Category: General

Today is World Environment Day, the international day calling for collective, transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect, and restore our planet. For too long human activities have over extracted from and polluted natural environments, and the consequences have been dire: out-of-control climate change, massive biodiversity loss, the emergence and spread of new diseases. However, hope is not lost and solutions exists that can remedy the damage caused and set our planet on a path towards recovery — some of these solutions rely on nuclear science.

Here are just four ways in which nuclear science and technology is playing an important role in protecting, conserving, and restoring our environment.

1. Mitigating climate change

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity and it’s driven — to a great extent — by carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. Reducing and ultimately ending these emissions requires an enormous, concerted effort by governments, industry and citizens to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and transition to low-carbon energy sources such as renewables and nuclear power.

Nuclear power accounts for roughly 10 per cent of the world’s electricity and over a quarter of its low-carbon electricity. When generating electricity, a nuclear power plant produces almost no carbon emissions — listen to our podcast to find out more — and so can play a key role in the transition to a low-emission energy future. The IAEA supports countries pursuing nuclear power programmes and has produced a trove of knowledge on how nuclear power can contribute towards decarbonisation and timely climate action. Recently, the IAEA launched an initiative to fast-track the development of hydrogen from nuclear to help decarbonise the most challenging fossil fuel-reliant sectors, such as heavy industry and transport.

2. Recycling plastic pollution

Since 1950, over eight billion tonnes of plastic have been produced. Plastic pollution has become one of today’s most pressing global environmental challenges, both on land and at sea where it chokes animals and seabirds and has begun to enter food webs. Not nearly enough of plastic is recycled or can be recycled using conventional methods, so the IAEA is working with countries to find solutions with the help of radiation technologies.

Last year the IAEA launched NUTEC Plastics, an initiative that supports using specialized nuclear methods to precisely track and quantify the movement and impacts of microplastic particles and associated co-contaminants in the environment — allowing experts to determine the status and trends of marine plastics, assess their impact on marine animals, and develop risk scenarios for informed decision making.

The initiative is also helping to make more plastics recyclable. Using radiation processes such as cross-linking, chain scission, grafting and other surface modifications, experts can help turn previously unrecyclable plastics into recyclable ones. Check out our recent photo essay on using irradiation towards a circular economy too learn more about the use of this technology in the Philippines.

3. Monitoring environmental pollution

Many activities in the modern world release pollutants into the environment. Pollution in the air, water, or soil impact and become a part of biological, geological and chemical cycles. Using nuclear techniques and tools, experts can study these processes to deal with pollutants and contaminated sites.

In the air, isotopic and nuclear tools are used monitor the pathways of heavy metal, greenhouse gases, and radioactive gases and particles through the atmosphere. Here’s a video on how scientists are able to use stable isotopes to ‘fingerprint’ greenhouse gases present in a sample of air and trace it to its source.

On land, nuclear techniques can precisely identify and measure pollutants. Using such techniques, the IAEA assists countries with monitoring, modelling and assessments for environmental protection initiatives. Here’s an example of how the IAEA has trained scientists and experts from Africa in correctly collecting and pre-treating environmental samples for measurement of radioactivity.

At sea, cutting-edge nuclear and isotopic techniques can accurately monitor pollution, minimise the impact of incidents and mitigate their effect on local populations. In January, Peru experienced a major oil spill because of a tsunami from a distant earthquake in Tonga, and the IAEA sent a fact-finding expert mission to support the country’s efforts to clean up the spill and monitor its effects.

4. Managing freshwater resources

Human life depends on the availability of water. Making sure the water we extract for drinking, industry and agriculture is sustainable can be achieved by measuring ratios of isotopes in the water — a field of science called isotope hydrology.

The IAEA support countries through its isotope hydrology laboratory with the application of nuclear and isotopic techniques in all aspects of freshwater resource assessments and water management and protection. For example, in Zimbabwe the IAEA is helping experts use isotopic techniques to assess the interactions of their groundwater and river systems, so as to better manage their freshwater resources, cope with pollution, and ensure safe water supplies for people. In Bolivia, nuclear techniques are being used to monitor glacier retreat and the impact it has on wetlands.

To discover other nuclear techniques and technologies addressing environmental issues, visit our  topic on the environment and stay informed by subscribing to our web newsletter and Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram accounts.

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency

West African leaders Saturday failed to agree what action to take against military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, postponing a decision for a month, insiders at the meeting said.

They decided to wait until the next ECOWAS summit July 3, a senior source in the Ghanian presidency told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.

Another source said the leaders had not been able to agree, “particularly over Mali.”

The summit in Ghana’s capital Accra had been billed as the forum to agree whether to ease or ramp up sanctions against the three junta-ruled nations facing jihadi insurgencies.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had met in a bid to rule whether to keep, lighten or lift retaliatory measures on Mali, imposed in January after its military regime announced plans to stay in power for another five years.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo opened the summit, attended by the heads of state of most of the 15-member countries but without any representative from Mali, Burkina Faso or Guinea visible in the audience.

“This present summit will reexamine and assess the situations in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso in light of recent developments within the region and global context,” he said.

“Our objective has always been to find ways to help these countries return to constitutional order.”

Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali are currently suspended from ECOWAS bodies.

While Mali has already been slapped with sanctions, the other two countries risk further punitive measures from the bloc after ruling juntas in their respective capitals vowed to hold on to power for another three years.

West Africa has seen a succession of military coups in less than two years — two in Bamako, followed by Conakry in September 2021 and Ouagadougou in January.

Insurgency

ECOWAS, keen to limit political instability spreading further, has held summits and tried to pile on pressure to shorten the juntas’ so-called transition periods before a return to civilian rule.

But strongmen Colonel Assimi Goita in Mali, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya in Guinea and Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in Burkina Faso, have all resisted that pressure and since been sworn in as presidents.

They invoke the severity of domestic crises — that span jihadi insurgencies to social problems — and claim they need time to rebuild their states and organize elections.

A U.N. report published last week said the West African sanctions had contributed to worsening living conditions, particularly for the poor.

One of the most volatile and impoverished countries in the world, Mali is battling a decade-old jihadi revolt, which began with a regional insurrection and then spread to Niger and Burkina Faso.

ECOWAS closed borders and suspended trade and financial exchanges, except for necessities.

In Guinea, the military overthrew President Alpha Conde in September and has vowed a return to civilian rule in three years.

Burkina Faso’s government was overthrown in January, when disgruntled colonels ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

Source: Voice of America

Pakistan says its exports to Afghanistan have dropped and imports sharply increased in the current financial year, leading to a bilateral trade balance for the first time in favor of the war-torn neighbor.

Pakistan has stepped up bilateral cooperation and announced trade-related concessions for the landlocked country to help it overcome deteriorating humanitarian and economic crises after the Taliban returned to power last August.

In the 11 months of the current financial year, Pakistani exports to Afghanistan have dropped to around $700 million from more than $900 million last year, a spokesperson for the commerce ministry in Islamabad told VOA.

The change is attributed mainly to increased purchases of Afghan coal and an “extremely good quality” cotton by Pakistan in recent months.

The spokesperson noted that imports from Afghanistan, meanwhile, have increased to more than $700 million from $550 million last year.

The decline in Pakistani exports is attributed to U.S. sanctions on the interim Taliban government, the absence of banking channels and non-availability of dollars in Afghanistan, as well as a drop in demand for certain Pakistani goods.

The commerce ministry spokesperson, however, told VOA that Pakistani exports to Central Asian countries through Afghanistan have risen by 70 percent to $202 million in the last 11 months from $118 million in the same period last year.

There are five fully operational border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan has in recent years fenced off its nearly 2,600 kilometer traditionally porous Afghan border and tightened immigration controls to deter terrorist infiltration in either direction.

Afghans say the massive fencing project has undermined livelihood opportunities for divided tribes, straddling the largely mountainous frontier.

A senior Pakistani foreign ministry official said despite tightened measures “about 30,000 people, including Afghan refugees, move across the border every day.”

“We have allowed Afghan importers to buy our products in Pakistani currency and have given them freedom to export any items to Pakistan to facilitate bilateral trade,” said the official, who deals directly with bilateral Afghan matters.

He noted that the Pakistani government has identified 44 places on the border where it plans to establish new crossings to further facilitate commercial activities as well as visitor movement.

“We intend to open several of the proposed gates every two or three months. We have discussed it with Afghan (Taliban) leaders and told them to arrange for manning these posts, so they know who is moving in and out,” the Pakistani official said.

The Taliban has acknowledged they are also stepping up coal exports to Pakistan and have raised duties on sales with a goal to generate more revenue from the Afghan mining sector in the absence of direct foreign funding.

Financial funding for Afghanistan has dried up because no country has yet recognized the Islamist group as the legitimate rulers of the country.

The Taliban are now relying on the country’s natural resources, including largely untapped mineral and fossil fuel deposits, to meet economic challenges facing their new government.

On Saturday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the ministry of mines and petroleum earned nearly $5 million, including about $1.9 million from crude oil sales, within the past week (May 26-June1).

Last week, the Afghan ministry said it had collected $44 million in customs revenue through coal exports in the last six months.

Cash-strapped Pakistan has increased coal imports from Afghanistan in the wake of rising global prices in a bid to reduce Islamabad’s dependence on expensive supplies from South Africa.

The coal price hike is linked to an unexpected ban by top exporter Indonesia earlier this year, followed by Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.

South Africa currently provides almost three-quarters of Pakistan’s coal needs for the country’s cement and textile industries, as well as some power plants.

Afghan and Pakistani business representatives are scheduled to gather in Islamabad next week to deliberate on developing “barter trade mechanism recommendations” for both governments in a bid to boost bilateral trade.

Source: Voice of America

It is the new gold rush, and China is leading the hunt as prices surge. Only it’s not gold everyone’s looking for, it’s lithium. Many say the future of electric vehicle production and, more broadly, combatting climate change, depend on the rare metal.

Prices for the “green metal” have seen an almost 500% increase in the past year, according to Bloomberg.

Sung Choi, a metals analyst at BloombergNEF, told VOA, “The cost of lithium has risen because virtually all automakers have jumped onto producing electric vehicles.”

Electric car tsar and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the “insane” costs meant “Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale.”

That is exactly what China has been doing, and its companies are looking to make sure they don’t run out of the metal needed to make lithium-ion batteries – which China, which has the largest EV market in the world, produces 80% of globally.

While more than half of global lithium resources are in South America and Australia, China is scouring the world for new sources of the metal, including in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and elsewhere, but increasingly in Africa.

“Africa has recently been in the spotlight with its ample resources in metals,” Choi said.

Shenzen-headquartered Chinese conglomerate BYD is in talks to buy six new lithium mines in unspecified African countries, Reuters reported, citing Shanghai government supported publication The Paper. Repeated emails to the company from VOA requesting details of the deals went unanswered.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chinese mining giant Zijin is in a legal battle with Australia’s AVZ minerals over control of the Manono mine – possibly the world’s biggest lithium deposit — in the resource-rich country’s east.

In Zimbabwe, too, home to large untapped deposits of the resource, China is buying up mines. In a major deal, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt is investing $300 million in its recently purchased Arcadia Lithium mine outside Harare, according to Reuters. The money will be used to construct a plant with a processing capacity of 400,000 metric tons of lithium concentrate a year.

Shenzhen Chengxin Lithium Group and Sinomine Resource Group are just two of the other companies that have invested in lithium in Zimbabwe in the past year.

The Zimbabwean government has welcomed the investment. Spokeswoman Monica Mutsvangwa told VOA via WhatsApp that the economically unstable country, which is under Western sanctions, plans to rebrand itself as a major player in “the blooming lithium sector.”

“We aim to fill the vacuum being created by the displacement of fossil fuel engines by electric batteries,” she said.

In an apparent reference to the West, she added in an email to VOA, “The battery storage industry of the ushering New Electric Vehicle Era has shunted you by the wayside … Triple digit figures in the mergers and acquisition of Arcadia Lithium, Buhera Lithium deposits and Bikita Minerals have shunted you aside.”

Joe Lowry, founder of advisory firm Global Lithium, told VOA that Western lithium producers had been taken by surprise regarding the growth of the EV industry and therefore the rush for lithium.

“Lithium has been a tiny niche market for 7 decades. The global market for lithium chemicals didn’t reach a billion dollars until 2015. The industry was not prepared for electrification of transportation,” he said by email.

“You can build a huge battery factory like Tesla does in a couple years. It takes up to ten years to bring a fully integrated lithium chemicals project online,” he said.

Meanwhile, “Chinese producers invested ahead of the curve in resources outside China … (and) are looking at Africa,” Lowry said.

The U.S., too, knows the importance of Africa. General Stephen Townsend, AFRICOM commander, told the House Appropriations Committee in April, “Africa possesses vast untapped energy deposits … (needed to) transition to clean energy, including mobile phones, jet engines, electric hybrid vehicles and missile guidance systems.”

“The winners and losers of the 21st century global economy may be determined by whether these resources are available in an open and transparent marketplace or are inaccessible due to predatory practices of competitors,” he added.

And while some of the key components for EVs come from Africa, the market for the finished product – made overseas – is still minuscule on the continent. The mines provide jobs, but critics say locals don’t see enough trickle-down from the multimillion-dollar projects.

Last year, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi said that people living in areas with mines were “still languishing in misery,” while foreign multinationals prospered. He has launched a review of his predecessor’s “minerals-for-infrastructure” contracts with Chinese mining companies.

Source: Voice of America

Two U.N. peacekeepers were killed and two others were injured on Friday after an improvised bomb exploded in central Mali, a spokesman for the MINUSMA mission tweeted.

The soldiers were part of the Egyptian contingent of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, a security official said.

“The head of MINUSMA condemned the attack,” spokesman Olivier Salgado posted.

He said the incident took place near the town of Douentza, on the road to Timbuktu.

On Wednesday, a Jordanian peacekeeper was killed in an attack on his convoy in Kidal, in northern Mali.

With 13,000 members, MINUSMA — the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali — is one of the U.N.’s biggest peacekeeping operations and also one of its most dangerous.

Improvised explosive devices are a weapon of choice for jihadis against MINUSMA and Malian forces. They also kill many civilians.
Seven Togolese peacekeepers were killed in December by an IED explosion between Douentza and Sevare.

On Friday, the Egyptian peacekeepers were in an escort of a dozen U.N. vehicles accompanying a convoy of civilian trucks carrying fuel, Salgado said.

Such convoys can stretch for miles. A mine exploded as the convoy passed, Salgado said. Mines can be detonated on contact or remotely.

Central Mali is a hotbed of violence and jihadi activity that has spread from the north to the center of the country, and then to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of civilians and combatants have died, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

Two reports published this week, one from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and another from the human rights division of MINUSMA, express alarm at the intensification of the violence in central Mali.

Source: Voice of America

A Mali-based coalition of al-Qaida-aligned militants has claimed responsibility for an attack in Togo last month, the SITE Intelligence monitoring group said Friday.

The Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) has been expanding geographically, threatening northern parts of coastal Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo.

Togo’s government had confirmed a “terrorist attack” on May 11 in the northern town of Kpekankandi, near the border with Burkina Faso, where the insurgents are also present.

Officials had said that eight Togolese soldiers were killed and 13 others were wounded.

JNIM, according to SITE Intelligence, which monitors jihadist activities worldwide, said it had killed eight soldiers, stolen some weapons and damaged two cars.

A senior security source in Togo told AFP that the soldiers were attacked by a group of 60 gunmen who arrived on motorbikes.

“They exchanged fire for more than two hours … and then a reinforcement unit was hit by an improvised explosive device,” he added.

Togolese soldiers foiled an attack last November in the northern village of Sanloaga, making the May attack the first to cause casualties.

The statement from JNIM also claimed attacks in Mali and in Burkina Faso.

Source: Voice of America