Trump Is Ignoring Hillary's Bengazi / Uranium One Scandals Because He's The One Who Is Really Behind Them!!! More Collusion! - Sean Hannity

[Jim Hoft]

Claims of Clinton-Russia Uranium Collusion Are A Real Empty Barrel

James Conca
Contributor
Energy
I write about nuclear, energy and the environment




What did Hillary Clinton know about the Russia uranium deal? Wrong
question. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Women's Media Center)

Hillary Clinton is back in the news. But the reason is a big nothing
burger.

In a 2015 book, Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer claimed that
donations to the Clinton Foundation were behind the Obama administration’s
approval of the 2010 sale of a Canadian mining company to a Russian state-
controlled firm. The sale gave Russia control of a large swath of American
uranium interests.

And by large, we really mean small.

The allegations are back in the news after a report in The Hill last week
claimed, citing anonymous sources, that at the time U.S. officials were
weighing whether to approve the deal, the FBI was investigating evidence of
bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering by Russian nuclear
industry officials designed to help further Russian President Vladimir
Putin's commercial nuclear ambitions inside the United States.

The Hill article was seized on by right-wing media ? and the President ? as
evidence backing up a conspiracy theory that they've pushed amid the
investigations into Russia's efforts to swing the presidential election to
Donald Trump. The real collusion scandal, they claim, involves Russia and
Hillary Clinton. The implication of the piece is that the FBI investigation
should have been known to those who approved the deal in question.


Clinton's State Department and several government agencies on the Committee
on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the 2010
partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear
giant Rosatom, supposedly giving Moscow control of more than 20% of
America’s uranium supply.

Obama and Clinton colluding to hand over 20% America’s strategic uranium to
the Russians? On cue, Fox News gabber Sean Hannity said this could be 'the
biggest scandal' in American history.

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But here's the thing ? by 20%, we really mean almost zero.

Those U.S. facilities obtained by Russia produce almost nothing. The
uranium deposits are of relatively poor grade and are too costly to compete
on the uranium market. But the facilities do have good milling capacity to
process ore, if anyone gives it to them, which hasn’t happened in about 10
years. Theoretically, they could process 20% of our ore, but that will
never happen. Uranium One couldn’t give these facilities away.

Besides, Russia can’t export any uranium they produce in the U.S. They do
not possess a Nuclear Regulatory Commission export license.

The real reason Russia wanted this deal was to give Rosatom’s subsidiary
Uranium One's very profitable uranium mines in Kazakhstan ? the single
largest producer of commercial uranium in the world.

Then, in 2011, the administration approved a Rosatom subsidiary to sell
commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in partnership with the
U.S. Enrichment Corporation. Up until then, Russia had been limited to
selling our nuclear power plants uranium reprocessed from old Soviet
nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.
Nothing strange here, either. Finally, in 2013, Russia obtained 100%
interest in Uranium One.

Rather than take action against this deal, the Department of Justice just
continued investigating the matter for years, essentially leaving the
American public, Congress, the secretary of state and the administration in
the dark about more Russian meddling in the United States, this time
involving nuclear.

Candidate Trump jumped on this issue during the 2016 campaign trail last
year, but as secretary of state, Clinton was not involved in the committee
review and never intervened on the matter, and there were several other
agencies involved in the recommendation.

It is still not clear why no one at the FBI alerted the Obama
administration to the Russian kickbacks, extortion threats and money
laundering before these decisions were made. One theory is that the United
States was still seeking to 'reset' its relationship with Russia and was
also trying to get Putin on board with our Iran nuclear deal. But in the
end, this Russian deal just wasn’t that important and had no national
security ramifications.

As Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury
Institute, described it, Russia’s purchase of the company 'had as much of
an impact on national security as it would have if they set the money on
fire. That’s probably why (all the U.S. agencies involved) approved it.'

The key to this issue’s resurgence this week is that Hillary Clinton was
secretary of state at the time, Bill Clinton was getting lucrative speaking
fees in Russia, and Russian money was finding its way to the Clinton
Foundation, although the amount turns out to be small. However, even if
there was no wrongdoing on the part of the administration or the Clintons,
and no national security reason for anyone to oppose this deal, some still
want to make it another Benghazi.

As a scandal, this issue lacks relevance since Clinton is now a private
citizen and Russian meddling in our 2016 election has become a bigger
issue. In fact, all the attention now being paid to the uranium deal seems
to have more to do with Robert Mueller’s present investigation of Russian
collusion than with Clinton.

The political ramifications aside, what is the reality of our uranium
supplies, and how much does Russian meddling affect them?

Short answer – not at all.

There’s lots and lots of uranium in the world, and more keeps being
discovered. Just look at the 2017 AAPG EMD Committee Report that covers
uranium, other nuclear minerals and rare earth elements.

According to the lead author, Michael Campbell at I2M Associates, 'we are
awash in uranium, not to mention all energy minerals – oil, coal and
especially natural gas.' (Disclosure: I am a member of that committee and a
co-author of the report.)

This is especially true in North America, which contains the highest-grade
uranium deposits in the world. The Athabasca Basin of Saskatchewan is known
as the 'Saudi Arabia of Uranium.'

Which is critical since we need to double nuclear power to address climate
change and replace coal, even as we ramp up renewables. We also need to
provide an extra 300 billion kWhs each year to charge the 100-million-plus
fleet of fully electric vehicles America needs by 2040 to have any chance
of putting a real dent in our petroleum use.

So yes, North America is essentially uranium-independent. And no, this
Russian deal had, and will have, no impact, aside from showing that the FBI
is lax in its prosecution of Russians who break our laws, and lax in
alerting us to their meddling in time to do anything about it.

Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a
planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter
@jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com