NIAMEY, Niger: Niger’s military regime on Sunday announced it was putting uranium produced by Somair — a subsidiary of French giant Orano before the regime nationalized it in June — on the international market.
Uranium mining in Niger is at the center of a standoff between the junta that took power in 2023 and Orano, which is 90-percent owned by the French government and has operated mines in Niger for decades.
The news was announced on state television Tele Sahel in a report Sunday evening citing comments by head of the junta General Abdourahamane Tiani.
Tiani, the report said, had claimed “Niger’s legitimate right to dispose of its natural riches to sell them to whoever wants to buy them, under the rules of the market, in complete independence.”
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said in July that Moscow wanted to mine uranium in Niger.
Since the junta took power in a 2023 coup, Niger has turned to Russia, which commands the world’s largest arsenal of atomic weapons, for help in fighting the west African country’s jihadist insurgency.
At the same time it has turned its back on former colonial power France, which it accused of supporting separatist groups.
In 2024, Niger removed Orano’s operational control of its three main mines in the country: Somair, Cominak and Imouraren, which has one of the largest uranium deposits in the world.
Orano officially retains a 60 percent stake in the subsidiaries, and has undertaken various arbitration procedures to try to win back operational control.
Niger in 2022 accounted for about a quarter of the natural uranium supplied to European nuclear power plants, according to data from the atomic organization Euratom.
Niger says putting its uranium on international market
https://arab.news/g6pus
Niger says putting its uranium on international market
- Uranium mining in Niger is at the center of a standoff between the junta that took power in 2023 and Orano, which is 90-percent owned by the French government and has operated mines in Niger for decades
Volcanic eruptions may have brought Black Death to Europe, say new study
- Study says volcanic eruptions in 1345 caused temperatures to drop, leading to crop failure and causing famine
- This led Italy to have ships bring grain from central Asia, where the bubonic plague is thought to have first emerged
- The plague killed tens of millions of people and wiped out up to 60 percent of the population in parts of Europe
PARIS: Previously unknown volcanic eruptions may have kicked off an unlikely series of events that brought the Black Death — the most devastating pandemic in human history — to the shores of medieval Europe, new research has revealed.
The outbreak of bubonic plague known as the Black Death killed tens of millions and wiped out up to 60 percent of the population in parts of Europe during the mid-14th century.
How it came to Europe — and why it spread so quickly on such a massive scale — have long been debated by historians and scientists.
Now two researchers studying tree rings have suggested that a volcanic eruption may have been the first domino to fall.
By analizing the tree rings from the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain, the pair established that southern Europe had unusually cold and wet summers from 1345 to 1347.
Comparing climate data with written accounts from the time, the researchers demonstrated that temperatures likely dropped because there was less sunlight following one or more volcanic eruptions in 1345.
The change in climate ruined harvests, leading to failed crops and the beginnings of famine.
Fortunately — or so it seemed — “powerful Italian city states had established long-distance trade routes across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, allowing them to activate a highly efficient system to prevent starvation,” said Martin Bauch, a historian at Germany’s Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe.
“But ultimately, these would inadvertently lead to a far bigger catastrophe,” he said in a statement.
Deadly stowaways
The city states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa had ships bring grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde in central Asia, which is where the plague is thought to have first emerged.
Previous research has suggested that these grain ships brought along unwelcome passengers: rats carrying fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague.
Between 25 and 50 million people are estimated to have died over the next six years.
While the story encompasses natural, demographic, economic and political events in the area, it was ultimately the previously unidentified volcanic eruption that paved the way for one of history’s greatest disasters, the researchers argued.
“Although the coincidence of factors that contributed to the Black Death seems rare, the probability of zoonotic diseases emerging under climate change and translating into pandemics is likely to increase in a globalized world,” study co-author Ulf Buentgen of Cambridge University in the UK said in a statement.
“This is especially relevant given our recent experiences with Covid-19.”
The study was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment on Thursday.
