Monday, March 14, 2011

Japan Appeals for Aid

Japan Appeals for Aid in Fight to Prevent Nuclear Meltdown

Prime Minister Naoto Kan

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan addresses a crisis meeting in Tokyo on Monday. Source: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Kelley, a nuclear engineer and former contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy, Seth Grae, chief executive officer of Lightbridge Corp., and Bill Tucker, editor of NuclearTownhall.com, offer their views on damage at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear facility resulting from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. This report also contains comments from Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and Anthony Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute. (Source: Bloomberg)

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Tucker, editor of NuclearTownhall.com and author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey," talks about efforts to prevent a nuclear meltdown and contain the spread of radiation after a second blast rocked an atomic plant north of Tokyo. Tucker speaks with Matt Miller and Adam Johnson on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Seth Grae, chief executive officer of Lightbridge Corp., discusses damage to Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima nuclear plant after Japan's strongest earthquake on record, the impact on the local population and environment, and the safety of nuclear power plants in the U.S. Grae speaks with Margaret Brennan on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness." (Source: Bloomberg)

Emergency Personnel Recover a Body in Miyagi

A Japanese rescue team transports a body in the town of Watari, Miyagi prefecture on Monday. Source: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it has resumed efforts to inject seawater into a nuclear reactor damaged by Japan’s biggest earthquake after the failure of the cooling system heightened the risk of a meltdown.

Water levels at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant’s No. 2 reactor aren’t rising enough and fuel rods were exposed, company officials told reporters this morning in a briefing. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano later said the cooling function is working, though it isn’t stable.

As workers battled to head off a further crisis after a second explosion at the plant north of Tokyo, millions of people remained without electricity or water following the earthquake, which may have killed 10,000. Japan sought aid from the United Nations atomic agency, and the U.S. pledged any help needed.

The March 11 temblor -- updated yesterday to a magnitude of 9, from 8.9, by the U.S. Geological Survey -- and subsequent tsunami have led to what Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the country’s worst crisis since World War II. Stocks plunged and the Bank of Japan poured record funds into the economy.

No large release of radiation was detected after the explosion, which didn’t breach Fukushima power station’s No. 3 reactor and followed a build-up of hydrogen gas, Edano told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. The risk of a large leak is small, he said.

“The situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant continues to be a concern,” Kan said at a meeting of the government’s crisis-response team in Tokyo. “Everyone connected with this is working with all their might, without regard to day or night, to prevent further damage.”

Record Radiation Levels

The cooling system failed at Fukushima Daiichi station’s No. 1 and No. 3 reactors after the earthquake, and it stopped working yesterday at the No. 2 reactor. Operator Tokyo Electric had earlier said it couldn’t rule out that fuel rods are melting at the No. 2 reactor after they became exposed for a second time by a drop in water levels.

Radiation levels reached 3,130 microsieverts an hour at the monitoring site near the gate of the plant as of 9:37 p.m. local time on March 14 -- twice the previous record. Radiation had retreated to 326.2 microsieverts per hour at 10:35 p.m., Tokyo Electric said.

Japan’s government asked the UN atomic agency to provide “expert missions” to help stabilize the nuclear reactors, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano said in a statement from Vienna.

The U.S. has dispatched two nuclear technicians to Japan to help with the reactors and stands ready to provide more aid.

Death Toll Climbing

“We are confident that they will overcome this challenge and recover from this tragedy,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

The death toll may reach 10,000 in Miyagi prefecture, north of Tokyo, said Go Sugawara, a spokesman for the prefectural police department. The official toll counts 1,823 dead and 2,369 missing, the National Police Agency said.

About 1.3 million households were without power, and 1.4 million had no running water, according to a government report. Rescue teams were having trouble reaching about 24,000 people stranded in northeastern Japan, NHK Television said.

More than 310,000 people are in emergency shelters and heating systems are short of fuel, the state broadcaster reported.

Emergency Supplies

About 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water, 100,000 packages of instant noodles, 10,000 diapers and 130 portable toilets were en route to the most devastated areas, according to a statement on the prime minister’s website.

Convoys of army trucks and police buses could be seen heading in both directions on the Tohoku expressway, which runs from Tokyo to the north of Japan. In the town of Motomiya, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) north of the capital, ambulances and Tokyo Electric vehicles were queuing up for petrol at a gasoline station.

Some of the expressways leading north from Tokyo were closed to regular traffic for the relief efforts. Drivers are allowed to buy 10 liters (2.6 gallons) at gasoline stands that have fuel, attendants told Bloomberg News.

Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Kaoru Yosano said “the economic impact will exceed the 20 trillion yen in damage sustained during the Kobe earthquake” of 1995. The government still has 1.3 trillion yen ($15.8 billion) in discretionary funds from this year’s budget that can be allocated for quake relief, he said at a press conference.

Stocks Plunge

The Bank of Japan poured a record 15 trillion yen into the world’s third-biggest economy as the earthquake triggered a plunge in stocks and surge in credit risk. Japan’s Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average closed 6.2 percent down, the biggest one-day drop since December 2008.

Kan is sending 100,000 Self-Defense Forces personnel into the areas around Sendai, a city of 1 million people, for search- and-rescue efforts, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said. About 190 aircraft and 45 vessels were deployed to transport injured people and supplies, according to the Defense Ministry website. More than 50 countries pledged help.

The parliament suspended its current session, Kyodo News reported, citing lawmakers.

“Our country faces its worst crisis since the end of the war 65 years ago,” an emotional Kan said at a nationally televised press conference in Tokyo yesterday. “I’m convinced that working together with all our might, the Japanese people can overcome this.”

New Quakes

A temblor measuring 6.1 shook buildings across Tokyo at 4:12 p.m. yesterday. There have been 32 aftershocks with a magnitude of 6 or greater since the main quake struck on March 11, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. One quake triggered an alert for a 5-meter tsunami for Iwate prefecture that didn’t materialize.

At Yurakucho station in the capital’s central business district, commuters stood 12 deep, waiting to board at 8 a.m. As a delayed train pulled in and passengers got off, people surged forward to squeeze into carriages. Riders who usually read newspapers or check their mobile phones were packed so tightly inside the car that they couldn’t lift their arms.

Edano said Japan is setting up power-conservation measures. Tokyo Electric started power outages in parts of the greater Tokyo area yesterday, according to a statement. Edano urged Japanese citizens to “save electricity in the most maximum way possible, including large electricity users.”

Exceeding Japanese Limits

Winds took small radiation releases from the reactors out to sea away from the population and shouldn’t affect the U.S. West Coast, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which sent reactor experts to Japan, said in a statement. Radiation at the plant exceeded Japanese limits after an explosion on March 12 at the No. 1 reactor destroyed the walls of the plant and injured four workers, said Naoyuki Matsumoto, a company spokesman.

Inadequate cooling of the reactor core may lead to a meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident because of the threat of radiation releases, according to the NRC. The 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania failed to breach the containment building, according to the commission.

Air Self-Defense Forces transported batteries, generators and pumps for cooling water to the plant, the Defense Ministry said. More than 100 military staff members were dispatched to provide containment assistance with special chemical units.

Seawater was pumped into reactors to prevent a meltdown.

The government ordered people within 10 kilometers of the power plant to evacuate after the cooling system failed.

Prepare for Worst

“We’d like to keep the length of the evacuation at a minimum, but at the same time we must prepare for the worst,” Edano said.

Rescue workers used chain saws and hand picks to dig out bodies in coastal towns hit by the quake, the Associated Press reported. Hajime Sato, a government official in quake-ravaged Iwate prefecture, told the AP that not enough supplies were getting through and that there was a shortage of body bags and coffins.

The U.S. Agency for International Development sent 150 search-and-rescue personnel with dogs that can find bodies in rubble. The U.K., Australia and South Korea also were sending teams with dogs.

U.S. Crew Affected

The U.S. Navy moved its ships and planes involved in the rescue efforts after radiation was detected on three helicopters operating near the Fukushima plant.

“Low-level radioactivity” was detected on 17 air crew members when they returned to the USS Ronald Reagan operating about 100 miles northeast from the plant, Navy spokesman Jeff Davis said in an e-mail.

The maximum radiation dose detected on any crew member was less than one month’s exposure to natural radiation emitted from sources such as “rocks, soil and the sun,” Davis said.

Le Groupe de Secours Catastrophe Francais, a volunteer organization that sends rescue teams into disaster areas, will not immediately be sending rescuers to Japan, in part because of the danger of exposure to radioactive contamination, the group said in an e-mailed statement Monday.

The quake was the world’s strongest since a December 2004 temblor in Indonesia that left about 220,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean. It was the biggest within the boundaries of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates in about 1,200 years, said Dave Applegate, a senior adviser at USGS.

Manufacturing Shut Down

Some of the nation’s largest manufacturers, including Sony Corp. (6758), Honda Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and beermaker Sapporo Holdings Ltd. (2501), shut down facilities in northern Japan.

Sony said its plant in Miyagi that makes Blu-ray discs, magnetic tapes and optical discs was flooded. Toshiba closed a plant that makes sensors for the cameras in its mobile phones. Refiner JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. also shut operations. Toyota Motor Corp. closed 12 plants in the nation through March 16.

Tokyo Disney Resort will be closed until at least March 21, depending on the state of transportation and infrastructure around the park, operator Oriental Land Co. said. No major damage to the park’s facilities was reported, it said.

‘Ring of Fire’

Japan lies on the so-called Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines surrounding the Pacific Basin. A 6.9- magnitude earthquake in Kobe, western Japan, killed more than 6,000 people in 1995, while the 7.9-magnitude Great Kanto Quake of 1923 destroyed 576,262 structures and killed an estimated 140,000.

Within an hour of the March 11 quake, a 7-meter-high tsunami engulfed towns on the northern coast, washing away buildings, vehicles and boats.

The wall of water reached as far as 20 kilometers inland, according to NHK. It swamped an area from Erimo in the northern island of Hokkaido to Oarai, Fukushima, about 670 kilometers to the south, according to Japan’s meteorological agency.

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