Equilibrium/Sustainability — NASA chief seeks to quell space jitters

Today is Wednesday. Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.     

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has promised to continue joint space exploration with other countries, despite suggestions from “his Twitter-trolling Russian counterpart” that Moscow could abandon a U.S. astronaut or crash the International Space Station into the Earth, NBC News reported.   

“I want to [assure] you that we are laser focused on our people,” Nelson told the agency’s workforce earlier this week, according to text of the remarks obtained by NBC. 

While Nelson acknowledged the soaring tensions between Russia and the U.S. following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, he assured NASA employees that he “remains committed” to all seven astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station, NBC reported.   

These comments are in direct contradiction with what NBC described as “the bellicose provocations” on Twitter by Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency.   

Today we’ll take a look at another threat arousing concerns — a uranium mill turned radioactive waste dump, just a mile from Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Then we’ll examine at the possible impacts of China’s current covid outbreak on global trade. 

For Equilibrium, we are Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Please send tips or comments to Saul at selbein@digital-staging.thehill.com or Sharon at sudasin@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @saul_elbein and @sharonudasin.     

Let’s get to it.  

 

Uranium mill a ‘radioactive waste dump’

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The White Mesa uranium mill, located just a mile from Bears Ears National Monument, now houses more than 700 million pounds of toxic waste — making the Utah desert site “America’s cheapest radioactive waste dump,” a new report has found.   

Among the contents of the dump are remnants of the World War II-era Manhattan Project, as well as radioactive waste from around the country, according to the report, which was published on Monday by the Grand Canyon Trust.   

While the White Mesa Mill was built to process uranium ore, the site eventually became home to a waste-disposal service, despite its proximity to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s White Mesa Community.   

First words: “Polluters are finding that the cheapest place to send unwanted radioactive waste is the White Mesa Mill,” Tim Peterson, director of cultural landscapes at the Grand Canyon Trust, said in a statement. “If the White Mesa Mill wants to act like a radioactive waste dump, it should be regulated like one.”   

The Grand Canyon Trust, based in Arizona, is an environmental advocacy nonprofit focused on Grand Canyon and Colorado Plateau conservation.   

Bears Ears refresher: Bears Ears has received increased attention in recent years, after the Trump administration reduced the boundaries of the monument by about 85 percent in 2017.   

President Biden officially restored environmental protections to Bears Ears in October, describing the spot as “a sacred homeland to hundreds of generations of native peoples,” as The Hill reported. 

Why is a uranium mill accepting waste? The White Mesa Mill, adjacent to Bears Ears, first received its license to process uranium ore — including from Grand Canyon region mines — in 1980, according to the report.   

Only toward the end of that decade did the mill begin accepting low-level radioactive waste from contaminated military and industrial sites. Doing so allowed the mill to charge a fee for processing and disposal, the authors explained.   

Special approvals required: Although the White Mesa Mill is operating as a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility, it is licensed only as a uranium mill and therefore has repeatedly needed to obtain amendments to its license in order to accept waste, according to the authors.   

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed and regulated the mill until 2004, after which Utah became an “agreement state” — a state that has signed an agreement with the Commission to regulate radioactive materials. 

Despite Utah’s early opposition to the transport of radioactive waste into its territory, state regulators have continued to approve the license amendments, some of which are valid for decades, the report found. 

ACCEPTING RADIOACTIVE WASTE — WORLDWIDE

Yet agreements to accept radioactive waste at the site continue to expand, not only from facilities across America, but also from abroad, according to the report.  

White Mesa Mill received state approvals in July 2020 and July 2021 to accept waste from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s uranium mines and from Estonia’s Silmet OÜ rare earth metals plant, though these materials have yet to arrive, according to the report.  

“A toxic and radioactive goulash”: White Mesa Mill’s waste ponds sit above the nearby Navajo Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to the White Mesa Ute community and to southeastern Utah and northern Arizona, including part of the Navajo Nation, the report stated.   

The authors described the waste ponds — some of which lack modern liners — as “a toxic and radioactive goulash” that contains a variety of heavy metals classified as human carcinogens, as well as nitrate and chloroform plumes.   

A 2011 U.S. Geological Survey study identified the potential for contaminants to migrate from the mill and into the environment, while a 2018 report from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s Environmental Programs Department showed rising levels of acidity in area springs, the authors noted.   

What does the local government say? The Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control affirmed the White Mesa Mill’s adherence to state and national exposure regulations. 

“We can confirm that Energy Fuels, White Mesa Mill is a highly regulated facility in compliance with all Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) permissible exposure limits and all State and Federal regulations, including a stringent groundwater permit issued by the state,” a statement from the Division said.   

Last words: Kenneth Maryboy, commissioner of the local San Juan County Commission, said he remains concerned about the possibility that pollution could end up in the groundwater and flow down to the San Juan River.     

“Every Labor Day, White Mesa has a Bear Dance that many of my community members participate in, and you can smell the cloud that comes from the mill,” he said.   

To read the full story, please click here. 

 

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Outbreak drops oil prices, risks supply chains

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China is rushing to contain its worst coronavirus outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic, pushing major industrial centers and tens of millions of people into lockdown.  

These measures — a stark contrast to how the rest of the world is dealing with this stage of the pandemic — are dropping oil prices and risk further disrupting global supply chains that were already reeling from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

First words: “It’s going to be really bad,” Bradley University professor Daniel Stanton told Fortune magazine of the lockdowns. 

“When we’re talking about goods coming out of China, it’s not just the finished products we buy directly, but it’s also a lot of parts that are crucial to manufacturing other things that we buy, too,” he added. 

Behind the lines: On Sunday, following a spike in coronavirus infections that hit nearly 2,000 new cases, China’s government imposed strict lockdowns over a number of cities, like the manufacturing megalopolis of Shenzhen — which borders virus-plagued Hong Kong — and the trade and finance hub of Shanghai, NBC reported on Monday.

How does that compare to U.S. numbers — or restrictions? China’s are far lower, and far stricter, respectively. 

On Monday, for example, China reported 2,125 new cases — about 6 percent of the U.S.’s average rate of new infections that week, The Washington Post reported. And that’s despite the fact that the U.S. has more than four times fewer people. 

Mainland China has reported a mortality rate of 4,630 since the first infections at the Wuhan seafood market — a death toll the U.S. currently reaches about every four days, with about 200 times more total deaths. 

 

CHINA IS LOCKING BACK DOWN

The government has switched classes to online learning; required mass testing; searched homes for fugitive migrants from Hong  Kongers who have tested positive for the virus; and sealed off intercity bus traffic and access to and from housing compounds, the Post reported.

The outbreak has also led to the closure of factories integral to the production of global brands from Apple to Toyota, The New York Times reported. 

The mask is always greener: The outbreak has many mainland Chinese residents looking with resentment — or envy  — at the limited restrictions in place in coronavirus-riddled Hong Kong, where the pandemic death rate is currently highest in the world, Fortune reported. 

Impacts on the broader world. China is the world’s largest oil importer, consuming a total of 14 million barrels of oil per day, of which two-thirds are imported. 

That’s one factor that may have contributed to a drop in oil prices, which have now fallen 22 percent below where they were last week — back to below $100, just above where they were when Russia invaded Ukraine, The New York Times reported. Other factors may include the ongoing talks between the Russian and Ukrainian governments and calls from the United Arab Emirates for OPEC to increase production. 

So gas prices are heading down? Maybe. The International Energy Agency warned on Wednesday that Russian oil output could still fall dramatically next month — and that unless OPEC significantly increases production, there won’t be enough supply to keep prices from rising again, Reuters reported. 

 

A RISK TO PORTS — AND GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS

It also leaves open the possibility that China’s key ports could close. The number one port in the world is in Shanghai; the third largest is in Shenzhen. Both are still open, but a closure of either risks further disrupting global manufacturing and trade.  

Perilous precedents: Much of last year’s supply chain crisis came from the June closure of the Yantian terminal in Shenzhen — which led to a sudden interruption of shipping.  

Then, when ports reopened, they released a pulse of backed-up orders that overwhelmed ports around the world, trade journal American Shipper reported. 

In May, before the Yantian closure, 19 ships on average waited every day to access the ports of Los Angeles; in January 2022, that number had soared to 109 ships, American Shipper reported.  

And now: It’s down to 43 per day at Los Angeles — a number that could continue to drop if Shenzhen and Shanghai ports close again, or if last week’s factory closures are extended.  

Short term, that would be a relief: “Any respite [U.S.] ports can be offered in terms of imports will be positive, given the number of containers that are currently quayside and the number of issues in the hinterland,” George Griffiths of S&P Global told American Shipper.  

But that’s only if Chinese ports stay open, but factories stay closed — avoiding another backlog of goods stuck at ports, he stressed.   

Last words: Last year, when shipping rates went “stratospheric, it was because of the release of all that pent-up pressure that had built up in the market” after the closure at Yantian, Griffiths added.

 

Wayback Wednesday

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Searching the deep past for clues to the near future in three new studies. 

Ice sheets overwhelmed carbon dioxide levels to create ancient Green Sahara 

• Long-term changes to the Earth’s surface, like the size and position of ice sheets and range of global ecosystems, can overwhelm or augment the effects of carbon dioxide alone, a study in Nature Communications has found. Ice sheets and the position of forest 3 million years ago — during the Pliocene Epoch, the last time carbon dioxide levels were so high — helped nonetheless create green zones in the Sahara and China’s desert north. 

Microbes and minerals may be responsible for Earth’s oxygenation  

• While the first 2 billion years of Earth’s history included barely any oxygen in the air, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are exploring a new hypothesis that suggests oxygen may have finally begun to accumulate due to interactions between marine microbes and minerals. These interactions may have helped oxygen from being consumed — triggering a process that made more oxygen available in the atmosphere, according to the scientists, who published their findings in Nature Communications. 

Prehistoric temperature spike predicts a pending one 

• The sudden spike in temperatures that occurred 56 million years ago — known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum — was triggered by a massive increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels from volcanic eruptions, according to a study in Science Advances. These explosions issued carbon dioxide at levels similar to today’s tailpipe and factory emissions, the study found. While Earth’s temperatures ultimately recovered, “it took hundreds of thousands of years,” lead author Tali Babila said in a statement.   

 

Please visit The Hill’s sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you on Thursday.