No one has ever died because of Swedish nuclear power. Until recently, nuclear power provided about 40% of that country’s electricity, similar to hydro. Fossil fuels only generated about 1% of Sweden’s electricity.
But that’s about to change for the worse. As Sama Bilbao y Léon and John Lindberg at World Nuclear Association write, “[Starting in 1980] Sweden had proved to the world that it was possible to free itself from fossil fuels for electricity production in less than a decade.
One of the world’s cheapest and cleanest electricity systems was delivered, at the same time as Swedish life improved without sacrificing the environment.”
SASKATOON — The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) is asserting that resource exploration permits from the Government of Saskatchewan have no authority on First Nations’ lands.
This comes after a Toronto-based uranium resource exploration company was found twice on the Birch Narrows Dene Nation without the consent of their band council.
“Resource developers must understand that provincial permits don’t give them the green light to run roughshod over our inherent and treaty rights,” said Birch Narrows Dene Nation Chief Jonathan Sylvestre.
For every day of his 10-year tenure at the head of Cameco Corp., Tim Gitzel has been saddled with a sprawling, costly and potentially ruinous tax dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency over how the uranium producer dealt with its overseas profits.
That dispute was punctuated, if not yet quite ended, on Thursday when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the CRA’s appeal of lower-court decisions that had sided with the company.
The heart of the long-running dispute is transfer pricing, or how multinational companies such as Cameco determine what prices their subsidiaries charge each other for goods and services, with those decisions influencing how much tax is paid in various jurisdictions.
In 2004, Heather Hoff was working at a clothing store and living with her husband in San Luis Obispo, a small, laid-back city in the Central Coast region of California. A few years earlier, she had earned a B.S. in materials engineering from the nearby California Polytechnic State University.
But she’d so far found work only in a series of eclectic entry-level positions—shovelling grapes at a winery, assembling rectal thermometers for cows. She was twenty-four years old and eager to start a career.
One of the county’s major employers was the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, situated on the coastline outside the city. Jobs there were stable and well-paying. But Diablo Canyon is a nuclear facility—it consists of two reactors, each contained inside a giant concrete dome—and Hoff, like many people, was suspicious of nuclear power.
Poland is working towards reducing its dependence on coal and forging ahead with plans to start producing nuclear energy. Its Polityka Energetczna Polski (PEP) strategy, which the government approved earlier this month and is set to begin in 2026, includes the construction of six reactors in two locations. According to the plan, the first reactor will begin operation in 2033 and all six should be up and running by 2043.
The EU member has to find new sources of energy in order to meet the bloc’s climate, energy and environmental targets. Poland currently depends on coal for 70% of its energy and is thus one of the most polluting EU states.
But Poland’s energy transition is not driven by external pressure alone. Brown coal mining in central Poland, which currently supplies 20% of the country’s energy, is set to be phased out by 2035.
Cronkite News – WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will award contracts worth up to $220 million to three companies for the cleanup of some of the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation.
Work could start later this year following the completion of assessments for mining sites coordinated between the EPA and the Navajo Nation’s environmental agency, the federal agency said.
This week’s announcement is just the latest in years of efforts to clean up the mines, the toxic legacy of Cold War mining in the region. More than 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined in the region, according to the EPA, which said more than 500 mines were ultimately abandoned.
South African advocacy groups have claimed Johannesburg is the most radioactive city on Earth, because of the mining of uranium-rich gold fields. But uranium contamination and radioactivity aren’t the same thing.
The history of gold mining and the South African city of Johannesburg are intimately linked – the city was founded after the discovery of the precious metal on the Witwatersrand in 1884. Locals call it “the City of Gold”, but can it also claim the title of “most radioactive city on earth”?
“Joburg is the most radioactive city on the planet, thanks to its gold-mining past, says Earthlife Africa,” read an article on news website Independent Online in late 2020. It linked this startling claim to the dumping of uranium as a waste product of gold mining.
(Kitco News) – Uranium Royalty (TSX-V: URC, US: URCCF) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire existing royalty interests on the McArthur River and Cigar Lake uranium mines in Saskatchewan, Canada.
McArthur River and Cigar Lake mines rank as the two largest high-grade uranium mines in the world, with ore grade 100 times world averages as disclosed by Cameco.
Based on disclosed production capacities, the mines have the combined capacity equal to 21% of global forecasted uranium demand (2021).
The new Poland’s Energy Policy for 2040 (PEP2040) is based on three pillars: a just transition; a zero-emission energy system; and good air quality.
The first 1-1.6 GWe nuclear unit is to be commissioned in 2033, with five more units, or 6-9 GWe, to follow by 2040. The investment expected to be required for this is PLN150 billion (USD39.7 billion). New jobs created by the country’s nuclear and renewable energy sectors are expected to total 300,000.
“The transition will cover many sectors, but it is energy that plays a particularly important role in the fight against climate change. The updated Poland’s energy policy for 2040 takes this into account in its assumptions, on an equal footing with the need to ensure energy security, a just transition, reconstruction after the coronavirus pandemic, a stable labour market, sustainable development of the economy and strengthening its competitiveness,” Kurtyka said.
The world is moving forward on building and deploying small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Canadian Nuclear Laboratories announced SMR technology as a research priority and Canada now has a roadmap for SMRs, including building an SMR demonstration plant by 2026, with Terrestrial Energy’s Integrated Molten Salt Reactor topping the list.
China is also moving fast on its 100 MW SMR designed by the China National Nuclear Corporation. Called the Linglong One, this ACP100 nuclear reactor has completed its preliminary design stage and is qualified for construction in Hainan province this year.
Its first use will be to generate heat for a residential district, replacing coal-fired boilers. But the sprint in the United States is being led by the small modular nuclear reactor company, NuScale, out of Oregon.
Science Moab talks to Dr. Tommy Rock about uranium exposure on the Navajo Nation
The Colorado Plateau has a long history of uranium mining, particularly within the Navajo Nation. Hundreds of abandoned uranium mines still contaminate water sources and ecologies within the Nation, creating dangerous levels of exposure within tribal communities.
Science Moab spoke with Dr. Tommy Rock, an environmental scientist who has testified before Congress as a leading expert in uranium contamination on the Navajo Nation, about his work to uncover these exposure pathways while empowering his community.
Science Moab: Can you explain the history of uranium mining within the Navajo Nation?
Rock: The mining actually first started with people looking for vanadium. [A chemical element primarily used as an additive to steel. -ed.] People flocked to the Four Corners area looking for it. Uranium mining started around 1918, but really started booming in the 1950s and ‘60s when the atomic bomb happened and the Cold War began.
The heads of two publicly-traded corporations with significant mining operations in Saskatchewan were again among the country’s highest-paid executives in 2019.
Nutrien Ltd. CEO Chuck Magro’s $16.4-million pay package made him Canada’s 11th-highest-paid CEO, according to new data compiled by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Cameco Corp. CEO Tim Gitzel, meanwhile, was paid a total of $7 million, good for 84th place on the list, which the self-described “progressive” think tank has published annually since 2006.
(LtoR) George A. Flach, P.Geo., Vice President, Exploration, Director; Tim Campbell, Vice President & Secretary and Stephen G. Roman, Chairman, President & CEO at the Global Atomic Corporation Annual General Meeting on June 26, 2019. (Photo by Stan Sudol)
https://www.northernminer.com/
“IL EST MORT! He is dead!” At least that was the verdict of five French doctors who were on their way to a medical convention on the Paris to London Eurostar train in 2014, when they briefly examined “the body” of Stephen G. Roman, Global Atomic’s (TSX: GLO; US-OTC: GATF) founder, chairman and CEO.
“I was on my way to meetings in London after visiting our uranium properties in the Republic of Niger, West Africa, just north of Ghana,” Roman recounts. “I had not been feeling very well after I ate a meal before our roughly five-hour plane flight from Niamey to Paris, but I thought I would persevere. Just after being served dinner on the Eurostar, I violently vomited and passed out falling to the floor of the train.”
Luckily, on further examination, a nurse found his pulse and both Roman and George Flach, Global Atomic’s vice president of exploration, were evacuated from the train at Lille, France via ambulance, and brought to a local hospital with all their luggage, where after a day of intensive antibiotic treatment for a highly contagious and virulent intestinal bacteria, Roman finally started to recover.
The largest operational uranium mine in the world is shutting down for the second time in 2020 due to the spread of COVID-19, presenting fertile ground for another rise in prices linked to the pandemic.
Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corp. announced Dec. 14 the suspension of production at its 50%-owned Cigar Lake uranium mine in the province after three employees at the site tested positive for the coronavirus.
It was the second temporary closure of the mine due to COVID-19. Orano SA, which has a 37% interest in Cigar Lake, announced the same day that it was suspending production at the nearby McClean Lake uranium processing mill.
Cameco Corp. is suspending operations at its Cigar Lake uranium mine in Saskatchewan for the second time this year to reduce the threat of further spread of COVID-19 into vulnerable northern communities as the province’s coronavirus caseload soars.
The province on Monday reported 267 new cases of the coronavirus and two more deaths. A total of 12,238 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Saskatchewan and 91 have died from the disease since the pandemic began.
Located about 650 kilometres north of Saskatoon, Cigar Lake is the world’s biggest uranium mine, accounting for about 14 per cent of global output.
