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The Trump Administration exempts new nuclear reactors from environmental review

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The Trump Administration exempts new nuclear reactors from environmental review

The Advanced Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory. The laboratory will soon be home to five new test reactors being built by private companies. Supporters hope the reactors will power data centers needed for Artificial Intelligence.

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The Trump Administration is excluding new experimental reactors being built at sites around the U.S. from a major environmental law that would have required them to disclose how their construction and operation might harm the environment. The law also typically required a written, public assessment of the possible consequences of a nuclear accident.

The exclusion comes just days after NPR revealed officials at the Department of Energy had secretly rewritten environmental, safety and security rules to make it easier for the reactors to be built.

The Department of Energy announced the change Monday in a notice in the Federal Register. It said the department would begin excluding advanced nuclear reactors from the National Environmental Policy Act. The act requires federal agencies to consider the environment when undertaking new projects and programs.

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The law also requires extensive reporting on how proposed programs might impact local ecosystems. That documentation, known as an Environmental Impact Statement, and a second lesser type of analysis, known as an Environmental Assessment, provide an opportunity for the public to review and comment on potential projects in their community.

In its notice, the Energy Department cited the inherent safety of the advanced reactor designs as the reason they should be excluded from environmental reviews. “Advanced reactor projects in this category typically employ inherent safety features and passive safety systems,” it said.

The exemption had been expected, according to Adam Stein, the director of nuclear energy innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank that studies nuclear power and the tech sector. President Trump explicitly required it in an executive order on nuclear power he signed last May.

Stein says he thinks the exclusion “is appropriate” for some reactors in the program, and notes that previous reactors built by the Energy Department have not been found to have significant environmental impacts.

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But critics of the proposed exemption questioned whether the new reactors, whose designs’ differ from earlier ones, really are as safe as claimed.

Until now, the test reactor designs currently under construction have primarily existed on paper, according to Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. He believes the lack of real world experience with the reactors means that they should be subject to more rigorous safety and environmental reviews before they’re built.

“The fact is that any nuclear reactor, no matter how small, no matter how safe it looks on paper, is potentially subject to severe accidents,” Lyman said.

Seeking Swift Approval

The move to exclude advanced reactors from environmental reviews comes amid a push to build multiple such reactors by the summer.

The Energy Department’s Reactor Pilot Program is seeking to begin operations of at least three advanced test reactors by July 4 of this year. The program was initiated in response to the executive order signed by President Trump, which was designed to help jump start the nuclear industry.

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The reactors are being built by around ten nuclear startups, which are being financed with billions in private capital, much of it from Silicon Valley. The goal, supporters say, is to develop new sources of electricity for power-hungry AI data centers.

Last week, NPR disclosed that officials at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory had extensively rewritten internal rules for the new test reactors. The new rules softened protections for groundwater and the environment. For example, rules that once said the environment “must” be protected, now say consideration “may be given to avoiding or minimizing, if practical, potential adverse impacts.”

Experts were critical of the changes, which were shared with the companies but not disclosed to the public. The new rules constitute “very clearly a loosening that I would have wanted to see exposed to public discussion,” Kathryn Huff, a professor of plasma and nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who served as head of the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy from 2022 to 2024, told NPR after reviewing the documents.

In a statement to NPR, the Energy Department said the new rules continue “to protect the public and the environment from any undue risks.”

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“DOE follows applicable U.S. EPA requirements in these areas,” it said.

Environmental review not needed

The decision to exclude the reactors from conducting environmental reviews means there will be less of an opportunity for the public to comment. But the environmental review process may not be an appropriate forum for such discussion anyway, Stein noted.

“I think that there’s a need for public participation, particularly for public acceptance,” he said. But he added, “the public just writing comments on an [Environmental Impact Statement] that ultimately would get rejected doesn’t help the public have a voice in any way that would shape any outcome.”

The Energy Department did not respond to NPR’s request for comment about the new exclusion, but in its Federal Register notice and an accompanying written record of support, it said that such reviews were unnecessary. The new reactors have “key attributes such as safety features, fuel type, and fission product inventory that limit adverse consequences from releases of radioactive or hazardous material from construction, operation, and decommissioning,” according to the notice.

Lyman said that he vehemently disagreed with that assessment.

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“I think the DOE’s attempts to cut corners on safety, security and environmental protections are posing a grave risk to public health, safety and our natural environment here in the United States,” he said.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt

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Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt

Lionel Messi #10 of Argentina celebrates scoring his team’s second goal during their World Cup match against Egypt in Atlanta on Tuesday.

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They looked beaten. And out. Argentina, the defending World Cup champion and No. 1-ranked team, was down 2-0 late against Egypt.

Then, in a span of 13 remarkable minutes, Argentina scored not once, not twice, but three times, capping a comeback for the ages and leaving Egypt stunned and shellshocked.

For much of the game in Atlanta, Egypt was in control, hobbling Argentina early. The Egyptian attack began almost immediately with a stunning header goal delivered by Yasser Ibrahim in the 15th minute. After that, Egypt’s defense closed ranks, making it practically impossible for Argentina to equalize.

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It was downhill from there for the Argentines: team captain Lionel Messi failed to convert a penalty kick, and in the 67th minute, Egypt got a second goal from Mostafa Ziko (after an earlier Egyptian goal had been disallowed after a video review). It looked like Argentina was finished. On the brink of elimination.

But no one told the Argentine players that.

In the 79th minute, Lionel Messi began doing his thing. He fired a cross near the Egyptian goal, and Cristian Romero headed it in. Messi was not done. Four minutes later, he powered a shot past the Egyptian keeper. It was his eighth goal of this tournament, the most of any player. The score was 2-2.

Then, in stoppage time, yet another Argentina header and another goal, this time from Enzo Fernandez.

“This is the World Cup for you,” said Messi after the game. “It wasn’t easy to come back from two goals down. But as I always say, this group never gives up. We always try to fight until the end.”

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French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.

French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.

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Afterward, Egypt coach Hossam Hassan complained about the French referee and the officiating. “I am not convinced. I am not convinced with this outcome. I’m not convinced with the way things unfolded during this match,” said Hassan in a post-match news conference. “We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice.”

“We would have deserved to earn this win, but we are leaving with honor, with pride, regardless of this defeat,” said Hossan.

African soccer teams have been the stars of this World Cup. Morocco has yet to lose a game. Cape Verde qualified for the first time in its history and stymied Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. Argentina barely beat them in a nail-biter of a match.

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