Uranium Mining and refining: health and safety

Posted on August 12, 2023 by borderslynn

Another reproduced source, from which I start with a quote:

Indeed, Wainwright says it may be impossible to get accurate data on uranium mining safety in all parts of the world. “Mining has been often a hidden component from consumers, often disproportionately impacting rural regions and vulnerable populations,” she says. “It is important to develop mechanisms and regulations to protect workers’ health as well as the environment.”
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-are-health-and-environmental-impacts-mining-and-enriching-uranium

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What are the health and environmental impacts of mining and enriching uranium?Listen with Speechify

Exposure to more than trace amounts of uranium can cause cancer and other diseases, which is why uranium mining has some of the world’s strictest regulations.

July 10, 2023

Advocates of nuclear power argue it can play a key role in society’s transition away from climate-warming fossil fuels, since nuclear fuels like uranium do not emit climate pollution like coal, oil, and gas do. But nuclear fuels are dangerous substances, and proper precautions are needed to scale up their use without causing harm to the environment or to the workers mining the material.

Health risks related to mining uranium have been known for nearly a century, says Haruko Wainwright, MIT assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering and of civil and environmental engineering. In the 1930s, for example, after increased rates of lung cancer were found in miners (including children), mining companies put in early safety systems such as proper ventilation.

The atomic age boom in uranium came in the 1950s, when it was mined throughout the Southwestern U.S. to power the nation’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and its earliest nuclear power plants. However, Wainwright says, workers often did not know the risks of mining uranium, especially the rise in lung cancer risk via inhalation of uranium and its byproducts, and safety precautions such as ventilation were not always installed. This was especially true at mines where Native Americans worked, says Wainwright. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, members of tribes such as the Navajo mined uranium for the U.S. government in environments with slow and incomplete adoption of safety measures.

In the environment, the risk of uranium exposure is highest for communities near uranium mines or sites where it is milled into a usable form or enriched in preparation for use. Uranium exists naturally in the soil, rocks, and ocean, which means all of us are naturally exposed to a small amount of it, but large exposures are associated with cancers and kidney damage. To protect Americans, the EPA has instituted rules that set a safe limit for uranium in drinking water, mandate cleanups of accidental uranium waste releases, and regulate how abandoned uranium processing sites are dealt with.¹

The situation at American uranium mines has improved over the decades. Mines today are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Environmental Protection Agency. To protect the environment, they mandate, for example, that places storing uranium waste are constructed with a 1,000-year compliance period, meaning they are built to last without leakages for at least that long.

The vast majority of uranium mining today, however, is done outside the U.S. The top producers include both wealthy countries like Canada and Australia, and developing countries such as Namibia and Kazakhstan, the world’s top producer.² Most uranium mining in Kazakhstan, and many other places, is now done through “in situ recovery”: instead of removing ore from the ground and treating it, miners use a chemical solution to dissolve the uranium-containing material and transport it to the surface in liquid form, where the uranium-containing minerals can be recovered. “It reduces hazards associated with digging and mining, but groundwater contamination is a concern,” Wainwright says.

While groundwater is heavily monitored in the United States, less is known about the effects in other countries. Some studies have indicated that areas of Kazakhstan around uranium mines have seen water contamination³ and plausibly related health impacts.^4,5

Given the well-known health hazards, uranium mines tend to have the strictest regulations among mines. The World Nuclear Organization says that Canadian and Australian mines in particular are run in accordance with regulations to prevent workers from unsafe exposure. It also notes that although “most uranium mined is done so in countries with full adoption of international recommendations, this is not the case in all parts of the world.”⁶

Indeed, Wainwright says it may be impossible to get accurate data on uranium mining safety in all parts of the world. “Mining has been often a hidden component from consumers, often disproportionately impacting rural regions and vulnerable populations,” she says. “It is important to develop mechanisms and regulations to protect workers’ health as well as the environment.”

Thank you to Julie Chapman of Portland, Oregon, for the question. You can submit your own question to Ask MIT Climate here.

More Resources for Learning

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: “Radioactive waste from uranium mining and milling”

World Nuclear Association: “Occupational safety in uranium mining”

U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry: “What are the standards and regulations for uranium exposure?”

Nuclear Energy Agency: “Managing Environmental and Health Impacts of Uranium Mining” (Report)

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Examples of foreign owned uranium mining accidents:

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/two-killed-niger-uranium-mine-collapse-company-says-2022-01-16

And here an article in The Conversation about the Australian mining company, BHP, and the dangers involved:

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged accidents, health and safety, ignorance of harm, inadequate corporate responsibility, land contamination, mining, outsourcing, regulations, river contamination, unprotected populations, vulnerable communities | Leave a comment

Nuclear Energy: history of uranium

Posted on August 12, 2023 by borderslynn

As long as nuclear reactors are being built to provide clean energy, those who supply the skills to build them will always be in demand. Uranium must always be sourced. Here is the history of uranium and of its applications since 1939:

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/mcfadden1

History of Uranium

Patrick McFadden
February 23, 2016

Submitted as coursework for PH241, Stanford University, Winter 2016

Background

Fig. 1: Uranium Ore (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Uranium, seen in Fig. 1, has become a well-known item in today’s news due to its connection with the making of nuclear bombs along with negative environmental impacts. It also has been extremely useful by providing energy to the world through nuclear reactors. This paper will discuss how uranium was discovered, how it is used today, and the implications of uranium in the future. [1]

Discovery of Uranium

Uranium was discovered in 1789 by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth. There were no major uses of uranium until 1934 when it was discovered that uranium could emit beta rays when inundated with neutrons. [2] Enrico Fermi was the man in charge of the team that had this discovery, and they were excited by the potential energy that could be produced from it. However, it was not until 1939 that Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered the nuclear fission capabilities of uranium. This discovery was then used to create uses of uranium such as nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. [1]

Uses of Uranium

Fig. 2: Little Boy. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

A well-known use of uranium has been its involvement in the creation of nuclear weapons. The Manhattan Project resulted in the United States creating the world’s first nuclear weapons. Little Boy, which was the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima seen in Fig. 2, was uranium based. The demand for uranium went up following the end of World War II as the Cold War began between the Soviet Union and the United States. Both countries began “stockpiling” nuclear weapons that led to the thought of Mutually Assured Destruction, which deterred attacks on the other country. Uranium quickly went from an unknown entity to a highly-sought out good. [1]

Uranium also has major implications on nuclear power plants, which have become an energy source for the world. The first nuclear reactors were created in the early 1940’s, and today there are over 400 nuclear reactors in the world. The way that nuclear power plants work is it uses steam to move turbine generators to create energy. This steam is created when the uranium atoms undergo nuclear fission, which creates a lot of energy. Today, it is estimated that nuclear power supplies over 10% of the world’s energy. [3] However, nuclear power plants have received some negative press due to nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl in 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan in 2011. [4]

Environmental Impacts

There have been worries about the negative environmental impact caused by uranium. There has been a lot of contamination from fallout from nuclear tests and nuclear accidents. If a human is exposed to uranium, the way that various functions of their body operate can be drastically affected. Short-term effects of radiation can lead to sickness, while long-term exposure can lead to bigger issues such as cancer. [4] Land that has been affected by nuclear fallout can be polluted for years afterwards. These negative effects of uranium exposure have led to measures in order to control the uses of uranium. [5]

Uranium in the Future

Uranium appears to be stable for the near future due to its prominence in nuclear reactors across the world. While its uses in nuclear weapons have been minimized due to disarmament treaties between countries, uranium will still be used in the future. The longevity and continued importance of uranium is strongly correlated to the future of nuclear reactors. If nuclear reactors are able to remain a long-term energy source, then uranium is here to stay. [3]

© Patrick McFadden. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.

References

[1] B. Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Political History of Nuclear Energy (American Nuclear Society, 1982).

[2] N. Boh and J. A, Wheeler, “The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission,” Phys. Rev. 56, 426 (1939).

[3] L. W. Davis, “Prospects for Nuclear Power,” J. Econ. Perspect. 26, 49 (2012).

[4] G. Steinhauser, A. Brandl, and T. E. Johnson, “Comparison of the Chernobyl and Fukushima Nuclear Accidents: A Review of the Environmental Impacts,” Sci. Total Environ. 470–471, 800 (2014); ibid. 487, 575 (2014).

[5] D. Williams, “Cancer after Nuclear Fallout: Lessons from the Chernobyl Accident,” Nat. Rev. Cancer 2, 543 (2002).

Consider the impact of nuclear testing since the 1960s and the fact that those nuclear explosions in our atmosphere sent showers of radioactive particles into our soils:

https://www.science.org/content/article/germany-s-radioactive-boars-are-bristly-reminder-nuclear-fallout?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyLatestNews&utm_content=alert&et_rid=330717162&et_cid=4880664&

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged accidents, applications, contamination, dangers, dependence, health, mining, reactor maintenance, risks, safety, supply and demand, threats, uranium, weapons | Leave a comment

Nuclear Energy

Posted on August 12, 2023 by borderslynn

I am reproducing this article since my next blogs cover the issue of viability of building nuclear reactors to supply clean energy to minimise use of fossil fuels. I would encourage my readers to access the site and become knowledgeable on the subject as consequences of pursuing all energy technologies invented to reduce use of fossil fuels has an impact on each and every one of us.

https://www.uxc.com/

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World Nuclear Association Symposium 2023

Uranium Market Outlook
Market in Transition

Incentivizing New Production

Mobile uranium inventories have continued to decline at an accelerated rate over the last two years, driven by many factors, including: COVID-19 pandemic production declines, the advent of the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (SPUT), and strategic acquisitions by junior uranium companies to support future project financing efforts. SPUT purchased more than 24 million pounds U₃O₈ in 2021, or about 25% of all spot purchases. Through August 2022, the Trust has purchased an additional 16 million pounds U₃O₈ in the market.

Apart from the above-mentioned factors, geopolitical risk has weighed heavily on the uranium market over the last several months, beginning with civil unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022, followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a month later. The spot uranium price reacted strongly to Russia’s military action, increasing from $43.00 in late February to a peak of $63.75 in April. The spot price has since resided in the mid- to high-$40s range. As a result of heightened geopolitical risk, many utilities are shifting their contracting focus to the term market to meet unfilled needs in the second half of this decade, and utilities with existing Russian enriched uranium contracts are actively seeking replacement supplies in the market.

Given past cuts to primary production and inventory optimization by utilities and producers, the uranium market is rapidly becoming production-driven, where spot and long-term prices more closely correlate to the marginal cost of uranium production. Accordingly, several producers have announced production restarts from idle mines in the last few months. Kazatomprom also recently decided to increase 2024 Kazakh production to 90% of nominal capacity from the current 80% level.

Although global reactor requirements are quite flat through 2024, UxC forecasts that significant demand growth from 2025 to 2040 will necessitate new production as resources are exhausted at several uranium projects. In addition to transitioning to a production-driven market, a large percentage of production exists in regions of the world with high geopolitical risk, which makes the market vulnerable to future disruptions and price volatility.

UxC’s Uranium Market Outlook (UMO) report is designed to examine developments and discern trends in the uranium market, including the likely future course of prices under different market scenarios. The UMO is updated quarterly to provide subscribers with the latest information and analyses on which to base their decisions. Updates of leading market indicators are also provided on a monthly basis to ensure you are current with the latest trends and developments in the uranium market.

A table of contents from a previous report has been provided for your review.

Special Issue Offer

Each quarter, UxC releases a new Uranium Market Outlook (UMO) that contains detailed up-to-date analysis on the uranium market. UxC makes available any individual report for sale as a stand alone report. In each UMO, topical essays are devoted to topics such as current market developments, major market events, and long-term market trends.

This quarter’s essay, “Capital Raises and Future Production Potential,” analyzes the amount of aggregate capital raised for the top 20 junior uranium companies in the last 3+ years from 2020 to 2023 and its correlation to progress in the advancement of future uranium projects.

An annual subscription to the UMO costs US$8,500.00, which includes four quarterly reports as well as monthly price indicator updates.

UxC also makes this quarter’s UMO available as a special single report order at a rate of US$5,000.00.

An online order form has been provided.

Please note that this special offer only covers this quarter’s UMO report. It does not include services associated with a full year’s subscription as discussed below: such as three additional quarterly reports, the monthly leading spot price indicator updates, and access to UxC’s Subscriber Services website.

The Uranium Market Outlook is a quarterly report on the uranium market that examines recent and prospective spot and long-term contract market activity, supply and demand trends, supplier developments, and the outlook for prices over the short and long term. The UMO also includes a topical essay on important developments that are shaping the market and detailed findings from UxC’s proprietary indicator system that analyzes trends in key factors influencing future prices. UxC also includes uranium demand forecasts based on the proprietary UxC Requirements Model (URM). Please see our product flier in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Standard Features

An executive summary is provided with a concise overview of the current market situation. The executive summary is also emailed to subscribers.
Chapter 1 contains a topical essay that addresses key events and their potential impact on the market. Examples of past essays are listed here.
In Chapter 2 – Recent Contracting Review, recent spot and long-term market activity over the previous quarter is reviewed, and current contract terms and conditions are summarized.
Chapter 3 – Requirements and Demand Outlook looks at recent developments affecting reactor requirements in the world’s regional markets, along with a review of requirements forecasts. An updated view on uncovered utility reactor requirements is also presented. This section also examines the spot demand outlook over the next three years and the long-term contract demand outlook over the next 12 months.
Chapter 4 – Production and Supply Outlook reviews recent production developments worldwide and the current status of major world projects. Also examined are secondary supplies projected to influence the market over the forecast period.
Following the production and supply chapter is Chapter 5 – Near-Term Technical Analysis & Spot Market Indicators, which presents a technical analysis of near-term price movements and a detailed update of the long-term spot price indicators, designed by UxC to quantify market factors that are affecting price outlook two years forward. Included with a subscription to the quarterly report are monthly updates of UxC’s near-term price indicators, a predictive tool used to gauge potential spot movements two to three months forward.
In the final chapter of this report, Chapter 6 – Market Outlook and Price Forecast, the market is analyzed in terms of a one-year and intermediate-term perspectives, and forecasts are presented for the spot price and long-term base price through 2035. The near-term availability of supply by price, market trends, and bullish and bearish arguments for price movements are also presented in this chapter.
The report contains two appendices. The first appendix, Appendix A – Forecasting Methodology, details the various methodologies used in this report to forecast price, supply, demand, and market price indicators. The second appendix, Appendix B – Statistical Review, contains tables and figures that provide additional and expanded data to those presented in the body of the report.

Who should read this report

Fuel buyers
Policy makers
Producers
Investors

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Posted in anthropocene | Tagged climate change, conflict, emissions, finite resources, fossil fuels, markets, mining, Nuclear Power, reactors, risk, safety, threats, trade wars, uranium | Leave a comment

Chechens

Posted on August 3, 2023 by borderslynn

After a chain of migrations of various ethnic populations in ancient times from locations such as the Fertile Crescent as well as Northeast and Central Asia, what came to be known as the Chechen and Avar peoples settled in the Northern Caucasus region. For centuries, this was the site of various invasions and imperial conflicts, involving empires such as the Cimmerians, Mongols, Scythians, Persians, Ottomans, and Safavids.

It was not until 1859 CE at the end of the Caucasian War that the Chechens and Avars would meet their greatest challenge, one which still torments them today.
https://hir.harvard.edu/the-bleeding-puzzle-of-chechnya-and-dagestan

I am reproducing another article here about Chechnya, and how the people fought and won, then, 2 years later, lost.

Russia’s wars in Chechnya offer a grim warning of what could be in Ukraine

March 12, 20228:27 AM ET

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Greg Myre

Russia unleashes a heavy bombing campaign. Cities and towns are reduced to rubble. Thousands of civilians are killed.

Russia did this twice — against fellow Russian citizens — in Chechnya in the 1990s. That raises the question of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is using the same playbook as he wages war in Ukraine today.

In Chechnya, a tiny Muslim republic in southern Russia with just 1.5 million people, resistance to Russian rule dates back at least two centuries. Rebels there began agitating for independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

After a couple of years of increasing tension, Russia unleashed a major invasion marked by relentless airstrikes and salvos of heavy artillery. Thousands of fighters and tens of thousands of Chechen civilians were killed. The Chechen capital, Grozny, was laid to waste.

Block after block, most every building was completely gutted. No other city had been so intensely bombed for decades. The devastation evoked those black-and-white photos of European cities pummeled in World War II.

Russia waged the campaign for two years, with its powerful military trying and repeatedly failing to crush a small band of rebels. Remarkably, Russia lost.

President Boris Yeltsin’s government in 1996 signed a peace treaty with Chechnya, removed all Russian troops from the territory and granted broad autonomy to Chechnya, though not formal independence.

Putin comes to power

But three years later, as Yeltsin was about to leave office, he named an obscure spy turned politician to be his prime minister — Vladimir Putin.

Putin assumed that office on Aug. 9, 1999, and by the end of that month, Russia was waging a renewed bombing campaign against Chechen rebels in an attempt to reverse the earlier humiliation.

The second Chechen war was also brutal, though it proved more effective. Russian forces took control of the breakaway republic after just a few months.

In March 2000, a triumphant Putin, who had by this time become president, flew to Grozny in a Russian fighter jet. He emerged from the aircraft in a full pilot suit, to commemorate the victory.

Putin installed a Kremlin-friendly leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, to strengthen his hold of the territory. Kadyrov was assassinated in 2004, but his son, Ramzan Kadyrov, now rules Chechnya.

In the current battle in Ukraine, Chechen forces have been sent in to fight with the Russian military.

Parallels between Chechnya then and Ukraine now

Thomas de Waal, a journalist who covered Chechnya in the 1990s, said he sees many similarities between then and now.

“There are some pretty disturbing parallels,” said de Waal, who’s now in London with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The use of heavy artillery, the indiscriminate attacking of an urban center. They bring back some pretty terrible memories for those of us who covered the Chechnya war of the 1990s.”

There are political parallels as well, he said

“There was a project to restore Chechnya to Russian control, and nowadays in 2022, to restore Ukraine to the Russian sphere of influence,” said de Waal. “And there was no Plan B. Once the people started resisting, which came as a surprise in Chechnya and is coming as a surprise in Ukraine, there was no political Plan B about what to do with the resistance.”

He said Putin was expecting little or no pushback, as happened when Russian troops quickly and bloodlessly seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Instead, Putin got Chechnya, 1994.

After more than two weeks of heavy fighting in Ukraine, the Russian invasion is moving far more slowly than planned.

With their superior firepower, Russian forces are closing in on Ukraine’s cities. But the Ukrainians are still resisting fiercely and still hold the capital, Kyiv, and other large urban centers.

Meanwhile, the civilian toll is mounting.

“When Russia says that it is ‘not waging war against civilians,’ I call out the names of these murdered children first,” Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska said in an open letter this past week. “Perhaps the most terrifying and devastating of this invasion are the child casualties.”

At least 549 civilians have been killed and nearly 1,000 injured, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The actual number could be much higher, according the office.

“Schools, hospitals, and kindergartens have been hit – with hugely devastating consequences,” the U.N. body said in a statement. “Civilians are being killed and maimed in what appear to be indiscriminate attacks, with Russian forces using explosive weapons with wide area effects in or near populated areas.”

U.S. intelligence officials painted a bleak picture this past week, predicting that urban fighting in the coming weeks could be even more intense.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, testifying Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “Our analysts assess that Putin is unlikely to be deterred by setbacks and instead may escalate, essentially doubling down.”

Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent who reported from Chechnya in the 1990s.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/12/1085861999/russias-wars-in-chechnya-offer-a-grim-warning-of-what-could-be-in-ukraine

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged asia, caucuses, Chechens, conflict, cultural destruction, migration, mountainous regions, muslim, origins, Sufism, tribes, war | Leave a comment

Crimean Tatars

Posted on August 3, 2023 by borderslynn

I am reproducing this article from The Conversation which arrived today in my mailbox:

Ukraine war: why Crimean Tatar fighters are playing an increasing role in resistance to Russian occupation

A resistance group of Crimean Tatars, an ethnic group native to the Russian-occupied peninsula, is now a prominent player in the Ukraine war.

The Atesh (fire) movement has pledged to wage an unending war on the Russian invaders of Ukraine. Founded in September 2022, Atesh seeks to disrupt logistics, sabotage key targets, and stoke discontent against – and within – Russian president Vladimir Putin’s army.

Atesh’s methods are ruthless, as witnessed by the killing of 30 Russian servicemen in hospitals in Simferopol in November 2022. Their methods are also effective. In February 2023, the group claimed that over 4,000 Russian soldiers had already taken an online course (at the ‘Atesh school’) on how to survive the war by sabotaging their own equipment.

Mustafa Dzhemilev, the Crimean Tatar leader who Russia has barred from Crimea until 2034, recently stated that “Atesh is very deep underground … but they are working inside Crimea … blowing up targets.”

Serhii Kuzan, head of the Kyiv-based thinktank the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, said that: “The idea is for the occupier to always feel the presence of the partisans and for them never to feel safe.”

Partisans including Atesh are using a variety of methods to undermine the Russians in Crimea and beyond. When Atesh claimed responsibility for “liquidising” the Russian soldiers in the hospitals in Simferopol it warned: “Check the wards, check the morgues … you can check this fact 300 times but it’s the truth”.

As with so many incidents in this war, and this goes for acts committed by all sides, verifying such claims is an exceedingly difficult task. What we do know is that the partisan forces in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions recently carried out a coordinated sticker and flyer campaign against the so-called Russian world.

In addition, emulating a tactic adopted in previous conflicts, Ukraine has reportedly dropped leaflets on Russian positions with the message: “Russian soldier, if you don’t want to be a Nazi of the 21st century, then leave our land! Otherwise, the fate of Hitler’s soldiers and a Nuremberg tribunal await you!”

The appeal to the past is seductive for Kyiv as partisan warfare played a major part in winning both the Russian civil war (1917-1923) and what Russia remembers as the “great patriotic war” (1941-1945).

The comparison of the current Russian army to the Nazi invaders of the second world war completely contradicts Putin’s version of history. The Kremlin chargesthat Ukrainian nationalists collaborated and engaged in mass murder during the Nazi occupation. Russian propaganda claims that the current war is designed to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

Who are the Tatars?

Those who know the history of Russia, Ukraine and the Crimean Tatars will not be surprised by the hostility of the latter to the latest manifestation of Muscovite imperialism. Unlike the Slavic Russians, the Crimean Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group native to the Crimean peninsula.

The Crimean Tatar nation formed over four centuries (c.1200-c.1650) and merged with waves of immigrants. Tsarina Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in 1783 and the Russian Empire subsequently sought to “Russianise” the Crimean Tatars, prior to the revolution of 1917.

Under the rule of Joseph Stalin (1924-1953), the Soviet Union engaged in the active repression of the Crimean Tatars. This led to a number of Tatars cooperating with the Germans following the Nazi invasion of June 1941.

Stalin accused the Crimean Tatars of treachery and deported the community en masse to the Gulag. Although some Crimean Tatars served with the Axis powers, rather more served in the Red Army.

This deportation of at least 180,000 persons to central Asia in 1944 was one of the most painful chapters in Tatar history, (remembered as Sürgün (the exile). In the 1960s, research by Tatar activists estimated that approximately 100,000 of these people died (and even Soviet records show that 30,000 Crimean Tatars died less than two years after the deportations).

Only in September 1967 did the Supreme Soviet – the highest legislative body in the USSR – acknowledge that the charge of treason against the entire Crimean Tatar nation had been “unreasonable”. Thirteen years earlier, the Supreme Soviet had voted to transfer Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

This was not that controversial at the time, given that both entities were then constituent parts of the Soviet Union. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 changed all of that.

Most of the Tatars were only allowed to return to Crimea in 1989, under the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Tatars did not receive any compensation for their losses, and their return home prompted tensions with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, many of whom had moved to the peninsula after 1944.

Map of Ukraine showing Crimea — Shutterstock

Once Ukraine became independent in 1991, Tatar leaders claimed that authorities in Kyiv deliberately prevented their people from obtaining government jobs, while secretly allowing “land grabs”. Gradually, however, the common enemy pushed the Crimean Tatars and Ukraine together.

Crimean Tatars became ardent supporters of the new Ukrainian state, and were sometimes dubbed “the greatest Ukrainians in Crimea”.

In 1897 native Crimean Tatars made up 34.1% of the population of Crimea. Despite the reversal of Stalin’s ethnic cleansing, by 2001 Russians made up 58% of the Crimean population while the indigenous Tatars represented only 12%.

The invasion of Crimea by Russia in 2014 was a disastrous return to the past for the Crimean Tatars. The Russians immediately embarked upon a programme of systematic tyranny. These persecutions persist to this day.

The Crimean Tatar self-governing assembly, the Mejlis, of which Mustafa Dzhemilev was chair, was banned, as were public references to the Stalinist deportations. After 2014, thousands of Tatars left Russian-occupied Crimea for Ukraine. Tatar activist and politician Ilmi Umerov told the Russian Federal Security Service that “I do not consider Crimea part of the Russian Federation.” He was sent to a psychiatric hospital.

Demonstrating Ukrainian-Tatar solidarity, in November 2015, the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) passed a motion denouncing the 1944 deportations as “genocide”. (A precedent that encouraged Latvia, Lithuania and Canada to follow suit in 2019.) In 2021 the Verkhovna Rada passed a law which recognised the Crimean Tatars as one of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine.

As long as the current war continues, and given the significant military contribution of the Crimean Tatars, Kyiv will look ever more favourably on the question of self-determination for the Crimean Tatar nation.

Ukrainian studies academic Rory Finnin argues that the future of the Crimea is central to any settlement that may follow the current war. Ukraine lost control of Crimea in 2014, but the exertions of the Crimean Tatars in the present conflict are contributing significantly to Kyiv’s ability to avoid defeat by Russia.

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Posted in anthropocene | Tagged conflict, Crimea, ethnic persecution, hate, human suffering, oppression, retribution, Tatars, trauma, war | Leave a comment

Learning from our mistakes

Posted on July 3, 2023 by borderslynn

One thing we hear often said by authorities after a disaster is, ‘let us learn from our mistakes and work to ensure this can never happen again.’

Earthquakes

………a map of the world, with the locations of the biggest earthquakes since 1500 plotted, reveals a puzzle. It is as if humanity took a collective decision to build as many as possible of its biggest cities on or close to fault lines. This illustrates the fatal interplay between the infrequency of disaster and the shortness of human memory. In 2011, those who recalled the 1938 earthquake off Fukushima made for old shelters that proved to be death traps as the much larger tsunamis struck.
Book ‘Doom’, Niall Ferguson

Earthquake Area? Let’s build a dam

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/13-facts-about-the-deadly-vajont-dam-engineering-disaster

Follow the above link and read the analysis of the problem waiting to happen. 2000 people died due to events in the unfolding disaster which could have been avoided.

Though the Italian Vajont Dam actually stayed intact during the disaster, it stands as a testament to how important it is for engineers and geologists to understand the natural environment surrounding a complex structure.

Building structures like dams during a heady period of post-war boom can lead to the opposite of what was intended.

In Beirut, the Bisri Dam is planned to finally ensure residents can enjoy clean water to their homes. But safety of such a construction is vital.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/solving-water-crisis-beirut

People who live in the area are warning of the dangers in building such a dam, just as the people who lived in the Vajont Dam vicinity did. If the land is unstable, then the dam should not be built there.

The dam lies on a complex and tectonically active area. The presence of fault lines within the region makes the dam additionally dangerous.

https://www.change.org/p/no-to-the-bisri-dam-project-the-lebanese-people-refuse-any-extension-and-demand-it-s-cancellation-and-a-reallocation-of-it-s-funds-for-urgent-needs-in-lebanon

The sight of a completed dam can be so impressive that it can be hailed as a marvel of engineering. But often precious land and homes are consumed by the water as the dam fills, and the water filling the dam may be already polluted, as is the lake which will drain into the Bisri Dam.

Common sense should counter engineering corporates sales pitch before any infrastructure is built.

…..1950s initiative. The collapse of one of the dams built then—the Banqiao Dam—exposed the limits of Sino-Soviet collaboration. In August 1975, Typhoon Nina overwhelmed the dam by dumping a year’s worth of rain (forty-two inches) in twelve hours,97 causing one of the worst disasters in the history of the People’s Republic.98 The breach unleashed the equivalent of a quarter of a million Olympic swimming pools of water, killing tens of thousands in a matter of hours. The secondary death toll from disease and starvation in the devastated area was in excess of 200,000 people.99 The Cassandra figure in this disaster was the hydrologist Chen Xing, who had been purged during the Anti-Rightist Campaign for urging a halt to new dam construction but was now swiftly rehabilitated.100 So horrific was the Banqiao Dam’s failure that it remained a state secret until 1989. This did nothing to diminish the Communist Party’s devotion to damming..
Niall Ferguson, Book ‘Doom’

The Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River in China was warned against decades ago, but it went ahead anyway, since it was to be another ‘triumph of engineering’.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/china-three-gorges-dam-highest-level-hydro-electric-floods

Watching this video of 2020 flooding at this location is of epic proportions, as climate change brings with it heavy, continuous rainfall, which the dam was designed to withstand.

….breach of the dam, a controversial and unprecedented feat of engineering along the Yangtze River, would be embarrassing for China, which took 12 years to build the megaproject, displacing millions and submerging swathes of land.

The Three Gorges dam, which can handle inflows of about 98.8m litres a second, is already approaching its capacity. Officials expect water levels in the reservoir, whose dam was built to withstand a water level of 175 metres, to reach 165.5 metres on Saturday. The flooding is predicted to last about five days.

But can we build dams on land with moving tectonic plates, mountains and climate change driven epic weather events?

Finally, the wartime destruction of a ‘sitting duck’ dam is a threat hanging over all infrastructure, but a dam burst is utterly devastating.

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged avoidable death, climate change, common sense, construction, dams, earthquakes, engineering, excess death, flooding, freshwater demand, local knowledge, prevention, tragedy, water shortages | Leave a comment

Is This Humanity in the End Game?

Posted on June 30, 2023 by borderslynn

I’m reproducing part of a summary of the Global Peace Index report, recently released.

As we see the 21st century reveals humans are increasingly prone to destruction rather than evolving into a benign and beneficial force for good.

Follow this link to read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/global-conflicts-death-toll-at-highest-in-21st-century/a-66047287

CONFLICTS

GLOBAL ISSUES

Global conflicts: Death toll at highest in 21st century

Ben Knight

06/28/2023June 28, 2023

Conflict deaths are higher than they have ever been this century with over 238,000 people killed in conflicts last year.

Since the 21st century began, war has never cost humanity so much. The number of conflict deaths almost doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year. And war caused a 13% loss of global GDP, according to the Global Peace Index, released on Wednesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

The major new survey by the global think tank said that the average level of “global peacefulness” had sunk for the ninth year in a row, with conflict deaths topping the previous global peak reached in 2014 during the Syrian Civil War.

The dramatic increase in death rates was mostly driven by the war in Ukraine, where 83,000 people were killed in the past year, though the bloodiest conflict was in Ethiopia, where 100,000 people lost their lives.

Internationalized conflict

The Global Peace Index is put together evaluating almost every country in the world according to 23 indicators, broken down into three domains: “Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict,” “Societal Safety and Security,” and “Militarization,” which reflect both social peace (crime statistics, the number of homicides) and a country’s conflicts at home and abroad. Altogether, the average level of “global peacefulness,” as measured by the index, had deteriorated by 0.42%.

The most obvious trend was that conflicts had become more internationalized, according to Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), and one of the authors of the report. Ninety-one of the world’s countries are now involved in some kind of conflict, the GPI found, compared to 58 in 2008.

“That’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing,” Killelea told DW. “Some might be involved in peacekeeping operations, like ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States]. On the one hand, more countries are getting involved in wars overseas, but you could also say we’re becoming more internationalized in how we’re working together.”

This might be seen as a surprising development, given that Western military intervention has been scaled back in the last decade. The US and NATO have now withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. But, as Killelea pointed out, the US is still involved in conflicts – it is now the biggest supporter of Ukraine.

The Price of War

One of the starkest findings of the report is the economic cost of war. In total, war and violence cost the world $17.5 trillion last year, or 12.9% of global GDP. For those countries most affected by conflict, the impact is obviously particularly devastating: Ukraine, for instance, spent 63% of its GDP on defense against the Russian invasion.

And the threat of future conflict is also startling: The report calculated that a potential Chinese blockade of Taiwan, for instance, would lead to a drop in global economic output equivalent to double the loss that occurred as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Of course, many arms companies also make money from war, but according to the index, those economic gains are dwarfed by the expense that war and militarization brings. “If I build an aircraft carrier: That might cost me $20 billion to build, and $500 million a year to run the thing,” said Killelea. “The best I can hope for is that I don’t use it. But that money could be used for stimulating business, on the health system, where it would have a far more productive benefit for the economy.”

Read the full report at:

https://www.economicsandpeace.org/report/global-peace-index-2023

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged analysis, arms, benefits, civilian deaths, conflict, cost, cultural loss, death, destruction, ecocide, genocide, homelessness, land grab, life, mercenaries, migration, persecution, rebuilding, resources stolen, strife, theft, war, war crimes, weapons | Leave a comment

Last chance saloon

Posted on May 9, 2023 by borderslynn

If you, dear reader, read these blogs, you will know I often quote from books recently published. I am searching for guidance, for hope, for sound planning, that our future generations may live a more fulfilling life than we have had. Below are a few examples of, what I believe to be, sound, implementable, planning to save the planet for we humans to deserve to live upon.

All we can do is learn from history how to build social and political structures that are at least resilient and at best antifragile; how to avoid the descent into self-flagellating chaos that so often characterizes societies overwhelmed by disaster; and how to resist the siren voices who propose totalitarian rule or world government as necessary for the protection of our hapless species and our vulnerable world.
From Doom, Niall Ferguson

I watched a YouTube of Bernie Sanders interview with Frankie Boyle, dated a couple of months ago when he visited the UK. He has clear plans we could follow.

https://youtu.be/7FqXDJkko_I

And social justice and prosperity cannot be achieved if the monetary system only provides access to finance for the already rich, those who own assets. The creation of a socially just monetary system – one that promotes widespread prosperity by acting as servant, not master of society and the economy; a monetary system that enables us all – including the public sector – to do what we can do, and be what we can be. That should be the aim of any progressive movement.
Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

Let us plan for degrowth.

https://theconversation.com/degrowth-isnt-the-same-as-a-recession-its-an-alternative-to-growing-the-economy-forever-202469

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged campaign, degrowth, economic plans, education, equality, fulfilment, mass movement, monetary rethinking, one percent, peace in our time, rewarding employment, working people | Leave a comment

Cast off the Debt Burden

Posted on April 26, 2023 by borderslynn

Being free of debt, whether it be an individual or a nation, is a fantasy. Well, so we have been brainwashed to believe.

In fact we have been:

‘bamboozled’ into allowing a small financial elite to create colossal quantities of private wealth while burdening the world with debt, volatility, crises and rising rates of inequality.
Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

Even the IMF admitted in a paper published in June, 2016:

the neoliberal agenda – a label used more by critics than by the architects of the policies – rests on two main planks. The first is increased competition – achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets, including financial markets, to foreign competition. The second is a smaller role for the state, achieved through privatization and limits on the ability of governments to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt.
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm

Ann Pettifor tells us that Keynes understood how to protect our economies by avoiding mobile capital which had been encouraged to all our detriment since discarding Keynesian advice. He suggested if we close borders to footloose, international mobile capital, we can avoid the pitfalls all of us know only too well.

Read the definition of capital mobility:

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/capital-mobility

Many high income nations have increased their debt more than developing countries between 2005 and 2015.

Read about countries Statista has revealed to have taken on the burden of high debt by borrowing from China:

https://www.statista.com/chart/29603/chinese-emergency-bailouts/

This shows the more desperate the country, the more likely they are to go to China as a lender of last resort.

Bailout amounts provided by China remained quite low in the 2000s and early 2010s, before shooting up from 2015 onwards, climbing to a total of $100 billion for the two decades. The two most common ways in which these loans work is through a liquidity swap with the Chinese Central Bank – where most of the outstanding balances of around $40 billion were located as of 2021 – or through credit lines from Chinese state-owned banks. Three countries, Venezuela, South Sudan and Ecuador, received prepayments on goods they were to deliver to China.

Financiers in the global financial market make decisions which can cause pain in some part of the world they may not even be familiar with….running our lives from a distance with impunity.

Allowing capital to be fully mobile inhibits the management by government of their own domestic financial market and interest rates if:

lenders in international markets offer higher or lower rates beyond a country’s border, rates that may not be appropriate to economic conditions in-country.
Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

Governments must be free to analyse their own nation’s financial position and adjust interest rates and policies accordingly to the benefit of its population.

…..mobile capital’s absolute power derives from its ability to move effortlessly across borders and to lend at the highest rate of interest to institutions and individuals that need finance…….the IMF provides protection…
Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

It is therefore imperative to work toward international cooperation and change the system – but we don’t seem inclined to do that these days, and we see populations suffering immensely as a result.

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged austerity, conflict, debt burden, economics, global financial markets, IMF, impunity, interest rates, Keynes, loans, mismanagement, mobile capital, poverty, power grabs, resources, trade, usury | Leave a comment

Permacrisis: Shipping

Posted on April 13, 2023 by borderslynn

If we want to look at human activity accelerated to the point of destruction, let’s look at the tragedy of the Mediterranean.

https://sciencing.com/animals-mediterranean-sea-8537277.html

Aerial view of a Cosco cargo ship moored between two piers covered with colorful shipping containers.

TRADECHINA

In Greece’s largest port of Piraeus, China is the boss

Kaki Bali

10/30/2022October 30, 2022

Since 2016, the Chinese shipping company Cosco has been the majority stakeholder in the port of Piraeus. This means a foreign power controls Greece’s main port.

In Germany, a heated debate has been raging about the Chinese state shipping company Cosco buying a minority stake in a container terminal at the port of Hamburg.

Greece, however, seems to have no such concerns. Since 2011, under pressure from both the debt crisis and the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), the Greek government has sold almost all of the country’s important ports and airports to foreign companies. Athens signed a contract with Cosco in 2016 that has allowed the Chinese company to secure a two-thirds majority stake in the port of Piraeus.

https://www.dw.com/en/greece-in-the-port-of-piraeus-china-is-the-boss/a-63581221

Reliable large infrastructure building projects skills have been developed by Chinese companies. China has also invested in container ports around the world.

https://ports.coscoshipping.com/en/

Shipping has a long history in Greece and famous names associated with it such as the Greek Onassis (born 1906 in Smyrna, Turkey), his father in the cigarette business. His family were victims of the slaughter of Greeks in that area, and he escaped and fled when he was 17.

https://greekreporter.com/2021/09/13/the-catastrophe-of-smyrna-genocide-of-greeks-in-asia-minor-remembered/

His human story is worth reading, spanning the turbulent times of the 1920s until his death in 1975, 2 years after the death of his son two years earlier.

https://www.factinate.com/people/facts-aristotle-onassis/

During his lifetime, shipping was part of a respected industry and the many uses of ships was never considered as a potentially harmful ecological component. He became a shipping magnate by being able to take advantage of the 1930s Depression:

Lucky for him, this was the 1930s—The Great Depression—and everyone was abandoning ship on the shipping business. So, Onassis offered to buy up the vessels from the companies that were—pun intended—going under.

Don’t think that Onassis was actually trying to help anyone: He got the ships for well under half price.
Factinate

Many billionaires have achieved their goals by purchasing industries at silly prices when their value has dropped due to a crisis. They have grown the business and gained worldwide fame as a consequence.

In the UK, Mrs Thatcher sold off Britain’s assets:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/britain-land-margaret-thatcher-built

The world of Money impacts all of us and many of us are left with family histories which show the damaging results of ruthless power. But the earth bears the main toll and we watch it dying before our eyes.

Efforts are being made to provide greener fuels for shipping:

https://www.transportenvironment.org/challenges/ships

But that costs money, and budgets are tight, so instead loopholes are sought and a blind eye turned to the toxic waste dumped in our oceans.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/12/shippings-dirty-secret-how-scrubbers-clean-the-air-while-contaminating-the-sea

We all know about the oil spills, but plastic nurdles are another catastrophic cause of ocean death if they end up in the sea:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/29/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous

And don’t forget human waste:

A large cruise ship can produce about 170,000 gallons of sewage on a daily basis. On an average of 0.01 to 0.06 m3 of sewage is produced per person in a day.

The UK proposed barge to house 500 migrants has been refitted to be more sanitary than it was when used in Amsterdam. But have they a sewage filtration system which prevents waste going into the sea at Portland? Let us hope so.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/05/anger-at-plan-to-house-asylum-seekers-on-barge-off-dorset-portland

Container cargo ships can become unstable:

ship capsize is a seafarer’s worst nightmare. These incidents are often due to inadequate ship stability caused by a sudden and unplanned rise in the ship’s Centre of Gravity (CoG). Tragic consequences include injury, death, pollution and total loss of ship and cargo. All ships are exposed to this potential danger but some ship types and trades are much more exposed than others. In particular, containerships and general cargo and multi-purpose ships carrying containers on deck – with a high ship CoG and low residual stability are in the instability high risk category
https://maritime-mutual.com/risk-bulletins/stability-vigilance-containerships-and-cargo-ships-carrying-containers

The greenwashing which goes on to present a responsible industry is upsetting. Just as we all understand factory fishing (I wrote about the harm supertrawlers do years ago, see https://borderslynn.com/2021/02/25/we-will-be-fishless-soon-part-one)

has overwhelmed and destroyed the marine life ecosystems, still demand and supply continues unabated. The shipping industry seems to be expanding, not shrinking.

Last, but not least, the tragedy in the Mediterranean of migrant deaths, fleeing in overcrowded and often leaking boats, desperate for a better life.

See here:

https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged barges, billionaire, black water, cargo instability, catastrophe, container shipping, cruise ships, dying planet, ecology, investment, marine life, migrants, money, naval shipping, responsibility, sea deaths, sewage treatment, Shipping, supertrawlers, toxic waste, trade | Leave a comment

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History of Uranium

Patrick McFaddenFebruary 23, 2016

Submitted as coursework for PH241, Stanford University, Winter 2016

Background

Discovery of Uranium

Uses of Uranium

Environmental Impacts

Uranium in the Future

References

Uranium Market OutlookMarket in Transition

Incentivizing New Production

Special Issue Offer

Standard Features

Who should read this report

Russia’s wars in Chechnya offer a grim warning of what could be in Ukraine

Putin comes to power

Parallels between Chechnya then and Ukraine now

Ukraine war: why Crimean Tatar fighters are playing an increasing role in resistance to Russian occupation

Who are the Tatars?

Earthquakes

Earthquake Area? Let’s build a dam

Global conflicts: Death toll at highest in 21st century

Internationalized conflict

In Greece’s largest port of Piraeus, China is the boss

Where did we come from? Where are we going?

Patrick McFadden
February 23, 2016

Uranium Market Outlook
Market in Transition