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JENKINSVILLE, S.C. — Federal officials have issued a warning about a substantial safety violation at a South Carolina nuclear plant after cracks were discovered again in a backup emergency fuel line.

Small cracks have been found a half-dozen times in the past 20 years in pipes that carry fuel to emergency generators that provide cooling water for a reactor if electricity fails at the V.C. Summer plant near Columbia, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The agency issued what it calls a preliminary “yellow” warning to plant owner Dominion Energy last week.

It is the second most serious category and only seven similar warnings have been issued across the country since 2009, nuclear power expert David Lochbaum told The State newspaper after reviewing records from federal regulators.

The commission’s ruling is not final and Dominion will have a chance to explain what happened, utility spokesman Darryl Huger told the paper in an email.

Dominion has already started to put in place a plan to improve the reliability of the backup system, Huger said.

A crack first appeared on a diesel fuel pipe in 2003, and similar pipes have had other cracks since then.

During a 24-hour test of the system in November, a small diesel fuel leak grew larger, according to NRC records.

The agency issued the preliminary yellow warning because of the repeated problems.

Virginia-based Dominion hasn’t been the only owner of the plant. SCANA built and started the plant in 1984. The South Carolina company had plans to build two more reactors, but billions of dollars of cost overruns forced it to abandon the project in 2017 and sell to Dominion.

Dominion has recently requested to renew the license for the nuclear plant for an additional 40 years.

Longtime nuclear safety advocate Tom Clements told the newspaper the pipe problems should mean a lot more scrutiny by regulators.

“This incident serves as a wake-up call to fully analyze all such systems prior to a license-renewal determination,’’ Clements said in an email.

Three teenage boys in Northern Florida are accused of creating a pair of hit lists that authorities said threatened to harm and kill the high school students who were named.

The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office said the three boys — Nikita Calantropo, 15; Ron Quinones, 14, and Kiryl Nerad, 14 — were arrested Friday and charged with felonies for penning what police called a “hit list” and “lethal hit list” that targeted students at Creekside High School.

The sheriff’s office said deputies discovered group text messages between the teenage suspects where the faces of specific students were circled and the accused boys talked about using guns. 

Sheriff Robert Hardwick also said that some of the targeted students had their addresses listed in the text messages.

“Nothing is more important to me than the safety of our children and this is another example of the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office commitment to protect the more than 50,000 students who attend classes on a daily basis,” Sheriff Hardwick said. “I am proud of the youth services deputies assigned to this investigation, who acted quickly on the information that was provided and prevented a potential tragedy.” 

None of the boys are currently behind bars, according to statewide jail records.

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president said Monday he is going to send a diplomatic note to the United States to protest Texas truck inspections that have caused major delays at border crossings.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador claimed Monday that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to enforce additional truck inspections was “very irresponsible” and politically motivated.

Mexico’s national freight transport chamber said Sunday that 19,000 trucks were delayed at the border. The freight association claimed the delayed trucks were carrying about $1.9 billion in goods.

It said in a statement that the delays were “severely affecting” cross-border trade.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said it had started “enhanced commercial vehicle safety inspections” on Sept. 19 in crossing around El Paso and Del Rio, Texas, “to deter the placement of migrants and other smuggling activity” and detect unsafe vehicles.

López Obrador claimed it was about politics.

“We are going to send a diplomatic note today to protest the Texas governor’s attitude of putting up obstacles to free transit on our borders without any reason, but rather with political motivations,” López Obrador said. “He is using the immigration issue to play politics.”

Bridge closures and train delays because of the influx of migrants crossing the border have also affected freight traffic in recent weeks.

Less than half of all adolescents with clinical depression during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic received mental health treatment as lockdowns kept them home, a study has found.

Four researchers based in Massachusetts published the study Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. They examined the data of 10,743 12- to 17-year-olds who responded to a national health survey Jan. 14-Dec. 20, 2021.

About 1 in 5 adolescents were clinically depressed during the first full calendar year of the pandemic, the study found. It reported that 33.3% of Asian adolescents, 39.5% of Blacks, 29.2% of Latinos, 45.0% of White adolescents and 22.1% of mixed-race adolescents received treatment such as psychiatric medication or talk therapy.

“The high levels of [major depressive disorder] and the low levels of mental health treatment access may in part be attributed to COVID-19 restrictions,” the researchers wrote.

The study noted that 42 states and territories issued stay-at-home orders that impacted 73% of counties nationwide from March 1 to May 31, 2020.

Symptoms of major depressive disorder, also known as clinical depression, include at least two weeks of persistent bad moods, low self-esteem and a loss of interest in favorite activities. People with it often experience sleeplessness, social withdrawal, lack of appetite and suicidal thoughts.

According to the researchers, unmet care needs surged amid “increased feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, and loneliness among adolescents due to social isolation, virtual school, and lack of peer interaction” during the pandemic.

They pointed to earlier data showing that national rates of major depression among adolescents doubled between 2009 and 2019, setting the stage for disaster as lockdowns deprived young people of healthy social outlets.

In the study published Monday, racial and ethnic minorities experienced the lowest treatment rates. Researchers noted that these adolescents were also more likely than White children to live in poverty, have public health insurance, reside in large urban areas and report poor or fair health.

The study found that Asian and Latino adolescents had lower rates than White adolescents of virtual mental health treatment. Additionally, Blacks and Latinos had lower rates than White adolescents of mental health care appointments transitioning to telehealth.

“These findings suggest that US federal policy should target adolescents as a whole, and racial and ethnic minority populations in particular, to ensure timely and equitable access to high-quality mental health treatment,” the researchers concluded.