The tragic nuclear history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Six Million dead, The Congo Holocaust has its origins in minerals plunder and colonialism https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72759838/posts/3011373848, By Linda Pentz Gunter, 8 Nov 20,
When you’ve lost family members to the Nazi death camps, it’s a pain that never goes away. Six of my relatives were killed there, four more shot in Polish ghettos and at Forlì. They died long before I was born and were people I never knew. But we have their photographs. Their pain stares out from those images, a perpetual ache.
But what use is endless mourning if no lessons are learned? The most important one surely is that no such Holocaust must ever be allowed to happen again? And yet it has. To almost universal silence. No one speaks of today’s six million dead. They lie beneath the mineral-rich soil of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), invisible and unmourned by the world beyond their country’s borders.
“The Holocaust continues in DRC with the complicity of the international community,” Rodrigue Muganwa Lubulu wrote to me in an email exchange. “Women and girls are raped every day and the dead are counted by tens each day.” He is the program director for CRISPAL Afrique and gave a zoom talk recently hosted by ICAN Germany.
The tragedy of the DRC, the second largest country in Africa, began with the discovery in 1915 of the Shinkolobwe uranium deposit, the richest ever discovered at the time. Its plunder, from 1921 until its closure in 2004, “has been a curse for the powerless community” around the mine, said Lubulu, “because not only have they been forced to abandon their lands, houses and fields in favor of uranium mining, but also all the men were forced to dig out those extremely radioactive materials without protective equipment.”
The cancers and other illnesses that killed those uranium workers are still harming the community today, Lubulu says, even though the mine is now shut down.
The DRC was first colonized by Belgium in 1908 and known as the Belgian Congo until it gained independence in 1960. (It was known as Zaire between 1971 and 1997.) It rapidly became a country of great interest, especially to the United State and the then Soviet Union, engaged in a growing Cold War arms race. Then, as now, the country promised riches to its White pillagers. In the Eastern part of the country, wrote Armin Rosen, in a June 26, 2013 article in The Atlantic, “just feet beneath the surface of the earth are enough minerals to keep the global technology and defense industries humming.”
But during World War II, the uranium mined from Shinkolobwe went to the American Manhattan Project. “More than 70 percent of the uranium in the Hiroshima bomb came from Shinkolobwe,” says Lubulu, whose organization is holding workshops and other events in an effort to persuade the government of the DNC to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
He is haunted by what might have been if the “ore of death” as he calls uranium, had instead been left where it belongs; in the ground. “Without the uranium of Shinkolobwe, the 5th of August 1945 would have been a perfect and productive day in Hiroshima,” he said during his ICAN presentation.
This is supported by a recollection from the Manhattan Project’s Colonel Ken Nichols, who wrote: “Without Sengier’s foresight in stockpiling ore in the United States and aboveground in Africa, we simply would not have had the amounts of uranium needed to justify building the large separation plants and the plutonium reactors.” Edgar Sengier was the then director of Union Minière du Haut Katanga, and had stockpiled 1,200 tonnes of uranium ore in a warehouse in New York. This ore and an additional 3,000 tonnes of ore stored above-ground at the mine was purchased by Nichols for use in the Manhattan Project.
That connection between his homeland and Hiroshima, and the haunting reminders of its outcome so movingly expressed by Japan’s Hibakusha, as the atomic bomb survivors are known, is what spurs Lubulu and CRISPAL to urge on the ratification and implementation of the TPNW.
“You cannot separate nuclear weapons from uranium,” Lubulu said. “Once you have one, you get the other. Once you dig it out, it becomes a monster and you can’t control it anymore.”
Tragically, that monster could be unleashed again at Shinkolobwe. Both France and China are interested in mineral rights there. CRISPAL needs to move fast to educate people about these renewed dangers. But they face dangers of their own in doing so.
Since 1997, when internal and cross-border strife took hold in the DRC, at least six million people have died. Trying to leaflet or hold meetings in such communities, especially if it is in opposition to uranium mining, is fraught with danger. No one involved has forgotten the brutal treatment of Congolese anti-uranium mining activist, Golden Misabiko, who was arrested, imprisoned twice, poisoned by his own government in an apparent, and mercifully unsuccessful, assassination attempt, separated from his family and forced into exile.
Despite this, Lubulu believes that, above all, love will find a way. “There is no door that enough love cannot open,” he said in concluding his presentation. Hopefully, the rest of the world will start sending some love in Congo’s direction.
Covid-19 divides and weakens the nuclear sector in South Africa
 Covid-19 divides and weakens the nuclear sector in South Africa, Daily Maverick, By Chris Yelland• 5 November 2020
The coronavirus crisis is undermining the business plan and turnaround strategy at the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa. The resulting losses are creating debilitating divisions between labour, middle and senior management, executives and boards of Necsa and its subsidiaries – as well as wage increases Following a tumultuous operational and management period for several years, with massive financial losses, new Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) chairperson David Nicholls and acting CEO Ayanda Myoli presented a restructuring and turnaround plan to Parliament on 20 May 2020……… While many considered the turnaround plan to be hopelessly optimistic even before the Covid-19 crisis in South Africa from March 2020, the impact of the national and international lockdowns are estimated to have resulted in the Necsa group taking a massive hit, which would increase the expected loss for 2020/21 to more than R300-million. …… While many considered the turnaround plan to be hopelessly optimistic even before the Covid-19 crisis in South Africa from March 2020, the impact of the national and international lockdowns are estimated to have resulted in the Necsa group taking a massive hit, which would increase the expected loss for 2020/21 to more than R300-million. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-11-05-covid-19-divides-and-weakens-the-nuclear-sector-in-south-africa/ |
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Trump’s USA is pushing NuScale’s small nuclear reactors for South Africa
The US nuclear company with an eye on South Africa just got a R23 billion boost, courtesy of Donald Trump, https://www.businessinsider.co.za/nuscale-nuclear-which-has-plans-for-sa-gets-a-big-us-subsidy-to-test-its-design-2020-10 Phillip de Wet , Business Insider SA Oct 22, 2020,
- American nuclear energy company NuScale has been citing Cape Town as an example of an ideal customer for its still-theoretical generators.
- It has now received in-principle financial support from the American government to build a nuclear power station in South Africa.
NuScale’s pathfinder project for its new technology, in Idaho, just got a promise of an infusion of US government cash worth some R23 billion.- While South Africa abandoned plans to create next-generation PBMR systems, the administration of Donald Trump has pushed small-scale nuclear development.
NuScale, a company with roots in US-funded research, this week received assurances that the American government will provide up to $1.4 billion (around R23 billion) in subsidies for a 12-module reactor it hopes to start building in Idaho by 2025.
The project is a commercial one, with municipal buyers lined up for the electricity, but the cash from the US department of energy is intended to bring the cost of that electricity down to $55 per MWh on a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) basis, making the project at least vaguely competitive with other forms of power generation.
Without the subsidies, the supposedly once-off cost of building a first-of-its kind power station would make the NuScale project commercially unviable, its planned customers say.
Just how once-off such costs are, and how much money the US government ends up actually spending on the project, will be closely watched in South Africa
Last week the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) announced it had signed a letter of intent to support NuScale “to develop 2,500 MW of nuclear energy in South Africa”.
NuScale has cited Cape Town as a purely theoretical customer for a 12-module version of its nuclear energy system, saying that such an installation could desalinate enough water to keep the entire city going.
But the 2,500MW number cited by the DFC suggests its South African ambitions are substantial. That is the full generating capability the South African government now envisages adding to the national grid from nuclear stations – but the government plan calls for a mixture of the conventional pressurised water reactors (PWRs) such as Russia’s Rosatom sells, and the type of small modular reactors (SMRs) NuScale is developing.
By seeking development finance for the full 2,500MW, NuScale appears to be signalling a plan to bid for the whole thing, rather than seeking to build only part of a new set of nuclear generators in SA alongside companies from China or elsewhere.
That matches the aggressive posture of the US government under the administration of Donald Trump. The DFC letter of intent is the first time the organisation has supported any nuclear project; a ban on its involvement in nuclear energy was lifted on the recommendation of a working group formed by the White House.
The state funding for the NuScale project in the US, meanwhile, comes after consistent and determined efforts under Trump’s presidency to “revitalise” nuclear energy in America, both in production and through research and development on next-generation systems.
South Africa, though determined to buy new nuclear power stations, has not had a similar political appetite to invest in research. In 2010 it mothballed work on the pebble bed modular reactor, a project launched in the late 1990s to create a safe, small, modular reactor system for both domestic use and sale abroad.
Russia once thought it had a done deal to build new nuclear reactors in South Africa. Half a decade later, thanks to its sheer political weight, China seems to be a serious contender for the job. Both France and South Korea have, at various points, been in the running too.
But as of this week, an American company with no track record of actually building commerical nuclear reactors yet is lining up the kind of money from the US government that could make its plans for South Africa viable – replacing a dream of home-grown next-generation nuclear with an imported version.
As of this year there are still vague plans to revive the project, in one form or another, but even if those were to succeed, the pace of development would have to be improbably fast for it to have any place in South Africa’s current round of explorations.
Hypocrisy prize to U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), for pretending that NuScam’s Small Nuclear Reactors are ”foreign aid”
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DFC Convenes U.S., African Leaders for Investment Conference, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), October 16, 2020 Announces new efforts aimed at bolstering agency’s reach across continent. WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the Atlantic Council hosted the virtual Investing in Africa’s Future conference to bring together African heads of state, senior U.S. government officials, African development finance institutions and others to announce new efforts to promote and strengthen U.S. trade and investment in Africa, in support of the Administration’s Prosper Africa Initiative…….. DFC made the following announcements during the summit: …………
LOI for Nuclear in South Africa: In July 2020, DFC updated and modernized its nuclear energy policy—ending its prohibition on supporting nuclear power in order to help meet the energy needs in the developing world. DFC signed a Letter of Intent to support NuScale, a U.S. nuclear energy technology firm, to develop 2,500 MW of nuclear energy in South Africa. If successful, NuScale would be the first U.S. nuclear energy IPP on the continent and would help support energy resilience and security in one of Africa’s leading economies and a key partner on the continent for the United States Government……….. https://www.dfc.gov/media/press-releases/dfc-convenes-us-african-leaders-investment-conference
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South Africa the first sucker to get American experimental nuclear reactor + $billions in bribes?
 US firm ‘aims to build a nuclear power plant’ in South Africa, https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/us-firm-aims-to-build-a-nuclear-power-plant-in-south-africa/What pandemic? An American investment group is looking to pump billions into South Africa, with one eye on a new nuclear power plant for Mzansi.by Tom Head 2020-10-18
The future of South Africa’s energy supply could be shaped by a cash injection from the United States of America. The government, in their ongoing discussions with NEDLAC and foreign investors, has entertained the idea of letting an international development firm finance and build a new nuclear power plant in Mzansi.
AN AMERICAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN SOUTH AFRICA?As Bloomberg has confirmed, The US International Development Finance Corp (DFC) has signed a letter of intent to support plans laid out by NuScale, an American technology group that are ready to kick on with this project. Amongst the billions of dollars they’ve pledged to South Africa, a ‘secure, reliable energy supply through the construction of new nuclear plants’ is their major priority. A CONTINENTAL FIRST FOR SOUTH AFRICA?
The DFC released a statement last week, confirming that they would be pioneering in their ambitious blueprint. Should a new nuclear plant get the green light, this would be the first IPP funded by the USA throughout the whole of Africa. The future of South Africa’s energy supply could be shaped by a cash injection from the United States of America. The government, in their ongoing discussions with NEDLAC and foreign investors, has entertained the idea of letting an international development firm finance and build a new nuclear power plant in Mzansi. further R4.5 billion would be spent on public transport development over the next 12 months. |
USA marketing NuScam small nuclear reactors to Africa
US to support new nuclear power project in South Africa https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/441510/us-to-support-new-nuclear-power-project-in-south-africa/, Bloomberg17 October 2020 The United States International Development Finance Corp. pledged to support NuScale Power LLC, a US nuclear energy technology firm, to develop 2,500 megawatts of power in South Africa.
South Africa’s government drafted an economic recovery plan in conjunction with business and labour groups several months ago in a bargaining forum known as the National Economic Development and Labour Council, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.A version of the strategy that was discussed by the cabinet this week, and seen by Bloomberg, includes suggestions to secure reliable energy supply through the construction of new nuclear plants.
The draft envisages R23 billion ($1.4 billion) being allocated to galvanize private investment in infrastructure and R4.5 billion being spent on public transport over the next 12 months, but provides scant detail on where the money will come from.
The DFC, which ended its prohibition on supporting nuclear power in July, signed a letter of intent to support NuScale’s bid for South Africa’s independent power producer program, the development bank said in an emailed statement on Friday.
“If successful, NuScale would be the first US nuclear energy IPP on the continent and would help support energy resilience and security in one of Africa’s leading economies,” the DFC said.
Boukadoum: Algeria to ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons “as soon as possible”
Boukadoum: Algeria to ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons “as soon as possible” http://www.aps.dz/en/algeria/36012-boukadoum-algeria-to-ratify-treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons-as-soon-as-possible
France should reveal the location of its nuclear waste dump in Algeria
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Calls for France to reveal location of nuclear waste dumped in Algeria https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20201005-calls-for-france-to-reveal-location-of-nuclear-waste-dumped-in-algeria/ October 5, 2020 France should take initiative to solve the problem of the nuclear waste buried in the Algerian Sahara in the early 1960s, as no one knows its exact location, which is a classified military secret, the head of the Paris-based Observatory for Armament said.In an interview with Radio France Internationale yesterday, Patrice Bouvre said: “When France suspended its nuclear tests in 1966, it simply buried the waste of the 17 experiments it conducted over the years.”
He added that Paris classified the location or locations of the buried nuclear waste and the documents related to the affair as “a military secret”, which remains to date. As a result, there is no information available about the exact location of the nuclear waste buried in the Algerian desert, Bouvre explained. He called on the French authorities to reveal the truth about this file and to cooperate with Algeria to clean up the areas contaminated by the nuclear waste that still exposes these regions to serious environmental damages. France conducted 17 nuclear tests between 1960 and 1966 in the Algerian Sahara, and the waste from these experiments is buried in an unknown location in the area, hindering attempts to remove the radioactive materials and protect the population and the environment |
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France’s secrecy over its deplorable history of nuclear bomb testing in Algeria
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Algeria: France urged to reveal truth about past nuclear tests, https://www.theafricareport.com/41067/algeria-france-urged-to-reveal-truth-about-past-nuclear-tests/, By Farid Alilat, Thursday, 10 September 2020, A study released shows the presence of waste tied to French nuclear tests in Algeria done during the 1960s. Jeune Afrique/The Africa Report had a chance to consult the report.
On 13 February 1960 at 7:04 a.m., France tested its first nuclear bomb, named Gerboise bleue, over Reggane. At the time, the French authorities explained that the tests were being conducted in uninhabited and deserted areas. However, at least 20,000 people were living at the sites, which still to this day have yet to be fully decontaminated. What waste remains of the 17 nuclear tests France carried out in Algeria between 1960 and 1967? What kind of condition is it in, and what repercussions does it have on the health of residents and the environment? Is France ready to assist Algerians in locating this waste and decontaminating sites, at a time when both countries show a willingness to work together on a memorial initiative regarding the colonial past? More than 60 years after Gerboise bleue, was conducted, a report from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) recommends that France answer these questions and provide Algeria with assistance in cleaning up the relevant sites. ‘Radioactivity Under the Sand’, a study led by Patrice Bouveret, director of the French Centre for Documentation and Research on Peace and Conflicts (Observatoire des armements), and Jean-Marie Collin, co-spokesperson for ICAN France, provides a comprehensive review of the presence of French nuclear waste in Algeria. Between February 1960 and February 1967, France carried out 17 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests in the Reggane and Hoggar regions, not far from a natural museum housing cave paintings which date back to the Neolithic period. Nine of these tests were conducted after Algeria gained independence in July 1962.
In accordance with a clause contained in the Evian Agreements of March 1962, France was permitted to continue its testing programme until 1967. On paper, the testing came to an end that year. However, the Algerian government under Chadli Bendjedid’s presidency secretly granted the French permission to continue carrying out tests at the B2-Namous site in Reggane until 1986. Radioactive materials left out in the openAlthough some of the facilities used for the tests were dismantled prior to and after the programme’s shutdown, waste is still present both above and below ground. At the end of the Algerian War, the two parties failed to negotiate a clause which would have forced France to decontaminate the sites or provide Algerians with archives and documentation related to the nuclear tests. “After seven years [from 1960 to 1967] of conducting a range of tests, the two sites at Reggane and In Ekker were handed over to Algeria without providing for any procedures to control and monitor radioactivity,” reads a December 1997 report from the French Senate. The institution acknowledged that the French authorities displayed “a certain lack of concern”, noting that local residents “could have been treated with at least a little consideration”. According to the authors of the ICAN report: “From the beginning of nuclear tests, France set up a policy of burying all waste in the sand. Everything that may have been contaminated by radioactivity had to be buried.” This included planes, tanks and other equipment. Worse still, radioactive materials (vitrified sand and contaminated rocks and lava) were left out in the open, thereby exposing the population and the environment to assured danger.
The report also mentions that since France is not subject to any obligation under agreements it has established with Algeria, it has never revealed the location or quantity of the buried waste. The authors add: “The nuclear past should no longer remain buried deep in the sand.” Lack of transparencyIn a 1996 ‘classified defence’-level report held in the archives of the French Ministry of Defence and which remains classified, the French authorities indicate that the tests had been halted without taking any initiative to provide documentation to their Algerian counterparts. “No memorandum and no report have been found that provide information about the radiological condition of the launch bases when they were returned to the Algerian authorities [in 1967],” the report reads. Not only does waste remain under the sand, but “the sites are not subject to checks for radioactivity and are even less the subject of campaigns to raise awareness among local residents about the health risks”. Although the Morin Law of 2010 (of which France recognised victims through its nuclear testing ) opened the doors to granting compensation to nuclear test victims in French Polynesia and Algeria, it failed to take environmental consequences into account. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted in July 2017 and signed by Algeria, requires State Parties to take measures to assist the residents and areas contaminated by the tests. In addition, the treaty stipulates that “a State Party that has used or tested nuclear weapons or any other nuclear explosive devices shall have a responsibility to provide adequate assistance to affected States Parties, for the purpose of victim assistance and environmental remediation”. The issue is that, thus far, France has declined to sign the TPNW. What’s more, a lack of transparency still dominates. For example, ICAN’s report cites a secret agreement between France and Algeria regarding nuclear decontamination which was reportedly signed during former French President François Hollande’s visit with his Algerian counterpart, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in Algiers in December 2012. The agreement concerned the notorious B2-Namous site in Reggane. A set of recommendationsWill the memorial initiatives recently undertaken by both countries – with the appointment of two experts, Benjamin Stora for France and Abdelmadjid Chikhi for Algeria – be a game changer for this chapter of history which continues to put a strain on relations between France and Algeria? According to Algeria’s veterans affairs minister, the memorial initiatives integrate the nuclear waste question. In keeping with these efforts, ICAN’s report recommends that the two parties hold discussions and that France improve Algerian citizens’ access to French medical archives, as well as that French legislation from 2010 “delineating the affected areas in the Sahara” be amended “so that they can be expanded, as was done for French Polynesia”. Other recommendations concern nuclear waste, with the report suggesting that “France should provide the Algerian authorities with a full list of sites where contaminated waste was buried, in addition to the precise location of each of these sites (latitude and longitude), a description of this material, as well as the type and thickness of the materials used to cover them”. The report also proposes that France “provide Algeria with the plans of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission’s [CEA] underground installations under the Reggane plateau military base, as well as the plans of the various galleries excavated in the Tan Afella mountain”. On 13 February 1960 at 7:04 a.m., France tested its first nuclear bomb, named Gerboise bleue, over Reggane. At the time, the French authorities explained that the tests were being conducted in uninhabited and deserted areas. However, at least 20,000 people were living at the sites, which still to this day have yet to be fully decontaminated. |
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Extreme weather events – Senegal and Nigeria
Senegal suburbs remain under water days after ‘exceptional rainfall’
Suburbs outside Dakar remained under water, three days after ‘exceptional rainfall’. In Keur Massar, a town just east of Dakar, cars were partly submerged while residents were seen walking knee deep in stagnant flood waters.
Farmland submerged as severe floods hit Nigeria
Farmlands were severely affected and thousands were displaced as severe rainfall caused flooding in Nigeria. An eyewitness captured a completely flooded rice farmland in Kebbi State where over 500,000 hectares were affected, according to local news reports. Kebbi is the country’s main rice-growing state, according to the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria.
Big oil looks to solve its problems by flooding Africa and Asia with plastic
Big Oil Is in Trouble. Its Plan: Flood Africa With Plastic. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-plastics-trade.html
Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash. NYT, By Hiroko Tabuchi, Michael Corkery and Carlos Mureithi, Aug. 30, 2020
Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste……..
Last year, Kenya was one of many countries around the world that signed on to a global agreement to stop importing plastic waste — a pact strongly opposed by the chemical industry. Emails reviewed by The Times showed industry representatives, many of them former trade officials, working with U.S. negotiators last year to try to stall those rules.
The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa.
According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence United States trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit.
Plastics makers are looking well beyond Kenya’s borders. “We anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying U.S.-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement,” Ed Brzytwa, the director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, wrote in an April 28 letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
The United States and Kenya are in the midst of trade negotiations and the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has made clear he is eager to strike a deal. But the behind-the-scenes lobbying by the petroleum companies has spread concern among environmental groups in Kenya and beyond that have been working to reduce both plastic use and waste.
Kenya, like many countries, has wrestled with the proliferation of plastic. It passed a stringent law against plastic bags in 2017, and last year was one of many nations around the world that signed on to a global agreement to stop importing plastic waste — a pact strongly opposed by the chemical industry.
The chemistry council’s plastics proposals would “inevitably mean more plastic and chemicals in the environment,” said Griffins Ochieng, executive director for the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development, a nonprofit group based in Nairobi that works on the problem of plastic waste in Kenya. “It’s shocking.”
The plastics proposal reflects an oil industry contemplating its inevitable decline as the world fights climate change. Profits are plunging amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the industry is fearful that climate change will force the world to retreat from burning fossil fuels. Producers are scrambling to find new uses for
an oversupply of oil and gas. Wind and solar power are becoming increasingly affordable, and governments are weighing new policies to fight climate change by reducing the burning of fossil fuels.
Pivoting to plastics, the industry has spent more than $200 billion on chemical and manufacturing plants in the United States over the past decade. But the United States already consumes as much as 16 times more plastic than many poor nations, and a backlash against single-use plastics has made it tougher to sell more at home……….
The Kenya proposal “really sets off alarm bells,” said Sharon Treat, a senior lawyer at the nonpartisan Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy who has worked for more than a decade advising trade talks in both the Trump and Obama administrations. Corporate lobbyists “frequently offer up very specific proposals, which the government then takes up,” she said. ………..
The plastics industry’s proposals could also make it tougher for to regulate plastics in the United States, since a trade deal would apply to both sides.
The records, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by Unearthed, a London-based affiliate of the environmental group Greenpeace, paint a picture of close ties between the trade representatives, administration officials and industry representatives. …………..
Kenya isn’t the only country taking measures to curb plastics. A recent report by the United Nations counted 127 countries with policies on the books to regulate or limit use.
In response, the industry has tried to address the plastics issue. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste — formed by oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron, as well as chemical companies like Dow — last year pledged $1.5 billion to fight plastic pollution. That figure, critics point out, is a small fraction of what the industry has invested in plastic infrastructure.
Manufacturers “say they will address plastic waste, but we say plastic itself is the problem,” Mr. Ochieng said. “An exponential growth in plastics production is just not something we can handle.”………….
Despite the industry opposition, last year more than 180 countries agreed to the restrictions. Starting next year, the new rules are expected to greatly reduce the ability of rich nations to send unwanted trash to poorer countries. The United States, which has not yet ratified the Basel Convention, won’t be able send waste to Basel member nations at all……
That setback has re-energized industry to seek deals with individual countries to boost the market for plastics, and find new destinations for plastic waste, analysts say.
In Nairobi, local groups are worried. “My concern is that Kenya will become a dumping ground for plastics,” said Dorothy Otieno of the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development. “And not just for Kenya, but all of Africa.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-plastics-trade.html
Minigrids – the clean energy revolution across Africa and Asia
The little-known clean energy revolution https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/the-little-known-clean-energy-revolution/77742430
There are about 5,500 mini-grids in operation across 12 countries in Africa and Asia, according to The State of the Global Mini-grids Market Report 2020 published by the international non-governmental organization Sustainable Energy for All and BloombergNEF, Bloomberg, August 26, 2020,
Over the last decade, the number of people in the world without access to electricity has fallen drastically — from 1.4 billion in 2010 to about 900 million in 2018, according to the United Nations. And yet, if current trends persist, the world won’t be able to meet the UN’s sustainable development goal of universal access to electricity by 2030, with as many as 600 million still lacking basic 21st century services.
It doesn’t have to be so. A new technology has matured and become affordable that could help achieve the laudable goal, and it’s called mini-grids.
As the name suggests, mini-grids are small, isolated versions of larger power grids. They increasingly use solar power as an energy source, with support from batteries or diesel generators. Because the cost of solar power has fallen drastically , mini-grids have become much cheaper than installing long-distance transmission lines from a central electricity grid.
There are about 5,500 mini-grids in operation across 12 countries in Africa and Asia, according to The State of the Global Mini-grids Market Report 2020, published by the international non-governmental organization Sustainable Energy for All and BloombergNEF earlier this year. The report’s authors found that mini-grids could meet the needs of half the people who still need access to electricity in those regions.
As the name suggests, mini-grids are small, isolated versions of larger power grids. They increasingly use solar power as an energy source, with support from batteries or diesel generators. Because the cost of solar power has fallen drastically , mini-grids have become much cheaper than installing long-distance transmission lines from a central electricity grid.
Universal power access will require $128 billion of spending, the report found, but the world is on track to spend only about $63 billion on mini-grids over the next decade. Plugging the gap would cost less than $600 per target household reached.
The need goes beyond money. “Today the mini-grid market is nascent, despite being the least-cost option for electricity access in many areas,” the report concludes. The international Mini-Grids Partnership, which includes the World Bank and other development agencies from rich countries, has approved $2 billion in awards since 2012 but only disbursed 13% of the money, with many projects stuck because of policy uncertainties.
Africa’s most populous country struggles to provide electricity to its 200 million people. Only 55% of the country has access to electricity, and even there, people suffer from power cuts lasting between four and 15 hours every day. As a result, the country spends more than $16 billion annually to power diesel generators.
In 2017, the country passed a law to help mini-grid development, which streamlines the online application process, offers $350 in government subsidies per user once grids with more than 30 users are up and running, and provides for compensation if the main power grid eventually arrives in an area served by a mini-grid. Developers in Nigeria now have simpler processes and clearer guidelines to follow.
The upshot is that mini-grids have become a much more attractive investment. “Now you see a lot of companies flocking to Nigeria,” says Ruchi Soni, program manager at Sustainable Energy for All. “We hear from partners that they would like to replicate Nigeria’s success in their country.”
This offshoot of the clean energy revolution has three benefits: mini-grids can help provide access to electricity to those who lack it and do so in a cleaner and cheaper way. Few things in life are win-win-win.
Nuclear colonialism. ICAN says that France must clean up its nucleat test wastelands in Algeria
France must clean up Algerian nuclear test sites: group, https://www.france24.com/en/20200826-france-must-
clean-up-algerian-nuclear-test-sites-group 28 Aug 20, France must clean up nuclear test sites in Algeria where radioactive waste remains from testing in the former colony during the 1960s, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning group said Wednesday.
France carried out 17 nuclear explosions in the Algerian part of the Sahara Desert between 1960 and 1966.
Eleven of the tests came after the 1962 Evian Accords ended the six-year war of independence and 132 years of colonial rule.
“France must give the Algerian authorities the full list of where the contaminated toxic waste was buried,” the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said in a new 60-page report.
“The ‘nuclear past’ must no longer remain deeply buried under the sand,” ICAN said, citing the concerned areas as the western Reggane region and a zone close to the In Ekker village.
The campaign group identified contaminated, radioactive elements that have either been buried, or are easily accessible.
“The majority of the waste is in the open air, without any security, and accessible by the population, creating a high level of sanitary and environmental insecurity,” ICAN said.The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate group added that almost nothing has been done to clean the sites, inform the populations and evaluate the risks.
Exposure to radioactive material can cause cancer.
“This case study shows once more an asymmetry of power and an injustice that we find all through nuclear history,” Giorgio Franceschini, director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation which published the report, said in his forward.
“It is not a coincidence that France tested its first nuclear weapon in Algeria, that was still a French colony in 1960,” he added.
France refused to sign up the UN’s 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, whereas Algeria signed and is in the process of ratifying the legally binding agreement.
Since Algeria’s independence, Franco-Algerian relations have been tumultuous.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in July called on France to fully apologise for its colonial past.
An apology could “make it possible to cool tensions and create a calmer atmosphere for economic and cultural relations”, especially for the more than six million Algerians who live in France, he said.
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