TV News LIES

The Trump administration has overhauled a set of nuclear safety directives and shared them with the companies it is charged with regulating, without making the new rules available to the public, according to documents obtained exclusively by NPR.

The sweeping changes were made to accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs. They occurred over the fall and winter at the Department of Energy, which is currently overseeing a program to build at least three new experimental commercial nuclear reactors by July 4 of this year.

The changes are to departmental orders, which dictate requirements for almost every aspect of the reactors' operations — including safety systems, environmental protections, site security and accident investigations.

NPR obtained copies of over a dozen of the new orders, none of which is publicly available. The orders slash hundreds of pages of requirements for security at the reactors. They also loosen protections for groundwater and the environment and eliminate at least one key safety role. The new orders cut back on requirements for keeping records, and they raise the amount of radiation a worker can be exposed to before an official accident investigation is triggered.

More...

For those who did not manage to buy portable gas heaters and stoves, firebricks have become a popular commodity. Users of the social network Threads show how to raise the temperature in a room by several degrees using simple homemade heaters. Those who have gas in their apartments or houses place bricks on the gas stove. As they heat up, the bricks give off heat and warm the room.

Those who live in high-rise buildings where gas is not used create a structure out of candles, barbecue grills and bricks laid on the grill. This method is effective but also unsafe. People online also remind users that it is important to use detectors for carbon monoxide and smoke.

A safer and equally popular way to keep warm is to use a regular camping tent. As social media users have discovered, if you set up a tent right in the bedroom and put a few plastic bottles filled with hot water inside, you will sleep warmer. Those who do not have camping experience and/or equipment recall their childhood and build tents out of blankets.

In general, most social media users agreed that hot water bottles in bed are the easiest and safest way to keep warm at night. They write that the heat from the bottles lasts for about four to five hours. Electric blankets are useful if they can be plugged in.

Businesses with generators are also reaching out on social media to offer shelter and help to those without power and electricity. In addition to the mobile heating points set up by the State Emergency Service and charitable organizations, local residents are creating their own shelters.

More...

A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for a New York offshore wind project to resume construction, a victory for the developer who said a Trump administration order to pause it would probably kill the project in a matter of days.

District judge Carl J Nichols, an appointee of Donald Trump, ruled construction on the Empire Wind project could go forward while he considers the merits of the government’s order to suspend the project. He faulted the government for not responding to key points in Empire Wind’s court filings, including the contention that the administration violated proper procedure.

Norwegian company Equinor owns Empire Wind. Spokesperson David Schoetz said they welcomed the court’s decision and would continue to work in collaboration with authorities. It is the second developer to prevail in court against the administration this week.

The Trump administration froze five big offshore wind projects on the east coast days before Christmas, citing national security concerns. Trump has targeted offshore wind from his first days back in the White House, most recently calling windfarms “losers” that lose money, destroy the landscape and kill birds.

More...

Europe’s biggest offshore wind developer is taking the Trump administration to court over its decision to suspend work on a $5bn project on the north-east US coast.

Denmark’s Ørsted filed a legal challenge on Thursday against the White House’s decision 10 days ago to suspend the lease for its Revolution Wind site as part of a sweeping move halting all construction of offshore wind.

The attempted injunction is the latest in a series of legal volleys between the renewables industry and Donald Trump, whose administration has sought to block major offshore wind projects from moving ahead since his re-election.

Trump, a vocal supporter of the fossil fuel industry, opposes renewable energy, and wind in particular, saying he finds turbines ugly, costly and inefficient.

On 22 December, officials from the Department of the Interior suspended the leases for five large offshore wind projects that are under construction in US waters over unspecified “national security risks”.

A statement from Ørsted and its partner in the Revolution project, Skyborn Renewables, described the move as a violation of applicable law.

More...

The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order late Tuesday to keep an aging Colorado coal plant open, just one day before it was slated to close. 

The plant — Unit 1, part of Craig Station, in Moffat County — is now required to keep running until March 30, 2026. The order can also be extended. 

The move drew a furious response from the governor’s office and environmental groups, who contest whether an emergency even exists that would require the plant to stay open.

Governor Polis said the order would lead to a huge spike in costs to repair the plant, which may be borne by customers of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a cooperative operating the plant to deliver electricity to rural communities in Nebraska, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado.

“This order will pass tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed,” Polis said in a statement. 

“Ludicrously, the coal plant isn’t even operational right now, meaning repairs — to the tune of millions of dollars — just to get it running, all on the backs of rural Colorado ratepayers!”

More...

The Trump administration has said it is immediately pausing all leases for offshore wind farms already under construction, in the heaviest blow yet to an industry that the administration has relentlessly targeted throughout the year.

Trump’s Department of the Interior said that it was halting the building of five wind projects due to “national security risks”. The department said it would work with the US Department of Defense to mitigate the risk of the wind turbine towers creating radar interference called “clutter” that could in some way hamper the US military.

“The prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people,” said Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior. “Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.”

The halt will affect the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind in New York, Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind in Virginia.

All of the projects were reviewed and approved under Joe Biden’s administration, which found there were no undue national security concerns raised by the developments. Democrats have pointed to two assessments by the Pentagon of Revolution Wind that found the project “would not have adverse impacts to DoD missions in the area”.

More...