President #Biden on Monday evening signed a bipartisan bill prohibiting Russian imports of enriched #uranium a move intended to cut off one of the last significant flows of #money from the #UnitedStates to #Russia amid the #war in #Ukraine.
But #sanctions on #uranium imports have taken much longer, in part because #Russia supplies roughly 20% of #US#nuclear fuel, leading some lawmakers to fear disruptions to the nation’s 93 nuclear reactors.
“It’s kind of ridiculous that it took as long as it did to get to this stage,” said Scott Melbye, exec VP of mining company Uranium Energy & president of the Uranium Producers of America, a trade group. “But we’re just glad that we got here.”
American companies pay around $1B a year for enriched uranium from Rosatom, #Russia’s state #nuclear power conglomerate. These payments have continued even after documents revealed last year that Rosatom had been working to supply the Russian #arms industry w/components, technology & raw materials for missile fuel.
The bipartisan bill will ban #uranium imports from Moscow beginning 90 days after its enactment.
The bill also frees up $2.7B…in previous #legislation to build out the domestic #uranium processing industry.
“This new #law reestablishes America’s leadership in the nuclear sector,” #NationalSecurity adv Jake Sullivan said in a stmnt Mon. “It will help secure our #energy sector for generations to come.” The bill passed the #House in Dec, but stalled for months in the #Senate, where Sen #TedCruz had blocked the measure over unrelated disputes.
#Iran ’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps ( #IRGC ), has posted a video with a caption saying: “Isfahan’s nuclear site is completely safe”.
According to the World Nuclear Association, the #Isfahan#Nuclear Technology Centre includes a #uranium conversion facility (UCF), which produces uranium hexafluoride.
I don't condone modern graffiti in canyon country, but this one where I'm camped at the end of a finger of rim rock is interesting. This would have been a very remote place in 1946. It's still pretty remote here. I wonder what David was doing out here? An early uranium prospector maybe? He carved this in a flat, up facing piece of sandstone. There's no ancient petroglyphs nearby, fortunately.
#Nuclear deal in tatters, #Iran edges close to weapons capability
Six years after the #Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord, Tehran is rapidly accumulating enriched #uranium, some of it very close to weapons grade. Experts fear that a #bomb could be a short dash away.
The inspectors’ latest trek yielded the usual matrices of readings & measurements, couched in the clinical language of a #UN#nuclear watchdog report. But w/in the doc’s dry prose were indications of alarming change. In factory chambers that had ceased making enriched #uranium under a 2015 nuclear accord, inspectors now witnessed frenzied activity: newly installed equipment, producing enriched uranium at ever faster speeds, & an expansion underway that could soon double the plant’s output. #Iran
More worryingly, #Fordow was scaling up production of a more dangerous form of #nuclear fuel — a kind of highly enriched #uranium, just shy of #WeaponsGrade. Iranian officials in charge of the plant, meanwhile, had begun talking openly about achieving “deterrence,” suggesting that Tehran now had everything it needed to build a #bomb if it chose.
Fordow’s transformation mirrors changes seen elsewhere in the country as #Iran blows past the guardrails of the Iran nuclear accord.
"As the U.S. pursues its #nuclear power potential, environmentalists and Native American leaders remain fearful of the consequences for communities near mining and milling sites in the West and are demanding better regulatory oversight."
Unlike other #nuclear#states , #France has chosen to reprocess its nuclear #waste on a massive scale, first at La Hague and then partly in... #Russia .While this saves 20% of #natural#uranium in #French nuclear #power#plants ,the #choice is politically highly questionable, since not only has it already accumulated 100 tonnes of #plutonium stored in France, which represents an enormous #risk , but it also contributes to financing the #Russian#state and, consequently, its #war in #Ukraine .
"La #France continue d’importer chaque année d’énormes quantités d’#uranium russe, remplissant ainsi les caisses de l’entreprise d’État #Rosatom. C’est l’un des secrets les plus gênants du #nucléaire français alors que la guerre en #Ukraine dure depuis plus de deux ans et que #VolodymyrZelensky vient de protester contre « les pays qui sont [leurs] partenaires, mais qui financièrement sont les partenaires de la #Russie dans cette guerre »."
Roughly everyone in America has heard some version of the Burisma/Biden backstory.
But briefly: in March of 2016 then-Vice President Joe Biden delivered a blustering speech in which he threatened to withhold foreign aid from Ukraine if that country didn’t fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
Shokin, the so-called “Diamond Prosecutor,” was shockingly corrupt, and it was the consensus of the entire US government, along with our Western European allies and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that Shokin had to go.
In 2017, he repurposed the lie for Joe Biden.
This time, the story was that Biden had gotten Shokin fired to protect Burisma, a company which employed Hunter Biden as a board member.
In reality, Shokin had let the investigation of Burisma go dormant by 2016.
But that didn’t stop Rudy Giuliani, then Donald Trump’s lawyer, from spending 2019 traipsing around Ukraine trying to prove that this fabrication was true
— or at least to find someone willing to say it was true so he could dirty up Biden and ensure his loss in 2020.
Unsurprisingly, Shokin was willing to play ball with Rudy as he tried to make fetch happen.
But so were a whole host of other Ukrainians, many of whom had ties to the Kremlin.
One of them was Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker, who was photographed showing Giuliani “evidence” in December 2019.
(Source: Derkach’s press office)
And here’s how Donald Trump’s own Treasury Department referred to Rudy’s buddy when it announced in September 2020 that it was sanctioning him for election interference:
🔸Derkach, a Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services. Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 US presidential election. […]
🔸From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning US officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day.
The announcement went on to note that “between May and July 2020, Derkach released edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit US officials.”
And that is where #Smirnov comes in...