Up First from NPR - Extreme Weather, Ukrainian Nuclear Power, Maui Unemployment

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Can a summer of extreme weather be linked to climate change? Ukraine is the only country that relies on nuclear power while it withstands an invasion. Unemployment lingers in Maui a month after deadly fires.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrea Kissack, Michael Sullivan, Katia Riddle and Peter Granitz. It was produced by Shelby Hawkins, Chad Campbell and Ziad Buchh. We get engineering support from Gilly Moon. And our technical director is Josephine Nyounai.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Daniel, how's it going? It's Friday. One more day. It's Friday. I know. I really struggled sleeping. I don't know how I'm here. You're going to get the whole weekend.

I know. I'm excited. What are your plans this weekend? Anything good? Sit around and do not much. That's my plan. We're so similar. From desert downpours to Mediterranean fires, a summer of weather extremes.

Is this the new normal? The lows aren't as low as they used to be, and the highs are higher than they used to be. And that will continue for it. I'm Leila Faldin with Daniel Estrin, and this is Up First from NPR News. Ukraine's trying to do something no other country has, continue operating nuclear power plants with Russian artillery attacks nearby. How long can it continue to operate amid a war at home? And a month after a deadly fire destroyed Lahaina, Hawaii,

residents are desperate for work. I need to make money. I'm making phone calls, applying online, but no, no, nobody. So stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin

marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. It's been a summer of extremes. Dozens recently died in Brazil when a cyclone dropped more than 11 inches of rain in 24 hours. Greece has been dealing with severe flooding following deadly wildfires. In the Nevada desert, people got stuck in the mud at the Burning Man Festival when torrential rain soaked the driest state in America. And much of the world has been baking in intense heat.

What is going on? Michael Copley joins us from NPR's Climate Desk. Good morning. Good morning, Daniel. Let's start with the heat. This summer felt hotter than usual. Is that true? Well, you're right.

It has been different. This summer was the hottest on record with heat waves in places like the U.S., Europe, and Japan. So what we're seeing is that heat waves are happening more and more frequently, and the hot days are getting hotter. And that's mainly because we keep burning fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, trapping heat close to the earth. But what's also happening right now is something called an El Nino. It's a natural weather pattern that happens periodically, and it's pushing up global temperatures. So that's amplifying the warming that we're getting from climate change. Okay. And does that warming have any connection to the

extreme rainfall that we've been seeing in Brazil and Greece and other places? So what we know is that warmer air holds more moisture and warmer water acts like fuel for hurricanes. So what we're seeing right now in Brazil, for example, where a cyclone has caused severe flooding is the kind of extreme event that we can expect to happen more often as the planet gets hotter. That's according to Andrew Weaver. He's a professor of earth and ocean sciences at the University of Victoria. This year, what we've seen is remarkable ocean temperatures worldwide. And what we're seeing then is a direct consequence of that is, you know, more energy being fed into the system. And when you look at the intense rain we've seen in Nevada, state officials say flooding is going to become more common there in the future.

And that's because there are going to be more intense storms because hotter temperatures will mean less snow and more rain. Okay, that's interesting. I hadn't connected the dots before. So hot air causes more rain. Hot air also heats oceans and fuels hurricanes. Is that it? That's right.

Is this the new normal? You know, when I spoke to Professor Weaver, what he says is we're not necessarily going to continue seeing record-breaking heat year after year, but there's every reason to believe we will keep breaking records in the future, especially during years with an El Nino weather pattern. What you're seeing, and you can see that in all the records globally, is that the lows aren't as low as they used to be and the highs are higher than they used to be. And that will continue forward. Scientists say this pattern of extreme weather is going to continue until we stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Okay, now this is a hypothetical question

because we're nowhere near close to actually stopping greenhouse gas emissions. But let's say we stop them tomorrow. Would that stop this extreme weather? The reality is that carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for a long time, like hundreds of years. So we're going to be living with the consequences of the emissions we've already put into the atmosphere. So there's a lag. But there's a much bigger problem. Humans keep putting more greenhouse gases up there. World leaders have already agreed we need to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. That's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If we can keep to that goal, it would stave off some of the most dire consequences.

But the reality is we're on track to exceed that mark. So the first thing to do is to start cutting emissions. All right. NPR's Michael Copley, thank you so much. Thanks, Daniel. Ukraine is trying to do something no nation has ever attempted. It's operating a nuclear power industry in the middle of a war. The nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia has already been caught up in the fighting. At least nine other Soviet-era reactors are operating in parts of the country where drone and missile strikes are common. So let's understand the risks with NPR's Brian Mann in Kiev, who

visited a nuclear power plant last week. Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Daniel. What does a nuclear reactor look like in wartime? Well, it looks like most civilian atomic power plants. The one I visited was in Melnitsky in western Ukraine. It's a huge, brightly painted complex of buildings, which means it's a pretty visible target. I spoke about this with Edwin Lyman. He's an American physicist who heads the Nuclear Power Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists. These plants were not designed to be hardened against military attack. And even though there is some capability to protect their airspace from missiles and drones,

it's not perfect. And Daniel, there have already been reports of drone and missile strikes really close to these plants. And last year, Russian air attacks briefly knocked out the off-site power supply that's needed to operate all these plants safely. Brian, has a nuclear facility ever been attacked anywhere in the world? You know, during previous conflicts, mainly in the Middle East, nuclear facilities have occasionally come under attack. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, for example, Iran attacked a nuclear facility in Iraq. Those incidents generally involved complexes that

were under construction or unfueled and non-operational, or in some other cases, the targeted reactors involved military research or weapons development. What's different here is that Ukraine is operating a civilian atomic power network, the first ever in this kind of sustained wartime threat. So can the Ukrainians run these plants safely when Russian missiles are falling? Well, they say they have no choice. These atomic reactors provide about half of Ukraine's electricity. And so officials here say they're scrambling to improve air defenses around these plants. During my visit, I interviewed Petro Kotkin, who's head of Ukraine's National Nuclear Power Utility. We constantly increase the protection of nuclear power plants.

This is a task for our militaries and for special anti-drone equipment. But Kotkin acknowledged there's a real danger here. His engineers and technicians are trying to do something that's never been tried before. And he pointed specifically to his technicians working at Zaporizhia, who face the greatest stress. That plant is still occupied by Russian soldiers. And Kotkin told me he worries that a Fukushima-like disaster could happen there. OK, wow, that's scary.

What makes the Zaporizhia plant so vulnerable? Yeah, some of the fiercest combat right now is happening only about 50 miles away from that nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. And officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency have inspectors on site. But last week, the IAEA issued a statement warning that Russian troops are refusing to let their team inspect key parts of the complex. They want to see whether mines or other military explosives have been placed in sensitive areas. The IAEA also reported that an attack drone hit a residential building close to the Zaporizhzhia reactor last month. So that's clearly the most vulnerable high-risk

situation. But as this war drags on, experts I interview say the nine other reactors operating across Ukraine, they're also really vulnerable. Okay. NPR's Brian Mann in Kiev. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. After a wildfire last month destroyed the town of Lahaina, Hawaii, activists and celebrities went on social media and told tourists to stay away from the island of Maui. And people have, but now Maui is facing an economic crisis and lots of people are losing jobs. NPR's Adrian Florido has been reporting in Maui. Good morning, Adrian. Good morning, Adrian. Good morning, Daniel. So it's been exactly a month since the fire, which killed at least 115 people. Hundreds of

people are still tragically unaccounted for. But tell us about this other crisis that's unfolding now. Yeah, it's an unemployment crisis. And not just in the town of Lahaina where the fire was. All of Maui has seen this huge drop in tourism. Restaurants and hotels are pretty much empty, and so workers everywhere have been getting laid off or having their hours slashed. I spoke with a woman from Lahaina who lost her home and everything she owned in the fire, and who also lost her job at a restaurant in the center of town. The restaurant didn't burn, but it is surrounded by destruction,

and so it won't soon reopen. This woman, Yeriet Oler, has been looking for work anywhere on the island. I told my friend, like, if you know someone who needs a housekeeper, I'm up for it. Like, I need to make money. I'm making phone calls, applying online, but no, nobody. Oh, wow. How widespread is unemployment? Well, to put it into perspective, Daniel, the week before the fire, 130 people on Maui filed unemployment claims.

The full week after the fire, 4,500 people did, and thousands more have filed for unemployment since then. Oh my goodness, so that is a stark contrast. And so how have residents been surviving if they can't find work? Well, Yari Olea, who we just heard from, friends have been helping her find one-off gigs, cleaning houses, a few hours of work here and there. I spoke with a worker at one resort hotel who said that he had not seen his hotel as empty as it is since the pandemic. Some of his co-workers have been let go and the rest are all giving up shifts. A lot of workers on Maui and business owners suspect that jobs are not going to return until Maui's tourists start to return.

Yeah, it's just devastating to imagine, you know, this iconic slice of paradise like Maui's tourists start to return. Yeah, it's just devastating to imagine, you know, this iconic slice of paradise like Maui just empty of visitors. I saw this recent picture of a beach that's just usually packed with tourists swimming with sea turtles, and the beach was completely empty. When is tourism going to bounce back? Yeah, that is the big question on everyone's minds, Daniel. The activists and celebrities, you know, who sent out that message after the fire that tourists should avoid Maui did not anticipate that an economic fallout of this scale would come of that. Business leaders and workers are trying to get the message out that they want tourists

back. Now, others are saying, look, this is the risk of having an economy that's so dependent on tourism. And then there are others who are, you know, working to expand people's employment options. I spoke with Kahelani Peleras. She works with the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement and has been working to train people on Maui for the kinds of jobs that are going to be needed to rebuild Lahaina, hazmat cleanup, construction, big rig drivers. What we want to provide is the ability to actively participate in the recovery efforts and help rebuild their own communities instead of having to go out of state to bring people in to do those jobs.

You know, Daniel, no one has any illusions that this is an immediate solution to Maui's problems right now. The jobs will return to the island when tourists do. But how long it's going to take for that to happen, whether that's weeks or months, that is really hard to say. NPR's Adrian Florido, who's been reporting on Maui. Thank you, Adrian. Thank you, Daniel. And that's Up First for Friday, September 8th. I'm Daniel Estrin. And I'm Leila Faldin. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrea Kisak, Michael Sullivan, Katia Riddle, and Peter Granitz. It was produced by Shelby Hawkins,

Ziad Butch, and Chad Campbell. We get engineering support from Gilly Moon, Thank you. What's it going to take to end the Hollywood strikes? Union President Fran Drescher on how studios can get artists off the picket lines and back to work. Listen to Consider This wherever you get your podcasts.