Tag: electric power industry

Nuclear Power/IAEA Fast Facts | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Here’s a look at the International Atomic Energy Agency and nuclear power.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspects nuclear and related facilities under safeguard agreements. Most agreements are with countries that have committed to not possessing nuclear weapons. The IAEA is the verification authority to enforce the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The IAEA has 173 member states (as of April 7, 2021).

Rafael Grossi has been the director general of the IAEA since December 3, 2019.

There are 35 member countries on the IAEA Board of Governors, which meets five times a year.

The IAEA has about 2,500 employees.

IAEA safeguard programs monitor nuclear reactors to make sure nuclear material is not being diverted for making weapons.

The IAEA sends out inspectors to monitor reactors.

The IAEA helps countries prepare and respond to emergencies.

There are more than 420 nuclear power reactors in operation.

There are more than 50 nuclear power reactors under construction.

There are more than 90 operational nuclear reactors in the United States.

France has a 69% share of nuclear power to total electricity generation, the highest percentage of nuclear energy in the world.

1939 – Nuclear fission is discovered.

1942 – The world’s first nuclear chain reaction takes place in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project, a US research program aimed at developing the first nuclear weapons.

July 16, 1945 – The United States conducts its first nuclear weapons test in New Mexico.

August 6, 1945 – An atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

August 9, 1945 – An atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

August 29, 1949 – The Soviet Union conducts its first nuclear weapons test.

December 1951 – Electricity is first generated from a nuclear reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho.

October 3, 1952 – The United Kingdom conducts its first nuclear weapons test.

December 8, 1953 – In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asks the world’s major powers to work together in developing peacetime uses of the atom. This is known as the Atoms for Peace program, and 40 countries participate. Also during this speech, Eisenhower proposes the creation of an international agency to monitor the spread of nuclear technology.

June 26, 1954 – In the Soviet Union, the first nuclear power plant is connected to an electricity grid to provide power to residences and businesses in a town near Moscow.

1957 – The IAEA is established to facilitate the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

1950’s – Brazil and Argentina begin research and development of nuclear reactors.

February 13, 1960 – France conducts its first nuclear weapons test.

October 16, 1964 – China conducts its first nuclear weapons test.

March 5, 1970 – The NPT goes into effect.

May 18, 1974 – India conducts its first nuclear weapons test.

March 28, 1979 – A partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant occurs in Middletown, Pennsylvania. It is determined that equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and human error led to the accident.

April 26, 1986 – Reactor number four explodes at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, releasing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.

September 24, 1996 – The United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and 66 other UN member countries sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, barring the testing of nuclear weapons.

December 1997 – Mohamed ElBaradei is appointed IAEA director-general.

May 1998 – India and Pakistan test nuclear devices amid tensions between the neighboring countries.

January 10, 2003 – North Korea announces its withdrawal from the NPT.

August 2003 – IAEA inspectors find traces of highly enriched uranium at an electrical plant in Iran.

December 19, 2003 – Libya announces that it will dismantle its WMD program, in cooperation with the IAEA as well as the United States and the United Kingdom.

October 7, 2005 – The IAEA and ElBaradei are named the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

December 1, 2009 – Yukiya Amano replaces ElBaradei as director general of the IAEA.

March 11, 2011 – A 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes near the coast of Honshu, Japan, creating a massive tsunami. The tsunami knocks out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s cooling systems. The cores of three of six reactors are damaged by overheating. Resulting hydrogen explosions blow apart the buildings surrounding two reactors.

May 30, 2011 – Germany announces it will abandon the use of all nuclear power by the year 2022. This repeals a 2010 plan to extend the life of the country’s nuclear reactors.

November 11, 2013 – Iran signs an agreement with the IAEA, granting inspectors access to nuclear sites.

July 14, 2015 – After 20 months of negotiations, Iran reaches a comprehensive agreement (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)), with the United States and other countries that is aimed at reining in Iran’s nuclear program. In exchange for limits on its nuclear activities, Iran will get relief from sanctions while being allowed to continue its atomic program for peaceful purposes.

August 11, 2015 – Japan restarts a nuclear reactor on the island of Kyushu. It’s the country’s first reactor to come back online since the 2011 tsunami.

January 16, 2016 – The IAEA confirms that Iran has taken all of the steps outlined in the nuclear deal, allowing for sanctions to be lifted, as per the agreement.

May 8, 2018 – US President Donald Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from JCPOA and will be imposing “the highest level of economic sanction” against Iran. In Tehran, Rouhani says Iran will take a few weeks to decide how to respond to the US withdrawal, but Rouhani says he had ordered the country’s “atomic industry organization” to be prepared to “start our industrial enrichment without limitations.”

May 8, 2019 – Rouhani announces a partial withdrawal from the JCPOA.

February 16, 2021 – The IAEA reports it received a February 15 letter from Iran stating that it will stop implementing provisions of the additional monitoring protocol as of February 23. This will effectively limit which facilities nuclear inspectors can scrutinize and when they can access them, making it harder for experts to determine if Tehran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

February 18, 2021 – The Joe Biden administration releases a statement indicating that the United States is willing to sit down for talks with Tehran and other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, before either side has taken tangible action to salvage or return to compliance with the agreement.

February 21, 2021 – In a joint statement, the IAEA and Iran announce they have reached a deal in which Iran will give IAEA inspectors continued access to verify and monitor nuclear activity in the country for the next three months.

March 15, 2023 – A spokesman from the IAEA tells CNN in an email that “approximately 2.5 tons of natural uranium” contained in 10 drums were found to be missing from supplies held in Libya during an inspection on March 14, 2023.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 26, 2024
2011 Japan Earthquake – Tsunami Fast Facts | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Here’s a look at the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March of 2011.

March 11, 2011 – At 2:46 p.m., a 9.1 magnitude earthquake takes place 231 miles northeast of Tokyo at a depth of 15.2 miles.

The earthquake causes a tsunami with 30-foot waves that damage several nuclear reactors in the area.

It is the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan.

Number of people killed and missing

(Source: Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency)

The combined total of confirmed deaths and missing is more than 22,000 (nearly 20,000 deaths and 2,500 missing). Deaths were caused by the initial earthquake and tsunami and by post-disaster health conditions.

At the time of the earthquake, Japan had 54 nuclear reactors, with two under construction, and 17 power plants, which produced about 30% of Japan’s electricity (IAEA 2011).

Material damage from the earthquake and tsunami is estimated at about 25 trillion yen ($300 billion).

There are six reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, located about 65 km (40 miles) south of Sendai.

A microsievert (mSv) is an internationally recognized unit measuring radiation dosage. People are typically exposed to a total of about 1,000 microsieverts in one year.

The Japanese government estimated that the tsunami swept about five million tons of debris offshore, but that 70% sank, leaving 1.5 million tons floating in the Pacific Ocean. The debris was not considered to be radioactive.

READ MORE: Fukushima: Five years after Japan’s worst nuclear disaster

All times and dates are local Japanese time.

March 11, 2011 – At 2:46 p.m., an 8.9 magnitude earthquake takes place 231 miles northeast of Tokyo. (8.9 = original recorded magnitude; later upgraded to 9.0, then 9.1.)
– The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issues a tsunami warning for the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the US. About an hour after the quake, waves up to 30 feet high hit the Japanese coast, sweeping away vehicles, causing buildings to collapse, and severing roads and highways.
– The Japanese government declares a state of emergency for the nuclear power plant near Sendai, 180 miles from Tokyo. Sixty to seventy thousand people living nearby are ordered to evacuate to shelters.

March 12, 2011 – Overnight, a 6.2 magnitude aftershock hits the Nagano and Niigata prefectures (USGS).
– At 5:00 a.m., a nuclear emergency is declared at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Officials report the earthquake and tsunami have cut off the plant’s electrical power, and that backup generators have been disabled by the tsunami.
– Another aftershock hits the west coast of Honshu – 6.3 magnitude. (5:56 a.m.)
– The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announces that radiation near the plant’s main gate is more than eight times the normal level.
– Cooling systems at three of the four units at the Fukushima Daini plant fail prompting state of emergency declarations there.
– At least six million homes – 10% of Japan’s households – are without electricity, and a million are without water.
– The US Geological Survey says the quake appears to have moved Honshu, Japan’s main island, by eight feet and has shifted the earth on its axis.
– About 9,500 people – half the town’s population – are reported to be unaccounted for in Minamisanriku on Japan’s Pacific coast.

March 13, 2011 – People living within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of the Fukushima Daini and 20 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi power plants begin a government-ordered evacuation. The total evacuated so far is about 185,000.
– 50,000 Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel, 190 aircraft and 25 ships are deployed to help with rescue efforts.
– A government official says a partial meltdown may be occurring at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant, sparking fears of a widespread release of radioactive material. So far, three units there have experienced major problems in cooling radioactive material.

March 14, 2011 – The US Geological Survey upgrades its measure of the earthquake to magnitude 9.0 from 8.9.
– An explosion at the Daiichi plant No. 3 reactor causes a building’s wall to collapse, injuring six. The 600 residents remaining within 30 kilometers of the plant, despite an earlier evacuation order, have been ordered to stay indoors.
– The No. 2 reactor at the Daiichi plant loses its cooling capabilities. Officials quickly work to pump seawater into the reactor, as they have been doing with two other reactors at the same plant, and the situation is resolved. Workers scramble to cool down fuel rods at two other reactors at the plant – No. 1 and No. 3.
– Rolling blackouts begin in parts of Tokyo and eight prefectures. Downtown Tokyo is not included. Up to 45 million people will be affected in the rolling outages, which are scheduled to last until April.

March 15, 2011 – The third explosion at the Daiichi plant in four days damages the suppression pool of reactor No. 2. Water continues to be injected into “pressure vessels” in order to cool down radioactive material.

March 16, 2011 – The nuclear safety agency investigates the cause of a white cloud of smoke rising above the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Plans are canceled to use helicopters to pour water onto fuel rods that may have burned after a fire there, causing a spike in radiation levels. The plume is later found to have been vapor from a spent-fuel storage pool.
– In a rare address, Emperor Akihito tells the nation to not give up hope, that “we need to understand and help each other.” A televised address by a sitting emperor is an extraordinarily rare event in Japan, usually reserved for times of extreme crisis or war.
– After hydrogen explosions occur in three of the plant’s reactors (1, 2 and 3), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says radiation levels “do not pose a direct threat to the human body” between 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) from the plant.

March 17, 2011 – Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, tells US Congress that spent fuel rods in the No. 4 reactor have been exposed because there “is no water in the spent fuel pool,” resulting in the emission of “extremely high” levels of radiation.
– Helicopters operated by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces begin dumping tons of seawater from the Pacific Ocean on to the No. 3 reactor to reduce overheating.
– Radiation levels hit 20 millisieverts per hour at an annex building where workers have been trying to re-establish electrical power, “the highest registered (at that building) so far.” (Tokyo Electric Power Co.)

March 18, 2011 – Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raises the threat level from 4 to 5, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. The International Nuclear Events Scale says a Level 5 incident means there is a likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to the reactor core.

April 12, 2011 – Japan’s nuclear agency raises the Fukushima Daiichi crisis from Level 5 to a Level 7 event, the highest level, signifying a “major accident.” It is now on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union, which amounts to a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures.”

June 6, 2011 – Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters reports reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced a full meltdown.

June 30, 2011 – The Japanese government recommends more evacuations of households 50 to 60 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The government said higher radiation is monitored sporadically in this area.

July 16, 2011 – Kansai Electric announces a reactor at the Ohi nuclear plant will be shut down due to problems with an emergency cooling system. This leaves only 18 of Japan’s 54 nuclear plants producing electricity.

October 31, 2011 – In response to questions about the safety of decontaminated water, Japanese government official Yasuhiro Sonoda drinks a glass of decontaminated water taken from a puddle at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

November 2, 2011 – Kyushu Electric Power Co. announces it restarted the No. 4 reactor, the first to come back online since the March 11 disaster, at the Genkai nuclear power plant in western Japan.

November 17, 2011 – Japanese authorities announce that they have halted the shipment of rice from some farms northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after finding higher-than-allowed levels of radioactive cesium.

December 5, 2011 – Tokyo Electric Power Company announces at least 45 metric tons of radioactive water have leaked from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility and may have reached the Pacific Ocean.

December 16, 2011 – Japan’s Prime Minister says a “cold shutdown” has been achieved at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a symbolic milestone which means the plant’s crippled reactors have stayed at temperatures below the boiling point for some time.

December 26, 2011 – Investigators report poorly trained operators at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant misread a key backup system and waited too long to start pumping water into the units, according to an interim report from the government committee probing the nuclear accident.

February 27, 2012 – Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, an independent fact-finding committee, releases a report claiming the Japanese government feared the nuclear disaster could lead to an evacuation of Tokyo while at the same time hiding its most alarming assessments of the nuclear disaster from the public as well as the United States.

May 24, 2012 – TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) estimates about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials were released between March 12 and March 31 in 2011, more radiation than previously estimated.

June 11, 2012 – At least 1,324 Fukushima residents lodge a criminal complaint with the Fukushima prosecutor’s office, naming Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and 32 others responsible for causing the nuclear disaster which followed the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and exposing the people of Fukushima to radiation.

June 16, 2012 – Despite public objections, the Japanese government approves restarting two nuclear reactors at the Kansai Electric Power Company in Ohi in Fukui prefecture, the first reactors scheduled to resume since all nuclear reactors were shut down in May 2012.

July 1, 2012 – Kansai Electric Power Co. Ltd. (KEPCO) restarts the Ohi nuclear plant’s No. 3 reactor, resuming nuclear power production in Japan for the first time in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown following the tsunami.

July 5, 2012 – The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission’s report finds that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis was a “man-made disaster” which unfolded as a result of collusion between the facility’s operator, regulators and the government. The report also attributes the failings at the plant before and after March 11 specifically to Japanese culture.

July 23, 2012 – A Japanese government report is released criticizing TEPCO. The report says the measures taken by TEPCO to prepare for disasters were “insufficient,” and the response to the crisis “inadequate.”

October 12, 2012 – TEPCO acknowledges in a report it played down safety risks at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant out of fear that additional measures would lead to a plant shutdown and further fuel public anxiety and anti-nuclear movements.

July 2013 – TEPCO admits radioactive groundwater is leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi site, bypassing an underground barrier built to seal in the water.

August 28, 2013 – Japan’s nuclear watchdog Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) says a toxic water leak at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant has been classified as a Level 3 “serious incident” on an eight-point International Nuclear Event Scale (lINES) scale.

September 15, 2013 – Japan’s only operating nuclear reactor is shut down for maintenance. All 50 of the country’s reactors are now offline. The government hasn’t said when or if any of them will come back on.

November 18, 2013 – Tokyo Electric Power Co. says operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant have started removing 1,500 fuel rods from damaged reactor No. 4. It is considered a milestone in the estimated $50 billion cleanup operation.

February 20, 2014 – TEPCO says an estimated 100 metric tons of radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

August 11, 2015 – Kyushu Electric Power Company restarts No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima prefecture. It is the first nuclear reactor reactivated since the Fukushima disaster.

October 19, 2015 – Japan’s health ministry says a Fukushima worker has been diagnosed with leukemia. It is the first cancer diagnosis linked to the cleanup.

February 29, 2016 – Three former TEPCO executives are indicted on charges of professional negligence related to the disaster at the Fukushiima Daiichi plant.

November 22, 2016 – A 6.9 magnitude earthquake hits the Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures and is considered an aftershock of the 2011 earthquake. Aftershocks can sometimes occur years after the original quake.

February 2, 2017 – TEPCO reports atmospheric readings from inside nuclear reactor plant No. 2. as high as 530 sieverts per hour. This is the highest since the 2011 meltdown.

February 13, 2021 – A 7.1 magnitude earthquake off the east coast of Japan is an aftershock of the 2011 quake, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

April 13, 2021 – The Japanese government announces it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tons of treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean in two years – a plan that faces opposition at home and has raised “grave concern” in neighboring countries. The whole process is expected to take decades to complete.

September 9, 2021 – The IAEA and Japan agree on a timeline for the multi-year review of Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean.

February 18, 2022 – An IAEA task force makes its first visit to Japan for the safety review of its plan to discharge treated radioactive water into the sea.

July 4, 2023 – An IAEA safety review concludes that Japan’s plans to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean are consistent with IAEA Safety Standards.

[ad_2]

Source link

February 27, 2024
Streets ‘reek of blood:’ Gazans run out of time after Israel’s evacuation deadline | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told them to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip.

Parts of the south are becoming even more crowded and overstretched, Gazans say, as waves of Palestinians abandon their homes in the wake of Israel’s statement, which came ahead of an anticipated ground assault by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.

The IDF said Saturday it would allow safe movement on specified streets between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time (3 – 9 a.m. ET). Residents were advised to use this window to move from the northern Beit Hanoun to Khan Yunis in the south – a roughly 20-mile distance of rubble-strewn streets.

The evacuation statement has been described by rights groups as well as some neighboring countries as a breach of international humanitarian law. Jordan’s foreign minister described it as a “war crime.”

The UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was forced to move its central operations from Gaza City to a location in southern Gaza following the Israeli statement, on Saturday described the evacuation as an “exodus,” and said that “nearly 1 million people have been displaced in one week alone.”

The evacuation advisory came after Israel imposed a complete siege on Gaza in response to a brutal attack launched a week ago by Hamas, which left at least 1,300 dead in Israel.

At least 2,215 civilians, including 724 children and 458 women, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry, as the Israeli military continues to pound the territory.

Palestinians who fled south, and those who are still north, are rapidly running out of food and water. There is no more electricity, and those with fuel-powered generators will soon live in complete blackout. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is also shrinking.

Mohamed Hamed, a 36-year-old resident of Gaza City, moved southward to Nuseirat, a refugee camp some five kilometers north-east of Deir al-Balah – which he was told was safe.

Hamed fled the north with 30 family members, including his extended relatives, four children and his wife, who is over eight months pregnant.

“In this situation, we’re afraid that she goes into labor, and we wouldn’t know where to go,” he told CNN.

The family has no access to medical care and are crammed into a single apartment with no electricity, and quickly depleting food and water.

“There is no electricity, there is no water. Bakeries are working but these are their final hours, as the fuel they need is running out,” he said, adding that “the food we have may last us a day or two.”

Speaking to CNN by phone, Hamed said that Nuseirat is a small area yet has received large crowds of displaced Palestinians from the north. Drinking water is only available in mineral water bottles, he said, which are dwindling as crowds rush to stock up.

“Everything in supermarkets and shops was used up,” he said.

Shelling in Nuseirat is intense, but not as bad as it was in Gaza City, where neighborhoods were “entirely wiped out,” he said.

Hamed said that the time provided by the IDF for “safe passage” southward may not be enough for vast number of Palestinians that need to flee, and that some Gazans in the north refuse to leave fearing forceful displacement into Egypt.

For many, that would mean displacement for the second time. The majority of Gaza’s residents today are already refugees from areas that fell under Israeli control in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

“People are afraid of this, of being pushed to Egypt,” he said, adding that the airstrikes have been “horrifying,” with some areas being targeted for the first time despite the years of conflict between Hamas and Israel.

But not everyone in Gaza’s north has heeded the IDF’s call to move southwards. Palestinian journalist Hashem Al-Saudi and his family have only moved from east to west of Gaza City, which is among areas the IDF told civilians to evacuate.

Residents are forced to leave their homes to fill up water tanks, the 33-year-old told CNN by phone, which puts them at risk of being struck by Israeli missiles.

Food is scarce, he said, and may not last his 11-member family more than three or four days.

“I say this jokingly, but those who are on a diet are eating more than us.”

Al-Saudi says that not only do they have nowhere to stay if they moved south, but that the route itself is unsafe. “Even those who moved south were hit by airstrikes,” he told CNN.

“Nowhere is safe in the Gaza Strip, from Rafah (south) to Beit Hanoun in the north,” Al-Saudi said, adding that everywhere is targeted, including “homes, shelters hospitals and places of worship.”

“Everyone on this piece of land is targeted by the Israeli military, which from the start did not differentiate between civilian and soldier.”

CNN has geolocated and authenticated five videos from the scene of a large explosion Friday along a route for civilians south of Gaza City that Israel said the following day would be safe.

The videos show many dead bodies amid a scene of extensive destruction. Some of those bodies are on a flatbed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City. They include at least several children. There are also many badly burned and damaged cars.

It’s unclear what caused the widespread devastation; the explosion occurred on Salah Al-Deen street on Friday afternoon. CNN has reached out to IDF for comment on any airstrikes in the same location.

“The situation is much worse than what you see on television,” he said. Many bodies remain unidentified, and corpses are being stored in refrigerators not made for storing human remains, Al-Saudi said.

“Streets are filled with rubble and reek of blood.”

The Israeli government launched a complete blockade on essential goods entering Gaza earlier this week, prompting warnings from human rights groups who say the siege is in violation of international law.

Israel, which administers most of the electricity, water, fuel and some of the food inside the Palestinian enclave, already imposes a stringent land, sea and air blockade, but used to permit some trade and humanitarian aid through two crossings that it controls.

Refaat Alareer, 44, a literature professor in Gaza City, said Thursday – before Israel told Gazans to evacuate – the shelves in his local supermarket are emptying every day. He has been able to buy cans of tinned tuna, adding that he avoided purchasing perishable goods because the lack of electricity means refrigerated food “will rot.”

Alareer, who lives with his wife and their six children, said his neighbors insist on leaving milk powder on the shelves – so that other parents can feed their own families.

“I’ve never seen people this disciplined,” he said. “I didn’t buy a single thing that is more expensive than it was last week.

“(What is) so beautiful about, you know, being in Gaza, being in Palestine, the solidarity.”

More than half of the residents in Gaza are food insecure and live under the poverty line, according to UNRWA. Alareer warned that blue collar workers, farmers and street vendors “will suffer the most,” from the blockade.

“We’re bracing for the worst. What happened is extremely genocidal in every sense of the word,” he added.

Aseel Mousa, a 25-year-old freelance journalist in Gaza, said she is unable to communicate with loved ones in other parts of the enclave, as electricity supplies diminish.

“We cannot connect with the world,” she told CNN on Thursday. “We hear the bombings, the air strikes and we don’t know where they are exactly.

“We cannot check up on our relatives who live in different areas of the Gaza Strip, we cannot reach them as there is no internet and there is no electricity.” She said on Friday that she relocated with her family from western Gaza to the south.

On Friday, Alareer told CNN he and his family see no choice but to remain in the north – despite Israel’s evacuation advisory – because they had “nowhere else to go.”

“Israel bombs (are) everywhere,” he said.

Gaza has already been under blockade since Hamas took control of the territory in 2007.

Egypt imposes a land blockade, while Israel imposes an air, sea and land blockade. The siege was completely tightened after Hamas’ attack on Israel a week ago, and the only remaining route into or outside of the Gaza Strip is the Rafah Crossing, which connects Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai.

While some aid has arrived in Egypt, it is yet to cross the border, which earlier this week was struck by Israel on the Palestinian side, according to Palestinian and Egyptian officials.

Egypt on Thursday stressed that its Rafah Crossing was however open, a claim CNN could not independently verify.

A Palestinian border official told CNN on Saturday morning that concrete slabs were being placed at the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, blocking all gates. The slabs were being placed by a winch visible on the Egyptian side of the crossing, the official said.

The official added that hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have been sat in the streets for hours, waiting to cross. “The gates are closed, and no one is being let through,” he told CNN.

CNN has reached out to Egyptian officials for comment.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 14, 2023
As hundreds remain missing in Maui, electric company admits evidence to determine how wildfires started may have been compromised | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Hundreds of people are still listed as unaccounted for after this month’s devastating wildfires on Maui – a number that’s expected to change as the FBI continues vetting names.

The “validated list” curated by the FBI currently includes 388 names, Maui County said Thursday, as cell phone data is now being used to try to pinpoint where victims may have been when the deadliest US wildfire disaster in more than 100 years tore through the Hawaiian island. At least 115 people are confirmed dead, though authorities say that number is likely to change.

The FBI on Friday acknowledged the list of names was “a subset of a larger list” of people who are believed to be missing. Steven Merrill, the bureau’s special agent in charge in Hawaii, said those currently on the list are people who authorities had more complete information about. Since the list was released, they’ve gotten “at least 100 people that have notified us that a certain person shouldn’t be on the list,” Merrill said – so the number of those still unaccounted for is expected to change.

As the race to identify the lost continues, the state’s main electrical utility stands accused of compromising evidence in the fire investigation, and Maui County officials have followed others in suing the company over responsibility for the fire. First responders also are pressing for answers about why they weren’t better prepared after a similar ruinous fire five years ago.

The updated list of the missing was released with hopes of confirming anyone who’s not truly still lost, officials said.

“We’re releasing this list of names today because we know that it will help with the investigation,” Police Chief John Pelletier said in the release. “We also know that once those names come out, it can and will cause pain for folks whose loved ones are listed. This is not an easy thing to do, but we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make this investigation as complete and thorough as possible.”

Pelletier said Friday that since the names were released, authorities have received hundreds of calls. Authorities would like to do a weekly update on the list of missing people to help notify the public, he said.

The FBI has worked with agencies “to unduplicate people that have been reported missing,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said earlier Thursday in a social media post. Some 800 to 1,200 people have been listed as unaccounted for since the fires, he said.

The grim search for those believed missing began shortly after wind-whipped flames tore through the island on August 8. Much of the western Maui community of Lahaina – once a lively economic and cultural hub – was left in ruins, with entire neighborhoods and businesses reduced to ash. Some residents were forced to jump into the ocean to survive as flames overtook the town.

Search crews and cadaver dogs have searched 100% of single-story homes in the disaster area, Maui County officials said Tuesday. They are now going through multistory homes and commercial properties.

And an FBI team that specializes in using cell phone data has launched in Maui to help identify potential fire victims, a law enforcement source told CNN. The Cellular Analysis Survey Team was on the island working with local law enforcement, the official said.

The team can get and analyze cell phone company subscriber records and cellular tower registration data, which could prove useful to the search efforts by geolocating the last known area where a victim’s cell phone was operating.

The team in the past has used information obtained through court orders to help with terrorism, kidnapping and criminal investigations.

“Cellular telephone analysis” is among the resources being provided by the bureau, Steven Merrill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Hawaii, said during news conference Tuesday without giving specifics.

Additionally, Maui County has named a new interim administrator of the Maui Emergency Management Agency after its prior chief resigned from the post August 17.

In announcing Darryl Oliveira’s hiring Friday, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said he has a track record of “invaluable experience and skill during challenging times.”

Oliveira, who previously served as the administrator of the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency, is expected to begin leading the county’s emergency agency Monday.

In pictures: The deadly Maui wildfires

As the human toll of the fire comes into focus, investigators also are trying to determine what sparked the flames, and while no official cause has been announced, the Hawaiian Electric Company is facing scrutiny over its actions before and after the fires broke out.

Some evidence potentially vital in determining the cause of the deadly fire in Lahaina may have been compromised, Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) acknowledged in an exchange with attorneys included in court documents obtained by CNN.

The company said fallen power poles, power lines and other equipment were moved during firefighting efforts and as officials worked to make the area safe for residents, according to letters part of a class action lawsuit. The company told attorneys, who are representing Lahaina residents in the class action suit, that it was “possible, even likely” that evidence that “relate(s) to the cause of the fire” might be lost, correspondence obtained by CNN shows.

The equipment was removed from the area around the Lahaina substation – which is thought to be where the blaze started – before federal investigators arrived.

Those actions could have violated national guidelines, which say the fire scenes should be heavily preserved for investigators and any and all evidence should be secured and not removed from the site without documentation, court documents filed by attorneys say.

The ATF said on August 17 that its National Response Team was being deployed to Hawaii to help determine the cause and origin of the deadly fire – days after the utility company acknowledged equipment and evidence had likely been moved or lost.

On August 10 – two days after the wildfire devastated the town of Lahaina, a group of attorneys notified the utility of anticipated litigation and requested that all electrical equipment that may relate to the origin of the fire – including power poles, lines and conductors – be preserved.

An attorney for Hawaiian Electric responded on August 11 that some potential evidence may have already been compromised during the firefight, not by the utility itself, but by others.

John Moore, an attorney for the utility wrote to attorneys for the families on August 11 that the company’s main focus was the safety of first responders and displaced residents and restoring power.

The company also noted it was taking steps to preserve property but local, state and federal agencies were on the ground and it was possible “that the actions of these third parties, whose actions Hawaiian Electric does not control, may result in the loss of property or other items that relate to the cause of the fire.”

The families’ attorneys then submitted a request for a temporary restraining order to stop Hawaiian Electric from altering the scene where it’s believed the Lahaina fire started, court documents show.

A judge signed an interim discovery order on August 18, detailing how the company should handle evidence around the scene, including preserving and protecting all physical evidence within a defined area and refraining from destructive testing.

The order also specified that it was not making any findings of any wrongdoing at this time.

The class action lawsuit was filed several days after the fires ignited alleging Hawaiian Electric failed to deenergize power lines ahead of the fire despite high wind and red flag warnings. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. It is believed to have ignited near a power substation where “where authorities reported a downed power line early on August 8, 2023,” the complaint says.

Hawaiian Electric vice president Jim Kelly previously told CNN that, “as has always been our policy, we don’t comment on pending litigation.”

“At this early stage, the cause of the fire has not been determined and we will work with the state and county as they conduct their review,” he said.

Hawaiian Electric has been “in regular communication with ATF and local authorities and are cooperating to provide them, as well as attorneys representing people affected by the wildfires, with inventories and access to the removed equipment, which we have carefully photographed, documented and stored,” spokesman Darren Pai told The Washington Post.

CNN has requested further comment on the potentially compromised evidence.

The ATF’s National Response Team, which is investigating the cause of the fire, declined to comment.

While the investigation continues, Maui County officials made their position clear in a lawsuit filed Thursday, claiming “the negligence, carelessness, and recklessness, and/or unlawfulness” of Hawaiian Electric Company and its subsidiaries is directly responsible for the fires.

The utility, known as HECO, “inexcusably kept their power lines energized” in early August, despite the National Weather Service issuing a High Wind Watch and a Fire Warning, the lawsuit alleges. The warnings cautioned that strong winds could knock down power lines and ignite a fire that would spread quickly due to dry conditions, the lawsuit indicated.

Maui County is seeking damages from HECO that may total tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, said John Fiske, an attorney representing the county in the suit.

“Our primary focus in the wake of this unimaginable tragedy has been to do everything we can to support not just the people of Maui, but also Maui County. We are very disappointed that Maui County chose this litigious path while the investigation is still unfolding,” a spokesperson from Hawaiian Electric told CNN in a statement.

Hawaiian Electric Company serves 95% of the state’s customer base.

As of Thursday, officials still were tracking at least three active fires on Maui, including the Lahaina fire, which was 90% contained after burning more than 2,170 acres. The Olinda fire, which has burned an estimated 1,081 acres, was 85% contained, and the Kula fire was also 85% contained, with just over 200 acres burned, county officials said.

And even as fire crews work to find and contain hot spots, a Hawaii police union official said firefighters “were set up for failure” ahead of the outbreak.

Following a destructive wildfire that broke out in 2018 under similar conditions in the same area, no wildfire management or other preventative methods were taken to mitigate future disasters, Nicholas Krau, the Maui Chapter Chair for the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, told CNN.

“We all knew this was going to happen again. While no one could have predicted this much destruction or loss of life, we all knew there would be another destructive fire that would threaten these same businesses and homes again,” Krau said. “I don’t know who’s responsible for preventing wildland fires and managing the private owned land where the fire started, but they should definitely answer for it.”

More than 2,000 acres burned and 20 homes were damaged in the 2018 fire, county officials have said.

Many police officers who helped with evacuations this month suffered smoke inhalation because they didn’t have proper respiratory protection, even after it was requested following previous fires, Krau said.

“If someone needs help, (the police) are going to rush in and do everything they can to help. But the department and county of Maui have the obligation to properly equip them,” he said.

CNN has reached out to Maui County and the Maui Police Department for comment on Krau’s claims.

[ad_2]

Source link

August 26, 2023
Hilary moves through Southwest with historic amount of rainfall | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Hilary has triggered deadly flooding, heavy rains and powerful gusts across parts of the southwest and Mexico, transforming streets into raging rivers and forcing some residents to flee, and leaving others in need of rescue, even after the storm weakened to a post-tropical cyclone.

More rain is expected to fall throughout Monday and Tuesday as officials clean up the aftermath. After hitting Southern California on Sunday as a tropical storm – the state’s first since 1997 – Hilary headed into Nevada as its first-ever recorded tropical storm. As Hilary moves across the southwest, the storm has brought power outages, life-threatening flooding and calls for residents to evacuate or shelter in place.

Live updates: Hilary brings major flood risk to California

The storm broke rainfall records across Southern California: Palm Springs got nearly a year’s worth of rain with 4.3 inches in 24 hours, one of its rainiest days ever. Death Valley nearly set a record with 1.68 inches, and the Furnace Creek area, which usually gets about two-tenths of an inch in August, got 0.63 inches.

And the storm is the rainiest tropical storm system in Nevada’s history, nearly doubling the state’s 116-year-old all-time record, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. Hilary has released 8.7 inches of rain on Lee Canyon, Nevada, smashing the previous record of 4.36 inches in 1906.

Watch: Massive mudslide sends firefighters scrambling to safety

More rain is expected to cause dangerous flash, urban and arroyo flooding in some places, including landslides, mudslides and debris flows. Localized flooding is expected into Tuesday morning across northern portions of the Intermountain West.

In Palm Springs, a section of Interstate 10 is shut down while road crews clear away mud left behind by floodwaters from Tropical Storm Hilary, but other routes in and out of the desert oasis near Joshua Tree National Park are open.

In addition, many freeway off-ramps are limited because of mud, and CalTrans crews are working to clear those in an effort to ease accessibility.

Emergency telephone service, which had been down since midmorning, has been restored, the police department said, but an outage continues to affect other areas of the Coachella Valley.

“We are not used to this level of precipitation, generally – certainly not in the middle of summer,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria told CNN on Sunday.

“With what we’re expecting, it may overwhelm us.”

Here’s the latest:

• Heavy rains and some flooding may continue Tuesday morning in parts of the Intermountain West, according to the National Hurricane Center. The rain will cause “mostly localized areas of flash flooding,” the National Weather Service Prediction Center said. Flood watches remain in place across eight Western states.

• Strong and gusty winds will blow in Nevada, western Utah, southern Idaho and southwest Montana, the hurricane center said. Coastal tropical storm warnings have been discontinued.

• Some portions of Southern California lost power during the storm but electricity was mostly restored by Monday evening. A total of about 41,000 customers in Los Angeles were without power at one point, Marty Adams, general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said Monday.

• People in parts of Southern California should not travel unless they are fleeing an area under flooding or under an evacuation order, the National Weather Service has warned.

• Flooding, mudslides and downed trees and wires were widely reported across Southern California on Sunday and Monday. At least nine people were rescued Sunday in a San Diego riverbed, San Diego Fire-Rescue said, with water rescues also reported in Ventura County and Palm Springs.

• In Mexico, where the storm first landed, power has been restored to 80% of customers in the three states affected by Hilary, according to the national power company. “379,850 users have been affected, and electricity supply has been restored to 302,134, equivalent to 80%,” said the Federal Electricity Commission in a statement Monday.

To the west, Los Angeles and Ventura counties saw “considerable damage” Sunday night amid reports of dangerous flash flooding, and rock and mudslides, the National Weather Service said, adding up to half an inch of rain could fall per hour.

Cars were stuck in floodwaters in the Spanish Hills area, the National Weather Service reported.

Crowley urged residents to take precautions on the roads.

“A relatively small amount of water can sweep a vehicle away,” she said.

In Los Angeles, the worst of the storm was over as of Monday morning, according to officials. All weather warnings in the city were canceled. “We are past the brunt of the impact,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Ariel Cohen.

Schools in San Diego and Los Angeles are set to reopen Tuesday after closing Monday in anticipation of the storm. Officials canceled classes for the more than 121,000 students in the San Diego Unified School District.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation, also shut down Monday. The district spans about 700 square miles, meaning the impact of the storm varied for its students.

Schools in the Los Angeles district will reopen on Tuesday, according to superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

“Our teams have been scouring our schools, and so far, conditions are pretty good,” Carvalho said. A couple dozen schools have lost phone and internet service, and one school has been impacted by a minor mudslide.

“It would have been reckless for us to make a different decision,” Carvalho said of the decision to close schools Monday.

“Los Angeles was tested but we came through it and we came through it with minimal impacts, considering what we endured,” said Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian.

The Nye County School District in Nevada also canceled classes Monday, with plans to reopen Tuesday.

Cars stranded in roads deluged with mud and water

Once a hurricane, Hilary weakened as it made landfall Sunday in Mexico – where at least one person died – then crossed into the Golden State. The storm’s center was roughly 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles around 8 p.m. local time Sunday, moving north with weakened 45-mph winds, according to the hurricane center.

The Los Angeles Fire Department fielded more than 4,000 emergency calls on Sunday and responded to about 1,800 incidents, Chief Kristin Crowley said in a news conference on Monday. The calls included a request for help for five cars stranded in a flooded intersection of Sun Valley. One person was safely rescued and no one was injured in the Sun Valley incident, Crowley said.

Flood water affected an underground power vault, leading to an outage for about 6,000 customers in the Beverly Grove area, with other outages reported in Hollywood, Hyde Park and Brentwood. The vast majority of city power customers remain unaffected by the storm, according to Los Angeles officials.

As the storm barreled through, covering roadways with debris and water, roads were blocked across Southern California by Sunday night. A section of Interstate 8 in Imperial County, east of San Diego, was closed Sunday after boulders came loose from an adjoining slope and fell into the road.

In San Bernardino County, a stretch of State Route 127 covered in floodwaters was closed, while a section of Interstate 15 was shuttered in Barstow because of downed power lines after a lightning strike, authorities said.

Crews across the region Sunday evening rescued people caught in the storm, including at least nine in a riverbed area in San Diego. “Crews are still looking for more people who may need help. #riverrescue,” San Diego Fire-Rescue said.

And Ventura County firefighters searched the Santa Clara River for people trapped in the waters on Sunday night, videos show.

The storm led to other disruptions across Southern California, with many parks, beaches and other locations closed as officials called on residents to stay indoors.

And Hilary continued to cause damage as it moved into Nevada. In Mt. Charleston, Nevada, the storm brought significant flooding on Monday morning, washing out the roadways. Residents are sheltering in place, the power is shut off, and the Nevada National Guard is on its way to assist, according to a Facebook post from Clark County.

West of Las Vegas, rushing water is flowing like a river down Echo Road, leaving vehicles stranded from Mary Jane Trailheads and Trail Canyon, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Emergency crews are evaluating and ask for people to stay out of the area, the service said.

California had been preparing for difficult conditions, positioning first responders across Southern California to brace for water rescues in flood-prone areas like wildfire burn scars and deserts amid fears areas unaccustomed to rain could suddenly receive a year’s worth or more, triggering flash floods and landslides.

Rainfall totals have been significant:

Daily and monthly rainfall records were broken Sunday, with 1.53 inches falling in downtown Los Angeles, 1.56 inches in Long Beach and 2.95 inches in Palmdale, according to the weather service.

At least three swift water rescues were conducted in Palm Springs, police department Lt. Gustavo Araiza told CNN.

In Cathedral City, a desert community roughly a 110-mile drive east of Los Angeles, at least 14 people were rescued from a senior boarding care facility Monday afternoon after “a blockade” of mud trapped them inside, city spokesperson Ryan Hunt said.

All of the people rescued are doing well, Hunt said.

The fire department had to borrow a dozer truck from a recycling center so they could carry out the rescue, Hunt said. The department had firefighters sit in the dozer and then had those being rescued sit on top to be brought out of the structure, he added.

Despite the “unorthodox method,” everyone stayed calm, he said.

Santa Clarita, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles, experienced steady rain for about 10 hours, with the storm dropping well over four inches of rain on the valley. Parts of Sand Canyon Road could be seen falling into rushing water.

ATTN DRIVERS: State Route 127 is now closed between Baker Blvd. in Baker (San Bernardino County) and Tecopa Hot Springs Road (Inyo County) due to flooding. @Caltrans9 maintenance crews are on scene. pic.twitter.com/fvcI9Vhss3

— Caltrans District 9 (@Caltrans9) August 21, 2023

As the storm continues to affect the West, officials with Oregon’s emergency management are bracing for possible flooding across portions of the state.

“At this point, we’re concerned about the substantial rainfall and the potential for fast-moving water and flooding. Flood watches have been issued for areas of Central and Eastern Oregon,” Oregon Department of Emergency Management spokesperson Chris Crabb told CNN Monday afternoon.

“We have reports of minor flooding currently and communities using sandbags to mitigate the impacts, but there have been no requests for state support at this point,” Crabb went on.

According to Crabb, the office is working with county and tribal partners.

Portions of Oregon are under a flood watch through Tuesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

“The remnants of Hurricane Hilary will bring periods of moderate to heavy rain to portions of northeastern Oregon through Tuesday,” the weather service said in a forecast message.

[ad_2]

Source link

August 21, 2023
Record heat and power outages create ‘the perfect storm,’ meteorologist says | CNN

[ad_1]

Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the weekly weather newsletter, the CNN Weather Brief, which is released every Monday. You can sign up here to receive them every week and during significant storms.

CNN
—

People in the South are storm weary. I’ve heard it from friends and family in my home state of Louisiana, where storms have hit exceptionally hard, and the damage extends much further.

Six tornadoes were reported in Mississippi alone in the last 24 hours, and strong storms are still in progress right now.

Tornadoes have been reported in the South every day during the last week, and more could occur in the next few days. They have caused serious damage, several deaths, and as of this morning half a million people are in the dark, according to PowerOutage.us. Making matters worse, some are expected to be without power for much of the week, leaving them without air conditioning as temperatures reach the triple digits.

The combination of power outages and dangerous heat “made this event the perfect storm,” meteorologist Michael Berry from the National Weather Service office in Shreveport said.

His region is recovering from an EF-1 tornado that hit Cass County, Texas on Friday night, along with extensive wind damage that uprooted trees and damaged power lines, littering them all over the region. He said the damage is in some ways worse than a tornado because it is so widespread.

Power crews have not been able to keep up. SWEPCO, which services Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas issued a statement late Sunday saying, “Nearly 3,000 utility professionals have now joined forces to tackle the work and rebuild communities across northwest Louisiana, east Texas and the western communities in Arkansas following the continued onslaught of extreme weather.” They added, “When you have devastation at this scale, with widespread damage that includes significant impacts to both our transmission and distribution stations the prolonged effort requires time to mobilize additional resources.”

Utility crews from as far away as Michigan and Indiana have come to the region to help rebuild the power grid.

According to Berry, straight-line winds Friday night approached 100 mph, which is what resulted in the damage to be so widespread, as well as causing damage to the power grid. He said it is the type of storm they typically only see once or twice a decade.

Another round of storms came through many of the same areas Saturday night, causing even more damage. Saturday’s round of storms produced nearly a dozen tornadoes across the South, hail greater than three inches in diameter and widespread wind reports stretching from Kansas to the Florida Panhandle. It caused even more power outages and set back power crews from getting power restored from Friday’s storms.

SWEPCO’s outages account for about 30% of the power outages across the South and some could be in the dark another week or more. It creates another concern for not only this region but for all the residents without power across the South: the heat!

Heat alerts are up for roughly 35 million people across the South, with temperatures remaining in the upper 90s to triple digits but feeling much hotter when you factor in the humidity.

“Widespread high and low temperature records are forecast to be tied or broken over the coming days,” the Weather Prediction Center said.

The heat index will be running anywhere from 115 across northern Louisiana and East Texas to close to 125 degrees across South Texas. The heat index is the “feels like” temperature when you factor in the humidity. It could be deadly for the hundreds of thousands without power.

“Our message quickly became how deadly the heat can become with the widespread power outages, encouraging people without power to try to stay cool by any means possible, drinking plenty of water, staying in the shade, relocating to friends or a family member’s home with power and AC,” Berry warned.

Many areas have opened cooling centers for those without power and in need of a place to cool off.

How to find cooling centers by state

With nighttime temperatures staying in the upper 70s to low 80s, they could be just as dangerous. Overnight is when the body needs to cool and reset, and if temperatures are staying warm overnight, we could see serious heat-related consequences as a result.

Why high overnight temperatures are so deadly

More than 50 million people are in the path of more severe weather today across the South.

A Level 2 of 5 slight risk of severe weather covers parts of the Gulf Coast from southeastern Louisiana to the East Coast of northern Florida. Areas possibly affected include New Orleans, Mobile and Jacksonville.

A broader area at a Level 1 of 5 marginal risk covers 40 million people and extends from central Texas to the Carolinas and down to South Florida. Cities like Austin and Fort Worth in Texas, Atlanta and Miami could face severe weather today.

“Any storm that develops will have the potential to become severe with large hail and damaging winds being the primary threats,” the weather service office in Fort Worth warned.

While tornadoes are not the primary threat today, they will also be a possibility.

The areas facing a severe threat also run the risk of excessive rainfall, which could lead to flash flooding. The storms could produce heavy downpours capable of dropping up to four inches of rain in some locations.

The severe threat continues tomorrow, before winding down for the rest of the week, giving the South a much-needed break.

[ad_2]

Source link

June 19, 2023
‘A new era’: Germany quits nuclear power, closing its final three plants | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Germany’s final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday, marking the end of the country’s nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades.

Nuclear power has long been contentious in Germany.

There are those who want to end reliance on a technology they view as unsustainable, dangerous and a distraction from speeding up renewable energy.

But for others, closing down nuclear plants is short-sighted. They see it as turning off the tap on a reliable source of low-carbon energy at a time when drastic cuts to planet-heating pollution are needed.

Even as these debates rumble on, and despite last-minute calls to keep the plants online amid an energy crisis, the German government has been steadfast.

“The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable,” Steffi Lemke, Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, told CNN.

“We are embarking on a new era of energy production,” she said.

The closure of the three plants – Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim – represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older.

In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition.

Nuclear accidents fueled the opposition: The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl that created a cloud of radioactive waste which reached parts of Germany.

In 2000, the German government pledged to phase out nuclear power and start shutting down plants. But when a new government came to power in 2009, it seemed – briefly – as if nuclear would get a reprieve as a bridging technology to help the country move to renewable energy.

Then Fukushima happened.

In March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to melt down. For many in Germany, Japan’s worst nuclear disaster was confirmation “that assurances that a nuclear accident of a large scale can’t happen are not credible,” Miranda Schreurs, professor of environment and climate policy at the Technical University of Munich, told CNN.

Three days later then-Chancellor Angela Merkel – a physicist who was previously pro-nuclear – made a speech called it an “inconceivable catastrophe for Japan” and a “turning point” for the world. She announced Germany would accelerate a nuclear phase-out, with older plants shuttered immediately.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, provided another plot twist.

Fearful of its energy security without Russian gas, the German government delayed its plan to close the final three plants in December 2022. Some urged a rethink.

But the government declined, agreeing to keep them running only until April 15.

For those in the anti-nuclear movement, it’s a moment of victory.

“It is a great achievement for millions of people who have been protesting nuclear in Germany and worldwide for decades,” Paul-Marie Manière, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, told CNN.

For critics of Germany’s policy, however, it’s irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify.

“We need to keep existing, safe nuclear reactors operating while simultaneously ramping up renewables as fast as possible,” Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CNN.

The big risk, she said, is that fossil fuels fill the energy gap left by nuclear. Reductions in Germany’s nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year.

Germany plans to replace the roughly 6% of electricity generated by the three nuclear plants with renewables, but also gas and coal.

More than 30% of Germany’s energy comes from coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – and the government has made controversial decisions to turn to coal to help with energy security.

In January, protestors including Greta Thunberg converged on the west German village of Lützerath in an unsuccessful attempt to stop it being demolished to mine the coal underneath it.

“Building new coal capacity is the opposite of what we need,” said Stokes. Fossil fuels are a climate problem, but they’re also a health risk, she pointed out. Air pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for 8.7 million deaths a year, according to a recent analysis.

Veronika Grimm, one of Germany’s leading economists, told CNN that keeping nuclear power plants running for longer would have allowed Germany more time “to electrify extensively,” especially as renewable energy growth “remains sluggish.”

But supporters of the nuclear shutdown argue it will ultimately hasten the end of fossil fuels.

Germany has pledged to close its last coal-fired power station no later than 2038, with a 2030 deadline in some areas. It’s aiming for 80% of electricity to come from renewables by the end of this decade.

While more coal was added in the months following Fukushima, Schreurs said, nuclear shutdowns have seen a big push on clean energy. “That urgency and demand can be what it takes to push forward on the growth of renewables,” she said.

Representatives for Germany’s renewable energy industry said the shutdown will open the door for more investment into clean energy.

“Germany’s phase-out of nuclear power is a historic event and an overdue step in energy terms,” Simone Peter, president of the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE), told CNN. “It is high time that we leave the nuclear age behind and consistently organize the renewable age.”

The impacts of nuclear power shouldn’t be overlooked either, Schreurs said, pointing to the carbon pollution created by uranium mining as well as the risk of health complications for miners. Plus, it creates a dependency on Russia, which supplies uranium for nuclear plants, she added.

Nuclear has also shown itself to have vulnerabilities to the climate crisis. France was forced to reduce nuclear power generation last year as the rivers used to cool reactors became too hot during Europe’s blistering heatwave.

Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

Currently, the nuclear waste is kept in interim storage next to the nuclear plants being decommissioned. But the search is on to find a permanent location where the waste can be stored safely for a million years.

The site needs to be deep – hundreds of meters underground. Only certain types of rock will do: Crystalline granite, rock salt or clay rock. It must be geologically stable with no risks of earthquakes or signs of underground rivers.

The process is likely to be fraught, complex and breathtakingly long – potentially lasting more than 100 years.

BGE, the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal, estimates a final site won’t be chosen until between 2046 and 2064. After that, it will take decades more to build the repository, fill it with the waste and seal it.

Plenty of other countries are treading paths similar to Germany’s. Denmark passed a resolution in the 1980s not to construct nuclear power plants, Switzerland voted in 2017 to phase out nuclear power, Italy closed its last reactors in 1990 and Austria’s one nuclear plant has never been used.

But, in the context of the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices and pressure to reduce carbon pollution, others still want nuclear in the mix.

The UK, in the process of building a nuclear power plant, said in its recent climate strategy that energy nuclear power has a “crucial” role in “creating secure, affordable and clean energy.”

France, which gets about 70% of its power from nuclear, is planning six new reactors, and Finland opened a new nuclear plant last year. Even Japan, still dealing with the aftermath of Fukushima, is considering restarting reactors.

The US, the world’s biggest nuclear power, is also investing in nuclear energy and, in March, started up a new nuclear reactor, Vogtle 3 in Georgia – the first in years.

But experts suggest this doesn’t mark the start of a nuclear ramp up. Vogtle 3 came online six years late and at a cost of $30 billion, twice the initial budget.

It encapsulates the big problem that afflicts the whole nuclear industry: making the economics add up. New plants are expensive and can take more than a decade to build. “Even the countries that are talking pro-nuclear are having big trouble developing nuclear power,” Schreurs said.

Many nuclear power plants in Europe, the US and elsewhere are aging – plants have an operating life of around 40 to 60 years. As Germany puts an end to its nuclear era, it’s coming up to crunch time for others, Schreurs said.

“There will be a moment of decision as to whether nuclear really has a future”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 14, 2023
How electric tuk-tuks could become a ‘virtual power plant’ for this country | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The streets of Dhaka are filled with constant clamor. Among the chorus of honking horns and ringing bells, roaring cars and rattling rickshaws, you can hear the electric hum of the city’s three-wheeled open taxis, called tuk-tuks, as they weave through traffic.

Among the chaos, one Bangladeshi startup has spotted an opportunity. SOLshare plans to tap into the country’s estimated 2.5 million electric tuk-tuks, and turn them into a “virtual power plant.”

“When (the tuk-tuks) return to the garage at the end of the night, they come back with 30% juice in their batteries,” says Salma Islam, head of projects, fundraising and communication at SOLshare. “If they can feed that back into the grid when the demand is really high, that would be amazing.”

SOLshare knows exactly how much electricity is left in these tuk-tuks because it has been working with local garages to upgrade their conventional lead-acid batteries to smart, lithium-ion batteries. These are equipped with SOLshare’s digital chip, which collects data on the battery’s performance, location, and charge level.

The startup claims that the leftover electricity in these batteries could provide up to 20% of the nation’s energy when demand is at its highest. The vehicles would recharge overnight when demand on the grid is lowest.

SOLshare hopes that this mobile power supply could help to stabilize Bangladesh’s energy grid — and power the country’s economic development.

“The demand is constantly growing, because the population is also growing, and as people’s livelihoods get better, their energy requirements also increase,” says Islam.

SOLshare launched its EV pilot program, called SOLmobility, in 2021. It partnered with 15 tuk-tuk garages to upgrade the batteries of around 40 vehicles and began gathering data on the mileage and activities of the three-wheelers.

The smart batteries use 40% less energy than lead-acid batteries, says Islam. Additionally, the lithium-ion batteries charge in just six hours, around half the time of lead-acid batteries, and are lighter and more efficient. Although they’re more expensive, costing more than double compared to lead acid batteries, they last up to five times longer, says Islam.

Muhammad Delwar Hossain, who has been driving a tuk-tuk in the Dhaka suburb of Tongi for over a decade, started using a SOLshare smart battery last year. He says it’s boosted his monthly earnings by 50% because he can make more trips on a single charge, and he feels his health has improved because he’s no longer breathing in the toxic fumes emitted by the lead-acid battery.

SOLshare’s ambitions go far beyond tuk-tuks – it wants to transform Bangladesh’s entire energy sector through multiple strands.

In 2015, the company began building peer-to-peer solar-powered microgrids that allow households without solar panels to buy excess energy from others in the community using a pay-as-you-go mobile top-up system. To date, it has installed 118 microgrids across the country. The startup has raised $6 million so far.

The company also installs solar panel systems for homes and commercial buildings, and has 27 megawatts of installation in the pipeline, says Islam.

Increasing solar power can help the country reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, says Islam – and these microgrids could even feed excess energy back into the national grid.

SOLshare’s innovations come at a pivotal time for the nation’s energy sector.

“We had massive power grid failures last summer … that was an eye opener for everyone,” says Islam.

Across the country, households experienced frequent load-shedding, a practice of enforced power outages that reduces strain on the grid to prevent a total blackout. Then, in October 2022, Bangladesh suffered its biggest blackout in eight years when the national grid failed and plunged 96 million people into darkness.

Despite being home to the world’s largest off-grid solar power program, Bangladesh’s rapid growth and increasing demand for electricity means renewables account for just 3.5% of its energy.

The low-lying nation is also one of the most climate change-vulnerable countries in the world and is highly susceptible to floods, droughts and storms – so finding a sustainable way to support its growing energy demand is vital.

“I think they were a little bit early, ahead of their time,” says Sonia Bashir Kabir, founder of Bangladesh venture capital firm SBK Tech Ventures and an early investor in SOLshare. She believes the next five years hold a lot of opportunity for the company.

“The government has taken a very serious mandate to look at climate, which helps because that means the policies are going to be favorable,” she says.

Bangladesh isn’t the only country struggling to meet energy demand: disruptions in the oil and gas supply throughout 2022 have caused a global energy crisis. This has fueled a renewable revolution, with solar and wind energy growing 30% faster than expected last year – and many are hoping it will accelerate the expansion of the green energy sector.

SOLshare is continuing to upgrade more tuk-tuks, as well as working with battery manufacturers to install its digital chip directly into the battery.

Through its different projects, Islam hopes the company will become “Asia’s largest virtual utility provider” – a model that could play “a massive role” in other countries with large fleets of electric three-wheel vehicles, such as Thailand and India, she says.

“We are tapping into as many decentralized renewable sources as possible, and not relying on just a central power grid,” says Islam. “The way we see it, if we can do this right here in Bangladesh, you can actually do it anywhere.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 10, 2023
A radioactive cylinder has gone missing in Thailand. Authorities are now scrambling to find it | CNN

[ad_1]

Bangkok, Thailand
CNN
—

Authorities in Thailand are scrambling to locate a metal cylinder with dangerous radioactive contents that went missing from a power plant this week, warning the public of serious health risks should they come across it.

The revelation comes just two months after Australia was forced to launch a similar hunt to find a tiny radioactive capsule that was eventually located by the side of a highway.

But while that Australian capsule was lost in the country’s remote outback hundreds of miles from the nearest major city – the Thai canister has disappeared in a much more populated area.

The cylinder, measuring 30 centimeters (4 inches) long and 13 centimeters (5 inches) wide, was reported missing during routine checks by staff on March 10, at the coal power plant in Prachin Buri, a province in central Thailand, east of the capital Bangkok.

The province has a population of nearly half a million people and houses some of Thailand’s best national parks, including the famed Khao Yai National Park which is popular with both local and international tourists.

The parks are a common day trip from nearby Bangkok, a sprawling megacity of some 14 million people.

Used for measuring ash, the cylinder was part of a silo and contains Caesium-137, a highly radioactive substance that scientists say is potentially lethal.

Search teams and drones have been deployed to recover the missing cylinder, according to a statement from the Office of Atoms for Peace (OAP), a government regulator for radioactive and nuclear research in Thailand.

Deputy Secretary General Pennapa Kanchana told CNN on Wednesday they were using radioactive detection equipment to locate the cylinder.

“We are searching in waste recycling shops in the area,” she said. “We are (using) survey equipment to detect for signals. For areas we cannot reach, we have dispatched drones and robots.”

Also involved in the search are Thai police, who believe the cylinder has been missing since February but was only officially reported lost by the National Power Plant 5 company on Friday.

Police have examined CCTV footage from the plant, Si Maha Phot district police chief Mongkol Thopao told CNN – but were hindered by “limited views” of the machine.

“It is unclear if the item was stolen and sold to a recycling shop or misplaced elsewhere,” Mongkol said. “We have dispatched our teams to recycle shops around the area… we still couldn’t find it.”

Experts warn that Caesium-137 can create serious health problems for people who come into contact with it: skin burns from close exposure, radiation sickness and potentially deadly cancer risks, especially for those exposed unknowingly for long periods of time.

Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30 years, which means it could pose a risk to the population for decades to come, if not found.

Pennapa, from the Office of Atoms for Peace, urged the public not to panic.

“If general people (come into) contact unknowingly, the health effects will depend on the level of the (radiation) intensity. If it’s high, the first thing we will see is skin irritation.”

It is not the first time something like this has happened in Thailand.

In 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service report, canisters containing another radioactive isotope, cobalt-60, were bought by two scrap collectors, who took it to a junkyard where it was cut open.

Some workers suffered burn-like injuries, and eventually three people died and seven others suffered radiation injuries, the report said. Nearly 2,000 others who lived nearby were exposed to radiation.

But Pennapa said the canister that is currently missing is far less radioactive than the incident in 2000.

The most recent case in Thailand follows a similar incident in Western Australia in January when a tiny capsule, also containing Caesium-137, went missing along a remote outback highway while being transported from an iron ore mine to a depot in Perth.

After a challenging six-day search, the capsule was eventually found and officials are still investigating how it apparently fell off the back of a vehicle during transit.

Nuclear radiation experts in Australia who previously spoke to CNN said that the loss of that capsule was “very unusual” and spoke about challenges of recovering such a tiny device.

But a good thing, they said, was that the search area was extremely isolated.

“So it would be very unlikely to have much impact (on people),” said Ivan Kempson, an associate professor in Biophysics from the University of Southern Australia.

But there had been some past examples, Kempson noted, of people finding similar things and suffering radiation poisoning.

“The concern… is the potential impact on health of the person who would find the capsule,” he said.

[ad_2]

Source link

March 16, 2023
Record-strength Cyclone Freddy pounds Mozambique after making second landfall | CNN

[ad_1]

Cyclone Freddy battered central Mozambique on Sunday after making landfall for a second time in a month, breaking records for the duration and strength of tropical storms in the southern hemisphere.

Communications and electricity supply in the storm area have been cut so the extent of the damage and number of casualties were not clear.

More than 171,000 people were affected after the cyclone swept through southern Mozambique last month, killing 27 people in Mozambique and Madagascar. More than half a million are at risk of being affected in Mozambique this time, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

UNICEF said in a statement that Freddy made landfall with sustained winds of nearly 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour), causing “severe damage and cutting off children and families from critical services.” After passing the port town of Quelimane, the storm continued inland towards the southern tip of neighboring Malawi, satellite data showed.

However, the national power company Electricidade de Moçambique said that by mid-afternoon electricity had been restored in most areas, with the exception of Milange, Lugela, Maganja da Costa, Namanjavira and parts of the city of Mocuba.

“The wind was very strong into the night … There is a lot of destruction, trees fallen down, roofs blown off,” Guy Taylor, the UNICEF chief of advocacy, communications and partnerships for Mozambique, told Reuters by satellite phone from Quelimane. He had no word yet on casualties or numbers of displaced.

“It’s potentially a disaster of large magnitude, and additional support will be needed,” Taylor said, adding that heavy rains were continuing to fall.

In Malawi, authorities were bracing for the cyclone to pass near the southern tip of the landlocked country by evening, bringing torrential rains and flooding, the department of meteorological resources and climate change said in a statement.

Freddy developed on February 6 off the northwest Australian coast, before tracking thousands of miles across the South Indian Ocean towards southeast Africa, affecting the islands of Mauritius and La Réunion on the way.

The storm hit the eastern coast of Madagascar on February 21 before slamming into Mozambique a few days later, bringing torrential rain, destructive winds and flooding which has destroyed houses and affected nearly 2 million people.

It then looped back out towards the Mozambique Channel, gaining energy from the warm waters, and headed toward the southwestern coast of Madagascar.

[ad_2]

Source link

March 12, 2023
Biden administration restores Obama-era mercury rules for power plants, eyes more regulations in coming months | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The Biden administration on Friday finalized a decision to reestablish Obama-era rules that require coal and oil-fired power plants to reduce toxic pollutants, including mercury and acid gas, that come out of their smokestacks.

Mercury is a neurotoxin with several health impacts, including harmful effects on children’s brain development. And while the updated rule significantly benefits public health for communities around these kinds of power plants, it also has the effect of requiring plants to cut down on planet-warming pollution that comes from burning coal to generate electricity.

President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency announced early last year that it intended to undo a Trump-era rollback of the 2012 mercury pollution rules, one of many Trump-era environmental decisions it has reversed.

“This is a really good day for public health in this country,” EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe told CNN. “We’re talking about mercury, arsenic, acid gases; these are dangerous pollutants that impact people’s health.”

The EPA estimates the 2012 rule brought down mercury emissions from power plants by 86% by 2017, while acid gas emissions were reduced by 96%.

McCabe said the EPA is currently working on its own, stronger mercury standard that it expects to propose “not too long from now” and finalize before the end of Biden’s first term.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rules are part of a larger tranche of regulations the agency is expected to roll out this spring that would cut down on coal-fired power plant pollution, including rules on proper disposal of coal ash.

It also plans to release a much-anticipated rule that would regulate planet-warming pollution like carbon dioxide and methane. That rule is expected to be more limited than climate advocates desire, after the US Supreme Court limited the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon pollution in a ruling last year.

“We’re very mindful of the Supreme Court precedent,” McCabe told CNN. “We’ve been working very, very carefully to craft a rule that will be in the four corners of the direction that the Supreme Court has laid down.”

McCabe said the agency will propose that rule “in the relatively near future,” but did not share specifics about what the rule would do to limit pollution.

Many of the nation’s coal-fired power plants are aging and new ones are not being built – especially as it’s getting more expensive operate existing plans. If the EPA implements stronger federal regulations on mercury, coal ash and greenhouse gas emissions, it could have the impact of more utilities shuttering coal-fired plants, as many are already doing.

[ad_2]

Source link

February 17, 2023
A vulnerable power grid is in the crosshairs of domestic extremist groups | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Gunshots fired at two power substations in Moore County, North Carolina, late last year left 45,000 homes and businesses without power and more attacks just like that could already be planned by domestic extremist groups, according to experts.

“All of a sudden, about 8:45 p.m., about 20 shots fired off right across the street,” Spencer Matthews told CNN affiliate WRAL shortly after the December attack.

The gunfire hit critical parts of the substations and the power went out.

“Got no way to heat because we don’t have a fireplace,” one woman told WRAL after her home was plunged into darkness.

Investigators found nearly two dozen shell casings from a high-powered rifle near the substations, but so far have not found a gun or made any arrests.

Experts say the two substation attacks could be the work of domestic extremists who have openly advocated targeting a vulnerable power system.

The motive behind the December 3 attack is still not known, but it came after an FBI bulletin in November warned of threats by extremist groups to “create civil disorder and inspire further violence.”

“This typically very primitive style attack equals millions of dollars in damage,” Brian Harrell, a former US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, told CNN. “If you were to shoot out some very key components you can quickly create an effect where this large multimillion dollar transformer becomes essentially a paperweight.”

In 2022 there were 25 “actual physical attacks” reported on power facilities across the US and one report of “sabotage,” according to the latest statistics available from the Department of Energy.

The data also shows 57 reports of suspicious activity, and 80 acts of vandalism.

The numbers are mostly trending up, compared with 2021, when there were six actual physical attacks reported and two reports of sabotage. The data also shows 32 reports of suspicious activity, and 52 acts of vandalism.

Many attacks remain unsolved.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that 2023… is probably going to be the most catastrophic when it comes to the uptick of DVE (Domestic Violent Extremist) attacks on electricity infrastructure,” Harrell said. “A number of individuals and extremist groups online right now have already signaled that this is a part of their playbook.”

One of those playbooks, with a swastika and lightning bolts on the cover, published on a social media platform by a neo-Nazi group, makes their aim quite clear.

“The main thing that keeps the anti-White system going is the powergrid,” the document reads. “This is something that is easier than you think. Peppered all over the country are power distribution substations… Sitting ducks, worthy prey.”

It’s part of a White-power philosophy called “accelerationism,” which wants to destroy society and replace it with one based on their racist ideologies.

“With the power off, when the lights don’t come back on… all hell will break lose, [sic] making conditions desirable for our race to once again take back what is ours,” they write.

The head of another accelerationist group posted on social media that these attackers have “cracked the code on lone wolf attacks.”

The attacks “check off all the necessary boxes which I didn’t think possible for lone wolf ops in USA – Frequency, sustainability, geographic concentration,” he is quoted as saying. “Law enforcement appears powerless (no pun intended) to stop them.”

These groups dream of striking exactly the right spots in the power grid, which government reports have warned for decades could cause a domino effect and leave huge parts of the country in the dark.

“If you were to target, you know, eight or nine very key nodes throughout the United States, you potentially could have a collapsing effect,” Harrell warns.

High voltage transmission power lines and substations are often spread across the country in out of the way places which can be hard to keep safe and technically challenging to secure.

“It’s inherently very difficult to harden or protect it all,” Granger Morgan, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University told CNN. “It may not take all that high tech an approach to cause physical disruption that could have very large consequences.”

Morgan is the chair of the National Academy of Science’s committee on enhancing the resilience of the nation’s power system.

“Physical attacks on major system components could cause serious physical damage, especially to large transformers and other hard to replace substation and transmission equipment such as high voltage circuit breakers,” one of his papers from 2017 warned. “Recovery could easily require many days or weeks.”

Right now there is no central authority that regulates the entire power system, which, Morgan says, gets in the way of changes needed to make the system more robust and resilient from attack.

Justice Department forms new domestic terrorism unit

“No one at the moment has authority to deal with the entire system, and we need to get that situation fixed,” he said. “We’ve got the federal regulators overseeing the high voltage system that brings power across long distances. We’ve got state public utility commissions dealing with things at the state level, we got both private and public power.”

Morgan said a presidential commission or other powerful political body needs to be appointed to take the lead in protecting the grid and making it more resilient to attacks.

“We just need to get much more systematic in terms of figuring out both how we protect against it, but also how we can quickly put the system back together again, once a problem arises,” he said.

[ad_2]

Source link

February 4, 2023
Dead chickens and decomposing bodies: Inside South Africa’s power blackout ‘pandemic’ | CNN

[ad_1]

Johannesburg, South Africa
CNN
—

Car crashes, opportunistic criminals, rotting food, decomposing bodies, bankrupt businesses, and water shortages. Welcome to life under South Africa’s power blackouts.

Last week the grim extent of the outages was laid bare when South Africans were advised to bury dead loved ones within four days.

In a public statement, the South African Funeral Practitioners Association warned that bodies in mortuaries were rapidly decomposing because of the unrelenting electricity outages, putting huge pressure on funeral parlors struggling to process corpses.

The situation is so bad that the country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is considering declaring a national disaster, similar to one in 2020 at the height of the Covid pandemic, which had a devastating effect on the country’s economy.

Last week scores of supporters from the Democratic Alliance opposition party marched under heavy security through the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town to voice their frustrations over the persistent blackouts.

Known locally as loadshedding, widespread electricity blackouts are carried out multiple times a day by state-owned energy utility Eskom to avoid the total collapse of the grid.

Shortages on the electricity system unbalance the network, and Eskom has stated that controlled outages are necessary to ensure reserve margins are maintained, and the system remains stable.

While the country has been experiencing on-off power outages for years, since September 2022 scheduled blackouts have become routine, affecting every part of South African society.

For some people, not having access to reliable power can be the difference between life and death.

Before she died in October 2022, Lis Van Os needed oxygen for 17 hours a day. Her stationary oxygen machine required mains power, making periods of loadshedding extremely stressful, particularly when power did not return as scheduled, her family said.

Her daughter Karin McDonald was forced to explore backup options such as inverters and a back up oxygen mobile tank, which only lasted short periods.

“Towards the end (of her life) power outages created a lot of anxiety for everyone,” she said.

South Africans experienced more than twice as many power cuts in 2022 than in any other year. And things are set to get worse in 2023.

Even simple daily tasks need to be arranged around loadshedding schedules, including meal planning, travel times, work that requires internet connectivity.

From preparing baby formula to keeping fans running during the summer heat, not having access to mains power is makes daily life challenging for South Africans.

Maneo Motsamai, a domestic worker in Johannesburg, says the outages prevents her from simple tasks such as cooking.

“I boil water to cook mealie meal (maize porridge) and the power goes. I can’t eat, it’s a waste. I can’t cope like that,” Motsamai told CNN.

Pump stations can’t provide water and many small businesses without access to backup power are having to close shop and lay off employees, according to people CNN spoke to.

Thando Makhubu runs Soweto Creamery, an ice cream shop in Jabulani, Soweto, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. His family pooled small welfare grants they received during the Covid-19 pandemic to set up the business, but are now feeling the pressure from power outages.

In early January, the shop was without power for 72 hours, when electricity did not return as scheduled. Thando was forced to shell out money for diesel to power their generator and prevent all his stock melting. He says the outages are costly and destroying their hopes of expanding.

Bongi Monjanaga, who runs a startup cleaning services company operating across Johannesburg, says the outages affect every part of her fledgling business, such as operating electric cleaning equipment, entering and leaving premises when security gates aren’t functioning, and having internet to invoice clients and complete online tax compliance documents.

“I find myself in this pool of misery when I’m just trying to start up. I’m just trying to grow,” she says.

The escalation of power outages is also deeply worrying for South Africa’s food security, driving up prices, and placing an even greater strain on stretched household budgets.

With modern farming practices ever more reliant on electricity for crop irrigation, processing, and storage, loadshedding is having a huge impact on agricultural output.

Gys Olivier, a farmer from Hertzogville in Free State province, in east-central South Africa, says he and other farmers in the area have been forced to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of seed potatoes due to disruptions to the ‘cold chain’ – (the process of keeping produce refrigerated throughout the supply chain.)

There is also less demand from growers due to water shortages, with pump stations reliant on electricity to operate.

“We have done everything we can to make sure there is food on the table for a very good price, but it’s become so capital-intensive to farm,” Olivier says.

Meanwhile livestock and poultry are dying before they even get to the slaughterhouse.

A gruesome video circulating on social media shows workers removing 50,000 dead broiler chickens from a farm in North West province, the birds suffocated when power outages caused ventilation systems to stop. The financial damage to the farmer was around ZAR1.6m ($93,300) according to local media reports.

South Africa is notorious for high crime rates, and loadshedding is making it worse as home security systems fail when the power goes out, giving criminals a field day inside unsecured properties.
Policing also becomes harder, with officers unable to reach crime scenes fast enough due to congestion when traffic lights are off.

Tumelo Mogodiseng, General Secretary of the South African Policing Union (SAPU), describes the load-shedding as “a pandemic.”

He says his members’ lives are now more at risk, with officers unable to see potentially dangerous situations in the darkness, and police stations, many of which don’t have backup power systems, at risk of attack from criminals during blackouts.

“Police are dying every day in this country. If this is happening in the daylight, what happens when there is no light for them to see at night?”

Mogodiseng also worries that crimes are going unreported, with citizens fearful of leaving their houses during outages and traveling in the darkness. “Communities won’t travel to police stations to open cases because they are afraid,” he told CNN.

Gareth Newham, who runs the Justice and Violence Prevention Programme at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, says that it’s hard to get solid data on the impact outages are having on crime. While anecdotal evidence suggests criminals are exploiting outages, the recent escalation of loadshedding has coincided with the Christmas holidays, when crime rates typically spike.

His biggest concern is that continued loadshedding or a temporary grid collapse could lead to a repeat of the coordinated civil unrest, rioting, and looting in parts of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces 18 months ago.

“A complete breakdown in the grid could be the trigger for local level gangs getting more power, and we could see a similar kind of violence to that we saw in July 2021.”

Under the ruling African National Congress (ANC), in charge since 1994, Eskom has become synonymous with corruption, crime, and mismanagement.

Last year a judge-led inquiry into graft under the former president, Jacob Zuma, found that there were grounds to prosecute several former Eskom executives.

The government has failed to build new power stations to keep up with increased demand, and warnings from energy experts on looming supply shortages across the past two decades have gone ignored.

A 2019 report by the South African Institution of Civil Engineering shows skilled engineers have been leaving the country in droves.

Despite spending billions of USD on two huge coal power stations, neither works properly.

Older plants are dilapidated due to a lack of maintenance, and organized crime steals vital coal supplies and cable from the rail lines going from mines to power stations.

Renewable energy companies say they are desperate to supply to the grid, but the government has been slow to cut red tape and streamline regulatory processes that would reduce the time frame for environmental authorisations, registration of new projects and grid connection approvals.

Legal challenges against the government and Eskom are stacking up. Several political parties and trade unions say they will take the government and state utility to court for not upholding their duty to provide electricity.

With no end in sight to the outages, South Africans are desperate for alternative energy sources, but even they are out of the reach of many citizens.

Thando Makhubu says he was shocked by the cost to power his ice cream business off-grid. “We were quoted R100,000 ($5,945) and that excluded the solar panels.”

Karin McDonald, who runs a swimming school, similarly found the upfront costs of solar prohibitive. “We received quotes for solar for the business and house and were not looking at anything less than half a million rand ($29,500) which is a major life decision to make,” she said.

There is also a long wait for solar. “I know a solar provider that had 40 requests just last week, all for big solar projects, ” said Angus Williamson, a cattle farmer from KwaZulu-Natal province.

As they come to terms with their new reality, many South Africans are finding it hard to stay optimistic.

“The light at the end of the tunnel is a train heading in our direction,” said Williamson.

[ad_2]

Source link

January 31, 2023
Hackers stole data from multiple electric utilities in recent ransomware attack | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Hackers stole data belonging to multiple electric utilities in an October ransomware attack on a US government contractor that handles critical infrastructure projects across the country, according to a memo describing the hack obtained by CNN.

Federal officials have closely monitored the incident for any potential broader impact on the US power sector while private investigators have combed the dark web for the stolen data, according to the memo sent this month to power company executives by the North American grid regulator’s cyberthreat sharing center.

The previously unreported incident is a window into how ransomware attacks on critical US companies are handled behind the scenes as lawyers and federal investigators quietly spring into action to determine the extent of the damage.

The ransomware attack hit Chicago-based Sargent & Lundy, an engineering firm that has designed more than 900 power stations and thousands of miles of power systems and that holds sensitive data on those projects.

The firm also handles nuclear security issues, working with the departments of Defense, Energy and other agencies “to strengthen nuclear deterrence” and keep weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists’ hands, according to its website.

Two people familiar with the investigation of the Sargent & Lundy hack told CNN that the incident was contained and remediated, and didn’t appear to have a broader impact on other power-sector firms.

There is no sign that data stolen from Sargent & Lundy, which includes “model files” and “transmission data” the firm uses for utility projects, is on the dark web, according to the memo from the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

But security experts have long been concerned that schematics held by electric and nuclear power contractors could be dumped online and used for follow-on physical or cyberattacks on those facilities.

“These are literally the configurations for your programmable logic controllers, your relays,” said longtime security consultant Patrick Miller, referring to critical electric equipment that keeps the lights on. “We’re really concerned about the data that’s in those organizations.”

Those concerns are particularly acute following a spate of physical attacks and vandalism at electric utilities in multiple states. Tens of thousands of people lost power in Moore County, North Carolina, this month after Duke Energy substations were damaged by gunfire. On Christmas, thousands of people lost power in a Washington county after someone vandalized multiple substations there.

“We’re fully recovered from the incident, which had minimal impact on our normal business operations,” Brenda Romero, a spokesperson for Sargent & Lundy, said in a statement to CNN. Romero said the firm “notified law enforcement” of the hack.

Romero declined to answer further questions on the ransomware attack, including whether the hackers had tried to extort Sargent & Lundy, citing an ongoing investigation.

The Biden administration has urged companies to share data on such hacks as US officials have tried to get a grip on the epidemic of ransomware, which has cost critical infrastructure firms many millions of dollars.

The hackers that hit Sargent & Lundy used a strain of ransomware known as Black Basta that first surfaced early this year, according to two people familiar with the investigation. Scores of Black Basta attacks have been reported since April, according to cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. The hackers steal data from their victims to give them added leverage in ransom negotiations.

Sargent & Lundy is one of several engineering firms whose work on critical infrastructure projects cuts across different sectors of the economy. For US cybersecurity officials, this engineering work can be harder to evaluate in terms of its risk to supply chain security than a firm that only makes software.

Federal regulations require electric utilities to maintain certain cybersecurity standards for protecting their systems from hacks. Companies that contract with those utilities, such as Sargent & Lundy, aren’t necessarily held to the same standard and are instead bound by the security requirements in the contract, experts told CNN.

“Utilities are effectively allowed to accept as much risk as they want,” said Miller, who is CEO of Oregon-based Ampere Industrial Security, a consulting firm. “Is it perfect? No, but [the contractors] are being assessed [for their security] in some ways through the utilities.”

[ad_2]

Source link

December 27, 2022
Power substations vandalized in Washington state weeks after North Carolina electricity attack and FBI warning | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

After thousands of customers in Pierce County, Washington, were affected Sunday when burglars vandalized three energy substations, power was then knocked out for even more homes after a suspect or suspects gained access to a fourth substation, vandalizing the equipment and causing a fire, according to an update from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.

The damaged equipment cut power to around 14,000 customers, police said, weeks after an attack in North Carolina left thousands in the dark for days amid federal warnings of extremist threats to electricity infrastructure.

The Christmas Day vandalism near Tacoma marked more such incidents in the state, where two November attacks on Puget Sound Energy substations were investigated by the FBI. Vandalism and deliberate damage were reported last month at substations in southern Washington and Oregon.

No suspects are in custody in the latest case affecting Puyallup and Graham, Washington, and it “is unknown if there are any motives or if this was a coordinated attack on the power systems,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said Sunday in a statement.

The FBI’s Seattle Division was aware of the vandalism reports but would not confirm or deny its role in any investigation, adding, “We do take threats against our infrastructure seriously and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement,” it told CNN on Sunday.

The bureau in a November 22 bulletin warned of reports of threats to electricity infrastructure by people espousing racially or ethnically motivated extremist ideology “to create civil disorder and inspire further violence,” according to the alert sent to private industry.

The first report of a burglary at a Tacoma Public Utilities substation came at 5:26 a.m. PT, the sheriff’s office said.

“Deputies arrived on scene and saw there was forced entry into the fenced area,” according to its statement. “Nothing had been taken from the substation, but the suspect vandalized the equipment causing a power outage in the area.”

Then, a second burglary was reported at another Tacoma Public Utilities substation, with forced entry and damage to equipment, the statement said. Similarly, nothing was taken.

“At 11:25 we were notified by Puget Sound Energy that they too had a power outage this morning at 02:39 a.m. Deputies are currently on scene at this facility where the fenced area was broken into and the equipment vandalized,” the statement continued.

Dispatchers received a call about a fire at another substation at 7:21 p.m. local time Sunday, the sheriff’s department said. Firefighters and Puget Sound Energy employees responded to the scene and were able to extinguish the fire and secure and the substation.

Power has since been restored to most of the affected homes, the update said.

Anti-government groups over the past two years have used online forums to urge followers to attack critical infrastructure, including the power grid. They have posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles.

Investigators probing the attacks last month at substations in Moore County, North Carolina, zeroed in on two possible threads: extremists’ writings in online forums encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, and recent disruptions of LGBTQ+ events across the nation by domestic extremists, law enforcement sources told CNN.

The attackers “knew exactly what they were doing,” Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at the time.

The resulting outages left some 40,000 customers scrambling as temperatures dipped to the mid-40s, with schools and businesses forced to close for days before power was restored.

[ad_2]

Source link

December 26, 2022
A prolonged winter storm delivers power outages, snarled travel and frigid temperatures on Christmas Day | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

A nearly weeklong winter storm blasting much of the US has plunged temperatures to life-threatening lows, brought blizzards and floods, and left more than a quarter million people without power on Christmas Day.

Blizzard conditions continue across the Great Lakes, while frigid cold temperatures grip the eastern two-thirds of the US, with some major cities in the Southeast, Midwest and East Coast recording their coldest Christmas in decades.

Large areas of the central and eastern US remain under wind chill warnings and advisories, as freeze warnings are in effect across the South.

New York City saw record cold temperatures on Christmas Eve at several locations, including its JFK and LaGuardia airports. The high at Central Park was 15 degrees, marking its second-coldest December 24 in at least 150 years, according to the National Weather Service.

At least 22 deaths have been attributed to dangerous weather conditions since Wednesday, and some residents in the Northeast are spending the holiday without sufficient heat or hot water as extremely cold temperatures persist.

Across the US, 275,856 homes and businesses in the US had no electricity service as of 1 a.m. ET, many of them in Maine and New York, according to PowerOutage.us. Since the start of the storm the number of outages has at times exceeded a million customers.

A power grid operator for at least 13 states in the country’s eastern half asked customers to conserve power and set thermostats lower than usual from early Saturday to 10 a.m. on Sunday because usage was straining capacity.

The operator, PJM Interconnection, serves about 65 million people in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and warned rolling blackouts could happen if the strain becomes too much.

In New York, utility companies Con Edison and Natural Grid US also urged customers to conserve energy, citing extreme weather conditions and increased energy demand on interstate pipelines carrying natural gas into the city.

Meanwhile, a shortage of electricity in Texas prompted the US Department of Energy to declare an emergency Friday, allowing the state’s energy provider to exceed environmental emissions standards until energy usage drops.

In Jackson, Mississippi, frigid temperatures are hampering efforts to repair a large water main break late Saturday, which has caused a loss in water pressure for residents, city officials said.

“We are grateful to the crews who are braving these frigid temperatures on this Christmas Eve night, while working to restore pressure to residents. Their sacrifice does not go unnoticed and is appreciated not only by this administration, but also by every resident who is affected,” the release stated.

The brutal weather conditions have also snarled travel during the busy holiday weekend, with more than 5,000 flights canceled Friday, more than 3,400 flights canceled Saturday, and more than 1,000 canceled for Christmas Day.

Conditions on the road weren’t any better in parts of the country amid whiteout conditions and icy and snow-covered roadways.

In New York’s Erie County – which is seeing blistering blizzard conditions – about 500 motorists found themselves stranded in their vehicles Friday night into Saturday morning, despite a county driving ban put in place during the storm, according to County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

National Guard troops were called in to help “rescue people that are stuck in vehicles,” and to give rides to medical workers so they could relieve colleagues who had been working at hospitals for more than a day, Poloncarz said.

In Seattle, Washington, online videos have documented cars sliding on the icy roads and bumping into each and residents slipping as they walked on sidewalks, CNN affiliate KOMO reported.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will ask the federal government for a declaration of emergency after a blistering winter storm.

“I’ll be asking the federal government for a declaration of emergency that’ll allow us to seek reimbursements for the extraordinary expenses of all the overtime and the fact that we brought in mutual aid from other parts of the state,” Hochul said to reporters Saturday. “We’ve deployed individuals – the utility crews have come but also making sure that we have all the vehicles we need.”

New York’s three storm-related deaths were reported in Erie County. Two died in separate incidents Friday night when emergency medical personnel could not get to their homes in time for medical emergencies, Poloncarz said Saturday morning. Details about the third death, confirmed by a county spokesperson Saturday afternoon, weren’t immediately available.

“The loss of two lives in Buffalo – storm related – because people were not able to get to medical attention, is again a crisis situation that unfolds before your eyes and you realize that lifesaving ambulances and emergency medical personnel cannot get to people during a blizzard situation,” Hochul added.

Other storm-related deaths have been reported in the country. They include:

• Colorado: Police in Colorado Springs, Colorado, reported two deaths related to the cold since Thursday, with one man found near a power transformer of a building possibly looking for warmth, and another in a camp in an alleyway.

• Kansas: Three people have died in weather-related traffic accidents, the Kansas Highway Patrol said Friday.

• Kentucky: Three people have died in the state, officials have said, including one involving a vehicle accident in Montgomery County.

• Missouri: One person died after a caravan slid off an icy road and into a frozen creek, Kansas City police said.

• Ohio: Eight people have died as a result of weather-related auto accidents, including four in a Saturday morning crash on Interstate 75, when a semi tractor-trailer crossed the median and collided with an SUV and a pickup, authorities said.

• Tennessee: The Tennessee Department of Health on Friday confirmed one storm-related fatality.

• Wisconsin: Wisconsin State Patrol on Thursday reported one fatal crash due to winter weather.

In pictures: Winter storm impacts the US

The storm system is forecast to gradually weaken as it lifts into southeastern Canada, moving slowly during the next couple of days and pulling arctic air from Canada down into much of the eastern side of the country.

The Arctic blast being felt across the eastern two-thirds of the nation will slowly moderate into Monday, but dangerous conditions will persist Christmas Day.

The cold temperatures combined with dangerous wind chills will create a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers who become stranded, people who work outside, livestock and pets, according to the National Weather Service.

“In some areas, being outdoors could lead to frostbite in minutes,” the Weather Service warned.

As the frigid air continues to blast the warm waters of the Great Lakes, lake-effect snows and blizzard conditions are expected to continue, but slowly become less intense.

Still, strong gusty winds initially up to 60 mph accompanying the snow downwind from the Great Lakes will continue to make for extremely dangerous conditions on the road.

By Christmas night into Monday, another low pressure system coming from the Pacific will deliver the next surge of moisture toward the Pacific Northwest and then into northern California, according to the Weather Service.

[ad_2]

Source link

December 24, 2022
‘Life or death.’ As Britons buckle under the cost of living crisis, many resort to ‘warm banks’ for heat this winter | CNN

[ad_1]

London
CNN
—

In a community center in central London, a young child plays in a makeshift area as her caregiver rocks her stroller and chats to a friend.

The Oasis Centre in Waterloo sits in a four-story building that has a warm, inviting feeling, with plush chairs and lots of potted plants.

But it’s not your regular high street hangout. This is a haven for families and local people to escape the bitter squeeze of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis – if only for the afternoon.

Thousands of warm banks have opened their doors across the UK this winter, as household budgets are squeezed even further by spiking energy bills and inflation reaches a 40-year high, leaving many scrambling to pay for basic necessities. There are more than 3,000 registered organizations running warm banks in Britain, according to the Warm Welcome Campaign, an initiative that signposts community-led responses to the cost-of-living crisis.

“A lot of people are struggling,” Charlotte, a community and families worker at the center, tells CNN. Her full name is not being disclosed for privacy reasons.

“We haven’t even really got to the peak of the living crisis yet,” the 33-year-old mother-of-four adds. “No one should be choosing whether to put food on the table or to put the heating on.”

The hub is funded by donations from individuals and local businesses, as well as grant incomes from charitable trusts.

The cost of living has risen sharply since early 2021, according to data from the UK government. From October 2021 to October 2022, domestic gas and electricity prices increased by 129% and 66% respectively, the same research found.

The average annual energy bill surged 96% from last autumn to £2,500 (roughly $3,000), with the UK government intervening to cap the unit cost of gas and electricity bills at that level until April 2023. However, the total amount consumers pay for their energy depends on their consumption habits, where they live, how they pay for energy and what type of meter they use, according to the UK’s regulator, Ofgem.

Charlotte, who works at and uses the warm space in Waterloo, says she limits her gas and electricity use in her flat. Instead of turning on the heating in the evening, she and her partner sit under quilts and use hot water bottles to stay warm, she says.

She also anticipates her household energy costs increasing over Christmas, as her children, who are between 4 and 17 years old, spend more time at home during the school holidays. At the moment, Charlotte spends most days at the hub and said this habit will continue over the holidays to help alleviate her costs at home.

Grace Richardson is an adult services manager at Future Projects in Norwich, in eastern England, an organization that offers health, housing and financial support to residents. She says her team started planning over the summer to provide a warm space in the organization’s Baseline Centre, located in an area with significant poverty.

“This winter in particular, it’s extremely important that we’re offering a space that people can turn everything off at home and they can save money,” she tells CNN.

“We’ve got people here working full time and they cannot make ends meet. That’s where the real difference is.”

From young parents to pensioners to students in their 20s, Richardson says that people from all walks of life use the warm space, with about 25 attending each day. The warm bank, where staff serve meals, is subsidized by grant funding from the local council and private or corporate foundations, as well as donations from individuals.

Michael John Edward Easter, 57, says the service at the Baseline Centre has been a lifeline for him this winter.

Easter, who has lymphedema in both legs and arthritis in one knee, is unable to work. Speaking to CNN earlier this month, he said he’d turned the heating on in his one-bedroom flat just twice so far this year to avoid spiking energy costs and compensate for a 50% increase in his weekly supermarket bill.

He says he “was in a mess” when he first reached out to the Baseline Centre in January for welfare advice, as he was dealing with mobility challenges and craved a sense of community.

“I was so ashamed and embarrassed, but I had to cry out for help,” he says. “I needed help and I just didn’t know where to turn to. If I’m totally honest, I’m very lonely.”

Richardson suggests the need for warm banks is a result of government inaction.

“I think that it highlights just how far removed our government is right now from the reality of real life. I think it screams … the divide between us and them, it’s only getting wider,” she says. “We keep referring to this as a cost of living crisis, as though it’s a period of time we’re going to go through and we will come out the other side. Will we? It’s life or death.”

Energy prices have soared across Europe since fall 2021, driven in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine. But UK energy prices rose more sharply than in comparable economies such as France and Italy, analysts told CNN Business this summer.

In November, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt announced higher taxes and reduced public spending in an effort to heave the country out of a recession forecast to last just over a year and shrink its economy by just over 2%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. The UK is the only G7 economy that remains smaller than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The UK government also announced an Energy Bill Support Scheme worth £400 per eligible household, which will partially subsidize domestic energy bills from winter 2022 to 2023, as well as providing extra financial support to help pensioners pay their heating costs this winter under the Winter Fuel Payment scheme.

In December more than one million households with prepayment meters did not redeem their monthly energy support vouchers – included in the government’s Energy Bill Support Scheme – the BBC reported.

But Michael Marmot, a lead researcher in epidemiology and health inequalities, says years of austerity, paltry government support, cuts to spending on social welfare and infrastructure, and a lack of regulation in the UK’s energy market have plunged millions into fuel poverty.

“Poverty has been building up over the last dozen years and getting worse,” says Marmot, director of University College London’s Institute of Health Equity.

“We look the worst in G7 countries, we’re the only one in terms of recovery … that hasn’t gone back to where we were pre-pandemic. This is mismanagement on a colossal scale.”

An estimated 3.69 million households in the UK were in fuel poverty as of December 2020 compared with 6.99 million households in December 2022, Simon Francis, who coordinates the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, told CNN.

This figure is set to steadily increase, with more than three-quarters of UK households – 53 million people – forecast to be in fuel poverty by the new year, according to research by the University of York in northern England.

The human rights organization Save the Children has distributed 2,344 direct grants to low-income families in the UK in the past year, the Guardian reported. The head of the charity also called on the government to provide more support for families, as it predicts acute financial hardship for millions in January.

“What do you want a well-functioning society to do? At the minimum, people should be able to eat, to feed their families, have a safe dwelling … and a safe dwelling includes one that’s warm enough,” Marmot adds.

Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council in Scotland, says warm banks are “not a solution” to the cost of living crisis but rather “an emergency service.” The council has established more than 30 warm banks across the city in spaces including church halls, libraries, sports venues and cafes, and that number is expected to increase, according to Aitken. The service runs on council budgets and charitable donations.

“The solution is for people to be able to stay in their own homes,” she says.

“It’s bad enough that food banks have become a permanent fixture of communities across the UK now. To have places that people have to go to because they can’t afford to heat their own home is an absolute indictment (of government policy).”

CNN has reached out to the UK government for comment, but it did not respond.

Back at the Oasis Centre, locals show up for anything from knitting circles to after-school clubs offering free hot meals.

Steve Chalke, the hub’s founder, says about 200 people use the facility daily for warmth. He says that he does not advertise the service as a warm bank because it is “dehumanizing.” Instead, he coordinates community-led events that are held in warm venues across the city.

“The idea is to not inquire and to not ask,” he says. “It’s stigmatizing and it’s traumatizing, you know, so you end up feeling a non-person. So we want to take away that stigma in every way we can.”

Francis, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition coordinator, says one of the most significant challenges to curbing fuel poverty is removing the taboo that people may feel when asking for support.

“I think one of the problems with fuel poverty … is it is quite a hidden form of poverty. People kind of … try and cover it up and try and get by,” he says. “We’re not going to know the full extent of the pain that people are suffering this winter, because there will be ways that people will disguise what it is that they’re doing.”

The mental health costs of fuel poverty are far-reaching, according to a 2020 report from the UCL Institute of Health Equity. The report said that young people living in cold homes are seven times more likely to have symptoms of poor mental health compared with those living in warm homes.

“There’s surprisingly lots of people that do have work, but yet it’s not enough to keep afloat, at least without needing some help,” says Bintu Tijani, a mother-of-four who goes to the Oasis Centre at least three times a week to warm up. “It’s having a significant impact on people’s wellbeing, mental health and wellbeing.”

Looking ahead to Christmas and the New Year, Francis says he is also concerned about the strain that treatment needed for medical conditions exacerbated or caused by cold weather will have on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

“We’re still calling for the government to realize that if it doesn’t take action to support those who are the most vulnerable … it is going to see a huge increase in the number of people turning up at the NHS’ door to seek help because of the fact that they are now living in a cold, damp home and it is making them sick,” he says.

Britain’s NHS is already under pressure amid staff shortages, historic nurses’ strikes over poor pay and working conditions, and a backlog of treatments resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

Aitken, the councilor in Glasgow, believes this Christmas will “be a pretty miserable time” for many.

“A Christmas where you have to ration how long you can put your heating on in your home is not a good Christmas for anyone.”

[ad_2]

Source link

December 24, 2022
First on CNN: Biden administration moves to phase out compact fluorescent light bulbs and push market toward LEDs | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The Biden administration is unveiling a new proposed rule that, if enacted, would effectively phase out compact fluorescent light bulbs and move the US light bulb markets decisively to more energy-efficient LEDs.

The Department of Energy is proposing the rule on Monday with the aim to finalize it by the end of President Joe Biden’s first term. The rule would more than double the current minimum light bulb efficiency level, from its current standard of 45 lumens per watt to over 120 lumens per watt for the most common bulbs. The details of the proposed rule were shared first with CNN.

This change will accelerate what White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said is an “increasing shift in the marketplace toward LED lighting” over the last decade. Zaidi said moving away from compact fluorescents and even less efficient incandescent bulbs will ultimately lead to savings for consumers.

“The mandate to the Department of Energy from Congress is to find ways to save money for American consumers,” Zaidi told CNN in an interview. “LEDs are now an order of magnitude cheaper than just a decade ago.”

The proposed rule comes on top of the Biden administration’s move to get inefficient incandescent bulbs off the shelves by the summer of 2023. The Department of Energy finalized a rule to phase out the old-fashioned bulbs in the spring, capping off a decades-long bipartisan effort started in the Bush administration to get them off the shelves.

That was complicated by former President Donald Trump in 2019, whose administration undid a previous Obama-era light bulb rule. Trump once famously complained about the quality of the light coming from LED bulbs, telling House Republicans “I always look orange” in the energy-efficient lighting.

Zaidi said that LED lighting technology has improved tremendously since the early days of LEDs, providing better light for a fraction of the cost.

LED bulbs can last three to five times longer than a compact fluorescent bulb, and up to 30 times longer than an incandescent bulb, according to the Department of Energy. Unlike both incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs, LEDs release very little heat, and thus waste less energy.

“If a particular light fixture was costing someone $10 in a year, then it’s going to be costing much, much less,” Zaidi said.

Even before the latest proposed rule, LED use in the US has grown significantly in recent years. Nearly 50% of US households said they used LED bulbs for most or all their indoor lighting, according to the 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. It was a huge increase from the 2015 survey, where just 4% of households reported using LEDs for most or all indoor light use.

That same survey showed just 12% of US households said they used compact fluorescents as their predominant source of lighting, down from 32% in 2015.

DOE also estimates the proposed changes will help put a dent in planet-warming emissions, cutting 131 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 903 thousand tons of methane over the next 30 years – roughly equal to the electricity that 29 million homes use in one year.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement the changes would “help lower energy costs and keep money in the pockets of American families while reducing our nation’s carbon footprint.”

The rulemaking is also part of an administration goal to take 100 actions in the past year to make energy efficiency standards stronger. The White House announced Monday it had surpassed its goal with stronger standards on gas furnaces, air conditioners and clothes dryers.

Zaidi told CNN it is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to move Americans’ appliances to more energy efficient and cost-effective ones that also release far less heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions into the air. For instance, Zaidi said DOE is also at work on a rule to make residential cooking products like stoves and ovens more efficient.

Zaidi added the administration is trying to use a combination of federal standards and incentives to push consumers toward energy-efficient and cleaner products for their homes, whether it be a light bulb, an HVAC unit or a stove.

“We’re laying the foundation for people in every year of this administration being able to lock in more ways to save money on energy bills,” Zaidi said. “One of the things we’ve heard loud and clear is how focused consumers are on not only recognizing that energy costs are front of mind now, but that there are these products that help them avoid impacts to their bottom line as energy costs fluctuate in the future.”

[ad_2]

Source link

December 19, 2022
As more in North Carolina regain power, investigators probe domestic terrorism and threats against power infrastructure across the US | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

A growing number of reported threats to power infrastructure are under investigation following attacks on substations in the South and on the West Coast as electricity becomes a more critical need in winter.

Even before the gun assaults Saturday in Moore County, North Carolina, wiped out power for days to thousands, at least five electricity substations in Oregon and Washington had been attacked in November, according to energy companies.

And now, the FBI is involved after reports of shots fired Wednesday near a power station in Ridgeway, South Carolina, a Duke Energy spokesperson told CNN. No outages or known property damage was reported at the Wateree Hydro Station, spokesperson Jeff Brooks said.

While no motive or suspect behind the North Carolina attacks has been identified, investigators are zeroing in on two possible threads centered on extremist behavior: writings by extremists on online forums encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure and a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ+ events across the nation by domestic extremists, law enforcement sources told CNN.

Though investigators have no evidence connecting the Moore County outage to a drag event that began there around when the lights went out, the timing and context of armed confrontations around similar LBGTQ+ events across the country are being considered, the sources told CNN. The outage ended the Moore County drag show after audience members lit the stage with phone flashlights, Sandhills PRIDE has said.

The FBI had warned of reports of threats to electricity infrastructure by people espousing racially or ethnically motivated extremist ideology “to create civil disorder and inspire further violence,” the agency said in a November 22 bulletin sent to private industry.

Beyond this month’s incidents in South Carolina and North Carolina, where lights flickered back on Wednesday:

• In Oregon, a substation in Clackamas was damaged in a “deliberate physical attack” over the Thanksgiving holiday, a Bonneville Power Administration spokesperson told CNN. “BPA operators discovered a cut perimeter fence and damaged equipment inside,” the spokesperson said, adding the company is working with the FBI on the incident.

• In Washington state, “two incidents occur(ed) in late November at two different substations,” Puget Sound Energy spokesperson told CNN. “Both incidents are currently under investigation by the FBI,” it said, adding, “We are aware of recent threats on power systems across the country and take these very seriously.”

And two Cowlitz County Public Utility District substations were vandalized in mid-November in the Woodland area, agency spokesperson Alice Dietz told The Seattle Times. “At this time, we do not have any further comment … Our facilities have since been repaired,” Dietz told the Times. CNN has reached out to the FBI’s office in Seattle for comment.

Anti-government groups in the past two years began using online forums to urge followers to attack critical infrastructure, including the power grid. They have posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles.

One 14-page guide obtained by CNN cited as an example the 2013 sniper attack on a high voltage substation at the edge of Silicon Valley that destroyed 17 transformers and cost Pacific Gas and Electric $15 million in repairs.

The caliber of the bullets in that California incident is different from those used in North Carolina, a law enforcement source told CNN.

But whoever attacked the North Carolina substations “knew exactly what they were doing,” Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields has said.

Investigators recovered around the damaged substations nearly two dozen shell casings from a high-powered rifle, law enforcement sources told CNN. While no rifle has been recovered, the ballistics may still offer critical evidence. And bullets pulled from a transformer station and brass shell casings found a short distance away are being examined, the sources said.

The casings can be entered into a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives database and matched to any other shell casings fired by the same gun at another crime scene, or to the gun itself if it’s found. The locations of the casings may also offer clues.

The sheriff on Wednesday asked the public to provide any surveillance footage from the areas that were hit and announced $75,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible.

Someone who lives near the West End substation heard around 20 gunshots in quick succession the night of the attack on the station, he told CNN affiliate WRAL. The power did not go out for about 30 minutes after that, he said.

“Me and my wife were just sitting on the couch just watching a movie and all of the sudden, about 8:45, about 20 shots fired off right across the street,” Spencer Matthews told WRAL.

The outages crippled the local economy and paralyzed daily life for more than 45,000 homes and businesses. And just because the electricity is back on doesn’t mean the pain is over.

Businesses “have lost a tremendous amount over the last few days,” Moore County Manager Wayne Vest said. The outages affected more than 600 food establishments, Moore County Health Director Matt Garner said

“We know our residents are going to end the day and go through the night in power and light and in safety. But there’s another element of our population is still suffering … and that’s our local merchants,” Pinehurst Mayor John Strickland said.

“If you’re dining out, if you’re only going to go out once, go out twice,” Vest said. “If you were going to shop and buy one package, buy two packages.”

[ad_2]

Source link

December 8, 2022
Why the power grid is an ‘attractive target’ for attacks | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
—

The motivation behind an attack on the electrical grid in a North Carolina county remains a mystery.

But the method – apparently coordinated attacks on multiple substations – exploits a vulnerability that has long been a source of concern for authorities warning about domestic terrorism.

Just last week the Department of Homeland Security renewed a national bulletin to warn of attacks on critical infrastructure.

The details of this particular story are only starting to come into view, although Moore County, North Carolina, remains plunged in darkness. The FBI has joined the hunt for answers into how attacks on substations left around 40,000 without power over the weekend.

In a Sunday news conference, the county sheriff described the attacks as “intentional” and “targeted,” but had no reason why the person or persons involved would choose the place.

CNN’s Whitney Wild, reporting from Moore County, mentioned online rumors that disrupting a drag show planned for Saturday night may have been the cause of the attack, but authorities have not confirmed that and said no person or group has claimed responsibility.

What authorities have confirmed is that someone or some people removed a gate at one substation from its hinges. The damage to transformers was apparently caused by gunfire, although it’s not clear what kind of weapon was used.

Most of the roughly 40,000 people who lost power aren’t expected to get it back until Thursday, according to Duke Energy.

Mike Cameron is the assistant town manager and fire chief of Southern Pines, North Carolina, which is in Moore County.

Appearing on CNN on Monday, he said medical calls have increased as people who rely on oxygen and plug-in medical devices struggle.

In temperatures that have dipped almost to freezing overnight, people have gotten creative to heat their homes, which has led to an increase in calls about house fires.

There has also been an increase in emergency calls about traffic accidents, “just because our traffic lights are obviously not working,” he said.

Southern Pines Mayor Carol Haney did not hold back on her message to whoever is responsible for plunging her town into darkness.

“It is just a horrible, horrible terrorist, in my opinion, act. Cowardly,” she told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on Monday.

The mayor of Pinehurst, North Carolina, John Strickland, said on CNN that investigators will have to determine if this was a targeted attack by domestic extremists, but he said it was meant to be destructive.

“This is clearly an act that was intentional, very forceful and an act of vandalism to create a situation where the citizens of Pinehurst and Moore County are lacking heat and other support services at the present time,” he said on “CNN Newsroom.”

FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital is currently being powered by diesel fuel, according to its president, Jonathan Davis, but elective procedures have been delayed.

CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller said this type of attack has long been feared.

The American electrical grid is decentralized and controlled by a hybrid of public and private entities.

“The challenge is most of these places are outdoors, most are in remote areas and most of them are available for attack from a long distance,” Miller said on “CNN This Morning.”

He also noted there has been an uptick in chatter among various anti-government and ecoterrorist groups who consider attacks on the electrical infrastructure as a way to create chaos in the US.

In particular, Miller said right wing neo-Nazi groups have suggested creating a chain reaction of attacks to systematically take down the power grid.

“Their theory is that if you identify the key nodes and you knock out one and they divert power to the next one, and you knock out the next one and the next one, a domino effect can actually start to topple the national grid and plunge the nation into darkness and chaos,” Miller said.

It’s obviously not clear if this North Carolina attack is anything along those lines, but the Department of Homeland Security has been warning about such attacks for some time.

Sniper fire hit a Silicon Valley substation in April 2013, when 150 rounds from an assault rifle took out 17 transformers. Workers rerouted power in that case, but repairs to the transformers took nearly a month.

Miller said that after that incident, power companies and the government undertook a systemic review of grid security and made changes to add more cameras and motion sensors.

In January 2022, CNN’s Geneva Sands reported on a DHS memo about potential electrical grid threats from extremist groups angry at the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Violent extremist groups have identified the electrical grid as a “particularly attractive target,” according to the intelligence bulletin, and have drawn up specific plans.

In October 2020, the memo noted, White supremacists in Idaho were charged with conspiracy for trying to damage transformers in that area.

Also, in May 2020 the government charged followers of the Boogaloo movement, which believes there is a civil war coming, for allegedly conspiring to attack a substation in Las Vegas. Their larger goal was to incite riots and violence.

Unsophisticated small-scale attacks are unlikely to cause the kind of large-scale meltdown that anti-government plotters envision, but they are likely to cause substantial harm and expensive damage – which is precisely what’s happening in Moore County.

Juliette Kayyem, a CNN analyst and the former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at DHS, said on CNN’s “The Lead” that investigators are probably looking at three possible scenarios:

Foreign attack. She said this seems unlikely, since Moore County is a rural area and not the expected target for a foreign actor.

Hate crime or domestic terrorism. She noted the lights went out at the drag show, which was organized by a LGBTQ group, just as it began.

Insider threat. Kayyem noted the knowledge it would take to disable the substations could be a clue.

“You don’t just drive by these places and know where to shoot,” she said. “(Investigators) will be looking at the potential there was either casing or someone who knew the area, the facilities and knew where to shoot. These aren’t drive-by incidents,” she said.

[ad_2]

Source link

December 5, 2022