March 17, 2011
By GARDINER HARRIS
Nearly 25 years after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, children and teenagers who drank contaminated milk or ate affected cheese in the days and weeks after the explosion still suffer from an increased risk of thyroid cancer, according to a study released Thursday by the National Cancer Institute.
The study confirms earlier research about the risks of radioactive iodine, which can accumulate in the thyroid gland and lead to cancer later. Potassium iodide is often given as a supplement to prevent the accumulation of the radioactive type in thyroid glands, but Russian authorities failed to provide the supplement to all those at risk.
Radioactive iodine has a half-life of just eight days, and it was not thought to be present outside the power plant in concentrations high enough to cause immediate health problems. But the isotope was concentrated by cows in milk, and children who drank contaminated milk or ate affected dairy products are particularly at risk.
An international team of researchers led by the National Cancer Institute, a federal agency based in Bethesda, Md., has been monitoring the health effects of the Chernobyl accident for years. In the study released Thursday, the team screened 12,500 people who were under 18-years-old at the time of the 1986 accident and lived in one of three provinces near the accident site. The subjects’ thyroid glands were measured for radioactivity within two months of the accident.
Those with the greatest exposures were at highest risk for developing thyroid cancer in later years, the researchers found. Sixty-five of the study’s subjects developed thyroid cancer during the study’s 10 years of screening.
Indeed, the increased risks associated with exposures to radioactive iodine have yet to show any sign of declining. Studies done in Japan after World War II suggested that the increased risks of thyroid cancer began to decline 30 years after the atomic explosions but remained above normal even 40 years later.
Some of the participants in the Chernobyl study lived as far as 90 miles from the accident site, demonstrating the risks of eating or drinking contaminated foods among people who were exposed to little or no radioactive iodine from the immediate fallout.
“This study confirms the risk of thyroid cancer from radioactive iodine,” Dr. Alina V. Brenner, a radiation epidemiologist at the cancer institute and a co-author of the study, said in an interview. “But thyroid cancer is largely a nonlethal cancer. If detected and treated in a timely manner, they have a good prognosis.”
That this study was released in the midst of the crisis at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan was a coincidence. Indeed, government officials scheduled the release for Thursday because they feared weeks ago that the government might shut down on Friday as a result of a budget impasse on Capitol Hill.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
18/03 Radiation Fears Cloud Japan’s Recovery
March 18, 2011
By ANDREW POLLACK
Add fears of radiation to the long list of troubles threatening Japan’s export-led economy.
As Japan struggles to contain radiation leaking from crippled nuclear reactors, many countries, including China, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand have already started to test food imported from Japan for radiation, and the European Union has recommended that member countries do so. Manufacturers have also begun sweeping cars waiting for oversea shipment. No reports of significant product contamination have surfaced.
Some sushi restaurants in Asia are reportedly dropping fish from Japan from their menus. In Hong Kong there was a run on baby formula from Japan because mothers feared future supplies would be contaminated or unavailable.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that it was considering increasing the monitoring of imported food and raw ingredients made in Japan, or that had traveled through the country. However, the agency said, “based on current information, there is no risk to the U.S. food supply.”
Despite the excellent reputation of Japan’s Kobe beef, premium tuna belly sushi or toro and fine sake, food is only a minor part of Japanese exports. The country imports far more food than it exports.
Far greater damage could occur if Japanese automobiles or electronics get contaminated with radiation, or if fear spreads among consumers that they could be exposed to radiation by sitting in a Prius or playing a DVD.
Among the steps that Japanese manufacturers are starting to take to reassure customers are trips to ports in Japan. For example, workers at Nissan, armed with radiation detectors, are testing some of the company’s cars waiting to be shipped overseas. On Friday, Carlos Tavares, chairman of Nissan Americas, confirmed the scanning of autos: “It’s clear that we have found nothing, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We are just doing it to make sure nothing is there.”
Radiation experts said there was virtually no chance of major contamination of industrial products, even if the leakage were to worsen. Particles like the ones containing radioactive iodine or cesium escaping from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant can be deposited on products. But given the nature of the manufacturing industries in Japan, there is little danger of contamination reaching harmful levels, the experts said. For one, most manufacturing in Japan happens far from the nuclear plant (and many of the cars and electronics from Japanese companies are actually made outside Japan).
Moreover, manufacturing is usually done indoors. A product would most likely not be contaminated “unless it sits outside for long periods and gets a significant amount of deposits on it,” said William F. Morgan, director of radiation biology and biophysics at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Also he noted, most products were in packages, and the radioactive particles would not damage the product inside. If a product is known to have deposited particles, they can be washed off, or a contaminated box could be opened by someone wearing gloves and thrown away.
Manufacturing is likely to be halted in areas with high levels of radiation. “If the levels are high enough, that there would be a concern for a product being shipped, there would be a much greater concern for the people working there,” said Jerrold T. Bushberg, director of health physics programs at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine.
So if the nuclear accident hurts Japan’s exports, some experts say, it is more likely to be attributable to disruptions in operations and logistics there, much as the earthquake and tsunami have done, not because the reactor damage is contaminating products. A huge plume of radiation heading toward Tokyo could bring commerce and manufacturing in that area to a halt. A nuclear meltdown at Fukushima could cause Japan to shut other nuclear plants as a precaution, adding to power outages.
Food is a much more pertinent issue for radioactive contamination because crops and animals are often raised outdoors and because they are ingested. Still, some experts say the risk is low to Americans because Japan accounts for only 4 percent of American food imports. And even less of that is food with the highest risk of contamination.
“We are not worried about imports from Japan, and we are not recommending that consumers be concerned,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group.
She said that in the five years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which was far worse than Japan’s radiation problem so far, only 1.4 percent of the food products entering the United States from Eastern Europe exceeded standards for radiation. Much of that was meat and poultry.
Imports of raw beef from Japan, including premium Kobe beef, have been suspended since last April, because of concerns about foot and mouth disease, according to a spokesman for the United States Department of Agriculture. Poultry and egg imports are barred because the Agriculture Department has not determined that Japan has a sufficient inspection system for those products. Dairy products can be contaminated if cows eat grass that radioactive isotopes have fallen on; this was a major source of radiation after the Chernobyl accident. But dairy accounts for only 0.1 percent of food imported from Japan, according to the F.D.A. There is also relatively little fresh produce.
Some seafood does come from Japan. However, much of the fish served in sushi restaurants here does not, and even fish caught by Japanese fleets might not be from waters near Japan.
The F.D.A. said it was taking steps to measure contamination in fish, but added, “The great quantity of water in the Pacific Ocean rapidly and effectively dilutes radioactive material, so fish and seafood are likely to be unaffected.”
The United States Customs and Border Protection already monitors incoming cargo for radiation, part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks. It said in a statement this week that it had instructed its field officers to specifically monitor maritime and air traffic from Japan.
“We don’t have any dirty bombs or nukes coming through here because of these processes,” said Ron Boyd, the chief of police at the Port of Los Angeles. He said he was confident that the procedures would also be able to detect radioactive cargo from Japan.
There are already reports of passengers arriving from Japan setting off radiation detectors at Chicago’s O’Hare and at Dallas-Fort Worth airports, but those levels were reported to be very low. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that no aircraft entering the United States “has tested positive for radiation at harmful levels.”
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By ANDREW POLLACK
Add fears of radiation to the long list of troubles threatening Japan’s export-led economy.
As Japan struggles to contain radiation leaking from crippled nuclear reactors, many countries, including China, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand have already started to test food imported from Japan for radiation, and the European Union has recommended that member countries do so. Manufacturers have also begun sweeping cars waiting for oversea shipment. No reports of significant product contamination have surfaced.
Some sushi restaurants in Asia are reportedly dropping fish from Japan from their menus. In Hong Kong there was a run on baby formula from Japan because mothers feared future supplies would be contaminated or unavailable.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that it was considering increasing the monitoring of imported food and raw ingredients made in Japan, or that had traveled through the country. However, the agency said, “based on current information, there is no risk to the U.S. food supply.”
Despite the excellent reputation of Japan’s Kobe beef, premium tuna belly sushi or toro and fine sake, food is only a minor part of Japanese exports. The country imports far more food than it exports.
Far greater damage could occur if Japanese automobiles or electronics get contaminated with radiation, or if fear spreads among consumers that they could be exposed to radiation by sitting in a Prius or playing a DVD.
Among the steps that Japanese manufacturers are starting to take to reassure customers are trips to ports in Japan. For example, workers at Nissan, armed with radiation detectors, are testing some of the company’s cars waiting to be shipped overseas. On Friday, Carlos Tavares, chairman of Nissan Americas, confirmed the scanning of autos: “It’s clear that we have found nothing, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We are just doing it to make sure nothing is there.”
Radiation experts said there was virtually no chance of major contamination of industrial products, even if the leakage were to worsen. Particles like the ones containing radioactive iodine or cesium escaping from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant can be deposited on products. But given the nature of the manufacturing industries in Japan, there is little danger of contamination reaching harmful levels, the experts said. For one, most manufacturing in Japan happens far from the nuclear plant (and many of the cars and electronics from Japanese companies are actually made outside Japan).
Moreover, manufacturing is usually done indoors. A product would most likely not be contaminated “unless it sits outside for long periods and gets a significant amount of deposits on it,” said William F. Morgan, director of radiation biology and biophysics at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Also he noted, most products were in packages, and the radioactive particles would not damage the product inside. If a product is known to have deposited particles, they can be washed off, or a contaminated box could be opened by someone wearing gloves and thrown away.
Manufacturing is likely to be halted in areas with high levels of radiation. “If the levels are high enough, that there would be a concern for a product being shipped, there would be a much greater concern for the people working there,” said Jerrold T. Bushberg, director of health physics programs at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine.
So if the nuclear accident hurts Japan’s exports, some experts say, it is more likely to be attributable to disruptions in operations and logistics there, much as the earthquake and tsunami have done, not because the reactor damage is contaminating products. A huge plume of radiation heading toward Tokyo could bring commerce and manufacturing in that area to a halt. A nuclear meltdown at Fukushima could cause Japan to shut other nuclear plants as a precaution, adding to power outages.
Food is a much more pertinent issue for radioactive contamination because crops and animals are often raised outdoors and because they are ingested. Still, some experts say the risk is low to Americans because Japan accounts for only 4 percent of American food imports. And even less of that is food with the highest risk of contamination.
“We are not worried about imports from Japan, and we are not recommending that consumers be concerned,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group.
She said that in the five years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which was far worse than Japan’s radiation problem so far, only 1.4 percent of the food products entering the United States from Eastern Europe exceeded standards for radiation. Much of that was meat and poultry.
Imports of raw beef from Japan, including premium Kobe beef, have been suspended since last April, because of concerns about foot and mouth disease, according to a spokesman for the United States Department of Agriculture. Poultry and egg imports are barred because the Agriculture Department has not determined that Japan has a sufficient inspection system for those products. Dairy products can be contaminated if cows eat grass that radioactive isotopes have fallen on; this was a major source of radiation after the Chernobyl accident. But dairy accounts for only 0.1 percent of food imported from Japan, according to the F.D.A. There is also relatively little fresh produce.
Some seafood does come from Japan. However, much of the fish served in sushi restaurants here does not, and even fish caught by Japanese fleets might not be from waters near Japan.
The F.D.A. said it was taking steps to measure contamination in fish, but added, “The great quantity of water in the Pacific Ocean rapidly and effectively dilutes radioactive material, so fish and seafood are likely to be unaffected.”
The United States Customs and Border Protection already monitors incoming cargo for radiation, part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks. It said in a statement this week that it had instructed its field officers to specifically monitor maritime and air traffic from Japan.
“We don’t have any dirty bombs or nukes coming through here because of these processes,” said Ron Boyd, the chief of police at the Port of Los Angeles. He said he was confident that the procedures would also be able to detect radioactive cargo from Japan.
There are already reports of passengers arriving from Japan setting off radiation detectors at Chicago’s O’Hare and at Dallas-Fort Worth airports, but those levels were reported to be very low. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that no aircraft entering the United States “has tested positive for radiation at harmful levels.”
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18/03 More Foreigners Are Seeking to Flee Japan
March 18, 2011
By MARK McDONALD and SHARON LAFRANIERE
TOKYO — The exodus from Japan grew Friday as foreigners sought to flee the threat of radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
About 20,000 resident foreigners have indicated their intent to leave the country by requesting re-entry permits from the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, according to Kyodo news agency. Tokyo is about 140 miles south of the plant.
Ticket agents said flights out of Tokyo to South Korea and China were booking up quickly. A representative of China Southern Airlines, which flies from Tokyo to the Chinese coastal city of Dalian, said its flights were sold out until April. A representative of China Eastern Airlines, which flies from Tokyo to Beijing and Shanghai, also said seats “are in short supply.” An Air China agent said that the airline added two flights from Tokyo to China on Thursday and that some seats remained on its flights from Tokyo to Beijing.
Xiao Er, a Chinese businessman temporarily working in Inner Mongolia, said he had tried for three days to secure airline tickets to China for his Japanese wife and daughter, who live less than 170 miles from the crippled nuclear plant.
“Right now, my family is extremely panicked,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “Nobody is going outside. Everyone is hiding in their rooms, afraid of coming into contact with the radiation.”
He said that neither he nor his wife had been able to buy tickets to China for her and their daughter. Finally, a relative of his wife secured two tickets for about $1,500 each. An air ticket out of Japan at the moment is almost “something that money can’t buy,” he said.
The South Korean government said that Korean Airlines and Asiana Airlines had added 4 to 11 flights a day from Tokyo to South Korea and had switched to bigger aircraft. Should an emergency evacuation become necessary, a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said, South Korea is prepared to send military planes and warships to rescue its citizens.
“The government will mobilize all means, such as charter planes, vessels, military transport planes, Coast Guard patrol ships and warships to help evacuate our people,” the second vice foreign minister, Min Dong-seok told reporters.
Foreign governments have taken varying approaches toward the evacuation of their citizens. Some countries recommended evacuation for those anywhere near the danger zone around the crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Other countries made arrangements to get their citizens out of Japan altogether.
France, Germany and Hong Kong, among many others, arranged charter flights for people wishing to pull back from Tokyo to Osaka — or to leave the country. Britain said that it was chartering jets to fly between Tokyo and Hong Kong, and that Britons directly affected by the tsunami would not be charged for the flight.
The United States approved plans for voluntary evacuations of families and dependents of its military personnel and embassy employees in Japan, including those at air and naval bases 200 miles or more from the plant.
The American military presence in Japan includes about 38,000 troops plus nearly 50,000 dependents, civilian employees and American contractors.
But not all foreigners were fleeing. One Briton said he was not about to leave.
Michael Tonge, a schoolteacher in Sendai, the closest major city to the quake’s epicenter, said that many of the expatriates in his area were “forming groups using things like Facebook to try to get aid and help to the people who need it.”
“Sendai has been my home for over five years,” Mr. Tonge said, “and the people of this area have taken me in and made me feel very welcome. I can’t leave them now, after this. I think that’s how a lot of the foreigners here feel, too.”
Mr. Min, the South Korean Foreign Ministry official, also said that South Korea had moved its team of rescue workers in Japan farther from the reactors out of concern for their safety. The team moved from the city of Sendai, in the tsunami-hit region, to the western coastal town of Niigata, he said. South Korea and Taiwan both continued to expand radiation checks of passengers arriving on airplanes from Japan.
Since Tuesday, more than 11,000 people have voluntarily submitted to checks at airports in Taiwan, said a spokeswoman for the Department of Radiation Prevention of Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council. Radiation residue has been detected on just 37 of them, said the spokeswoman, who identified herself only as Ms. Xu. She said the highest level was about three times above normal, not enough to cause any health concern. Those with higher levels were given plastic coveralls and shoe covers. All were advised to wash their clothing and shoes when they reached their destination.
Seoul’s Incheon international airport has established two voluntary checkpoints for radiation. Anyone who does not pass the first one is checked again to see if the levels of radioactive residue are high enough to be considered contamination. So far, according to the Nuclear Emergency Response Team at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, three people have been checked at the second gate. Two were cleared and sent home. A third person was checked again without shoes and coat after a small amount of residue was found on them, and was then cleared as well and sent home. The contaminated clothing was kept by the inspectors.
Mark McDonald reported from Tokyo, and Sharon LaFraniere from Beijing. Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Yamagata, Japan. Su-Hyun Lee contributed research from Seoul, South Korea, and Li Bibo and Jonathan Kaiman from Beijing.
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By MARK McDONALD and SHARON LAFRANIERE
TOKYO — The exodus from Japan grew Friday as foreigners sought to flee the threat of radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
About 20,000 resident foreigners have indicated their intent to leave the country by requesting re-entry permits from the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, according to Kyodo news agency. Tokyo is about 140 miles south of the plant.
Ticket agents said flights out of Tokyo to South Korea and China were booking up quickly. A representative of China Southern Airlines, which flies from Tokyo to the Chinese coastal city of Dalian, said its flights were sold out until April. A representative of China Eastern Airlines, which flies from Tokyo to Beijing and Shanghai, also said seats “are in short supply.” An Air China agent said that the airline added two flights from Tokyo to China on Thursday and that some seats remained on its flights from Tokyo to Beijing.
Xiao Er, a Chinese businessman temporarily working in Inner Mongolia, said he had tried for three days to secure airline tickets to China for his Japanese wife and daughter, who live less than 170 miles from the crippled nuclear plant.
“Right now, my family is extremely panicked,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “Nobody is going outside. Everyone is hiding in their rooms, afraid of coming into contact with the radiation.”
He said that neither he nor his wife had been able to buy tickets to China for her and their daughter. Finally, a relative of his wife secured two tickets for about $1,500 each. An air ticket out of Japan at the moment is almost “something that money can’t buy,” he said.
The South Korean government said that Korean Airlines and Asiana Airlines had added 4 to 11 flights a day from Tokyo to South Korea and had switched to bigger aircraft. Should an emergency evacuation become necessary, a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said, South Korea is prepared to send military planes and warships to rescue its citizens.
“The government will mobilize all means, such as charter planes, vessels, military transport planes, Coast Guard patrol ships and warships to help evacuate our people,” the second vice foreign minister, Min Dong-seok told reporters.
Foreign governments have taken varying approaches toward the evacuation of their citizens. Some countries recommended evacuation for those anywhere near the danger zone around the crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Other countries made arrangements to get their citizens out of Japan altogether.
France, Germany and Hong Kong, among many others, arranged charter flights for people wishing to pull back from Tokyo to Osaka — or to leave the country. Britain said that it was chartering jets to fly between Tokyo and Hong Kong, and that Britons directly affected by the tsunami would not be charged for the flight.
The United States approved plans for voluntary evacuations of families and dependents of its military personnel and embassy employees in Japan, including those at air and naval bases 200 miles or more from the plant.
The American military presence in Japan includes about 38,000 troops plus nearly 50,000 dependents, civilian employees and American contractors.
But not all foreigners were fleeing. One Briton said he was not about to leave.
Michael Tonge, a schoolteacher in Sendai, the closest major city to the quake’s epicenter, said that many of the expatriates in his area were “forming groups using things like Facebook to try to get aid and help to the people who need it.”
“Sendai has been my home for over five years,” Mr. Tonge said, “and the people of this area have taken me in and made me feel very welcome. I can’t leave them now, after this. I think that’s how a lot of the foreigners here feel, too.”
Mr. Min, the South Korean Foreign Ministry official, also said that South Korea had moved its team of rescue workers in Japan farther from the reactors out of concern for their safety. The team moved from the city of Sendai, in the tsunami-hit region, to the western coastal town of Niigata, he said. South Korea and Taiwan both continued to expand radiation checks of passengers arriving on airplanes from Japan.
Since Tuesday, more than 11,000 people have voluntarily submitted to checks at airports in Taiwan, said a spokeswoman for the Department of Radiation Prevention of Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council. Radiation residue has been detected on just 37 of them, said the spokeswoman, who identified herself only as Ms. Xu. She said the highest level was about three times above normal, not enough to cause any health concern. Those with higher levels were given plastic coveralls and shoe covers. All were advised to wash their clothing and shoes when they reached their destination.
Seoul’s Incheon international airport has established two voluntary checkpoints for radiation. Anyone who does not pass the first one is checked again to see if the levels of radioactive residue are high enough to be considered contamination. So far, according to the Nuclear Emergency Response Team at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, three people have been checked at the second gate. Two were cleared and sent home. A third person was checked again without shoes and coat after a small amount of residue was found on them, and was then cleared as well and sent home. The contaminated clothing was kept by the inspectors.
Mark McDonald reported from Tokyo, and Sharon LaFraniere from Beijing. Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Yamagata, Japan. Su-Hyun Lee contributed research from Seoul, South Korea, and Li Bibo and Jonathan Kaiman from Beijing.
More in Asia Pacific (5 of 52 articles)
Try-Anything Strategy in Nuclear Crisis Draws Criticism, and Sympathy
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19/03 Black women ugly? Says who?
By LZ Granderson, Special to CNN
May 19, 2011 -- Updated 1701 GMT (0101 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- LZ Granderson: His mom a fiery, caring woman who beat back life's challenges, she's beautiful
- He's offended at Psychology Today blogpost that asked why black women aren't attractive
- He questions writer's methods, but wonders at culture that abides, fosters such views
- Granderson: Some black men help damage black women's image. They must show respect
RELATED TOPICS
Editor's note: LZ Granderson writes a weekly column for CNN.com. A senior writer and columnist for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, he has contributed to ESPN's "Sports Center," "Outside the Lines" and "First Take." He is a 2010 nominee and the 2009 winner of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism and a 2010 and 2008 honoree of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for column writing.
(CNN) -- In a couple of weeks my mother turns 65.
She takes yoga and Zumba every chance she gets and if you sneeze more than twice around her, she'll cook you a pot of collard greens. My mother believes her collard greens can fix just about anything.
19/03 11-year-old girl can't be 'willing' in sex
By Jane Velez-Mitchell, Special to CNN
March 19, 2011 -- Updated 1701 GMT (0101 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Jane Velez-Mitchell says people shocked in Texas town where girl allegedly gang-raped
- But she says what was really shocking were comments from residents seeming to blame girl
- She says there's no situation where sex with 11-year-old girl is consensual
- Velez-Mitchell: Question people should be asking is: Where were parents of the suspects?
RELATED TOPICS
Editor's note: Jane Velez-Mitchell hosts "ISSUES with Jane Velez-Mitchell," a topical event-driven show with a wide range of viewpoints that airs every night at 7 p.m. ET on HLN.
(CNN) -- What's more shocking than the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl? The fact that some people are actually blaming the little girl.
12/03 Tương lai của kinh tế Nhật sau thảm họa
Thứ bảy, 12/03/2011 13:52
Ảnh: Time.
(DVT.vn) - Nhật Bản sẽ nhanh chóng vượt qua những hậu quả nặng nề vừa xảy ra cũng như họ đã vượt qua thảm họa động đất kinh hoàng ở Kobe năm 1995?
>> Thị trường tài Nhật chịu ảnh hưởng như thế nào?
>> Giao dịch trái phiếu Nhật tăng sau trận động đất
>> Ngân hàng Trung ương Nhật thiết lập lực lượng khẩn cấp
>> Nhật: Điều tồi tệ nhất xảy ra đúng thời điểm tồi tệ nhất
>> Đồng yên giảm mạnh sau động đất
Các trận động đất lớn đã tấn công miền bắc Nhật Bản đúng vào lúc kinh tế nước này giảm phát và Chính phủ đang vướng phải những vấn đề nợ chính phủ. Chính phủ Nhật Bản sẽ dựa vào động lực nào để tái thiết lại nền kinh tế đang đi vào bế tắc?
Sau thiên tai, Nhật Bản sẽ phải xây dựng lại hàng loạt các công trình công cộng có thể trợ giúp, thúc đẩy tăng trưởng kinh tế, trong khi nợ công Nhật Bản đang ở mức hơn 200% GDP.
Hàng năm, chính phủ Nhật Bản không hề có 1 quỹ khẩn nào để đối phó với các thảm họa như vậy. Quan chức Chính phủ cho biết, họ sẽ xem xét sử dụng ngân sách bổ sung để thực hiện công việc tái thiết sau động đất. Nhưng để dự đoán số tiền mà Nhật Bản thực sự cần lúc này thật khó khăn.
Chi phí tái thiết cho cả khu vực công cộng và tư nhân trong trận động đất tại Kobe năm 1995 là khoảng 156,65 tỷ USD.
Tuy nhiên, tình hình có thực sự tồi tệ như thế giới đang nghĩ? Các chuyên gia đã nhìn sâu vào tình hình kinh tế Nhật và đưa ra nhận xét rằng, những thiệt hại kinh tế hôm nay không thể lớn bằng những gì Nhật Bản phải trải qua năm 1995.
Moody's, tổ chức xếp hạng gần đây đã chỉ ra một viễn cảnh tiêu cực về nợ công của Nhật Bản, lại cho rằng trận động đất vừa qua không ảnh hưởng nhiều tới tình hình tài chính của Chính phủ. Một nhà phân tích của Moody’s phát biểu, một nền kinh tế giàu có như Nhật Bản sẽ vượt qua thảm họa dễ dàng hơn so với những nền kinh tế nhỏ hơn.
Một số nhà kinh tế hy vọng ngân hàng Trung ương Nhật Bản (BOJ) sẽ nới lỏng chính sách tiền tệ để nâng cao niềm tin trên thị trường tài chính sau trận động đất vừa qua.
Nhà kinh tế của Sandard Chartered, ông Simon Wong cho biết: “Một trong những biện pháp nới lỏng mà BOJ có thể thực hiện là bơm thêm vốn vào thị trường tiền tệ. Vẫn còn quá sớm để ước tính ảnh hưởng lâu dài của trận động đất tới nền kinh tế Nhật Bản. Tuy nhiên, tác động đến lạm phát lõi có thể khá nhỏ”.
Tác động dài hạn tới tiềm lực tài chính của Nhật Bản sau trận động đất vừa qua có thể thấp hơn so với trận động đất tại Kobe năm 1995. Thực tế là, thảm họa vừa qua đã dội xuống vùng nông thôn của Nhật, một khu vực không mấy sầm uất, trong khi Kobe là một thành phố lớn của Nhật.
Ông Richard Jerram, chuyên gia tại công ty chứng khoán Macquarie Securities cho biết, tỉnh Miyagi, khu vực bị ảnh hưởng nặng nhất, chỉ chiếm khoảng 1,7% GDP của Nhật Bản, so với 4% GDP của thành phố Kobe. Thiệt hại tại Tokyo, thành phố chiếm gần 40% GDP của Nhật Bản, được hạn chế tới mức tối thiểu trong trận động đất vừa qua.
Ông Mitsuru Sahara, chuyên gia cấp cao của Ngân hàng Tokyo-Mitsubishi cho rằng, các tác động trên thị trường giao dịch tiền tệ đã bị phóng đại bởi vì dòng chảy thị trường tổng thể vốn đã khó khăn từ trước đó. Các chuyên gia sẽ chỉ chú ý tới tình huống bị thiệt hại nếu điều này sẽ có tác động rất tiêu cực đối với thị trường chứng khoán trong nước.
Tuyết Mai
Theo WSJ
Ảnh: Time.
(DVT.vn) - Nhật Bản sẽ nhanh chóng vượt qua những hậu quả nặng nề vừa xảy ra cũng như họ đã vượt qua thảm họa động đất kinh hoàng ở Kobe năm 1995?
>> Thị trường tài Nhật chịu ảnh hưởng như thế nào?
>> Giao dịch trái phiếu Nhật tăng sau trận động đất
>> Ngân hàng Trung ương Nhật thiết lập lực lượng khẩn cấp
>> Nhật: Điều tồi tệ nhất xảy ra đúng thời điểm tồi tệ nhất
>> Đồng yên giảm mạnh sau động đất
Các trận động đất lớn đã tấn công miền bắc Nhật Bản đúng vào lúc kinh tế nước này giảm phát và Chính phủ đang vướng phải những vấn đề nợ chính phủ. Chính phủ Nhật Bản sẽ dựa vào động lực nào để tái thiết lại nền kinh tế đang đi vào bế tắc?
Sau thiên tai, Nhật Bản sẽ phải xây dựng lại hàng loạt các công trình công cộng có thể trợ giúp, thúc đẩy tăng trưởng kinh tế, trong khi nợ công Nhật Bản đang ở mức hơn 200% GDP.
Hàng năm, chính phủ Nhật Bản không hề có 1 quỹ khẩn nào để đối phó với các thảm họa như vậy. Quan chức Chính phủ cho biết, họ sẽ xem xét sử dụng ngân sách bổ sung để thực hiện công việc tái thiết sau động đất. Nhưng để dự đoán số tiền mà Nhật Bản thực sự cần lúc này thật khó khăn.
Chi phí tái thiết cho cả khu vực công cộng và tư nhân trong trận động đất tại Kobe năm 1995 là khoảng 156,65 tỷ USD.
Tuy nhiên, tình hình có thực sự tồi tệ như thế giới đang nghĩ? Các chuyên gia đã nhìn sâu vào tình hình kinh tế Nhật và đưa ra nhận xét rằng, những thiệt hại kinh tế hôm nay không thể lớn bằng những gì Nhật Bản phải trải qua năm 1995.
Moody's, tổ chức xếp hạng gần đây đã chỉ ra một viễn cảnh tiêu cực về nợ công của Nhật Bản, lại cho rằng trận động đất vừa qua không ảnh hưởng nhiều tới tình hình tài chính của Chính phủ. Một nhà phân tích của Moody’s phát biểu, một nền kinh tế giàu có như Nhật Bản sẽ vượt qua thảm họa dễ dàng hơn so với những nền kinh tế nhỏ hơn.
Một số nhà kinh tế hy vọng ngân hàng Trung ương Nhật Bản (BOJ) sẽ nới lỏng chính sách tiền tệ để nâng cao niềm tin trên thị trường tài chính sau trận động đất vừa qua.
Nhà kinh tế của Sandard Chartered, ông Simon Wong cho biết: “Một trong những biện pháp nới lỏng mà BOJ có thể thực hiện là bơm thêm vốn vào thị trường tiền tệ. Vẫn còn quá sớm để ước tính ảnh hưởng lâu dài của trận động đất tới nền kinh tế Nhật Bản. Tuy nhiên, tác động đến lạm phát lõi có thể khá nhỏ”.
Tác động dài hạn tới tiềm lực tài chính của Nhật Bản sau trận động đất vừa qua có thể thấp hơn so với trận động đất tại Kobe năm 1995. Thực tế là, thảm họa vừa qua đã dội xuống vùng nông thôn của Nhật, một khu vực không mấy sầm uất, trong khi Kobe là một thành phố lớn của Nhật.
Ông Richard Jerram, chuyên gia tại công ty chứng khoán Macquarie Securities cho biết, tỉnh Miyagi, khu vực bị ảnh hưởng nặng nhất, chỉ chiếm khoảng 1,7% GDP của Nhật Bản, so với 4% GDP của thành phố Kobe. Thiệt hại tại Tokyo, thành phố chiếm gần 40% GDP của Nhật Bản, được hạn chế tới mức tối thiểu trong trận động đất vừa qua.
Ông Mitsuru Sahara, chuyên gia cấp cao của Ngân hàng Tokyo-Mitsubishi cho rằng, các tác động trên thị trường giao dịch tiền tệ đã bị phóng đại bởi vì dòng chảy thị trường tổng thể vốn đã khó khăn từ trước đó. Các chuyên gia sẽ chỉ chú ý tới tình huống bị thiệt hại nếu điều này sẽ có tác động rất tiêu cực đối với thị trường chứng khoán trong nước.
Tuyết Mai
Theo WSJ
19/03 In Japan’s Danger Zone, the Stranded Await the Merciful
March 18, 2011
By MARTIN FACKLER
YAMAGATA, Japan — Some are stuck in their homes, fearful of radiation, heeding government warnings to stay indoors, cut off without electricity or phone service. Others want to leave but have no gasoline. Still more, those whose homes were ruined, wait helplessly for evacuation at crowded shelters. All face dwindling supplies of heating fuel, food and water.
A week after an earthquake and tsunami devastated their communities and set off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the plight of the thousands still stranded in areas near the stricken reactors — many too old or infirm to move — has underscored what residents say is a striking lack of help from the national government to assist with the evacuation of danger zones or the ferrying of supplies to those it has urged to stay inside.
“Those who can leave have already left,” Nanae Takeshima, 40, a resident of Minamisoma, a city of 70,000 about 16 miles from the nuclear plant that lies within the area covered by the advisory to stay indoors, said by phone from her home. “Those here are the ones who cannot escape.”
Instead, the task has fallen to some local governments and even private companies and organizations that have made limited but heroic efforts to help those left behind, adding to the burden of coastal communities already overwhelmed by tens of thousands of people left homeless and the search for bodies, which the nuclear evacuations have now made impossible.
Residents reached by telephone said the order by the government to evacuate a 12-mile radius around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, as well as the request for those who live 12 to 18 miles away to stay indoors, has turned communities like Minamisoma into virtual ghost towns, populated mostly by the unwilling and the unlucky.
One is Masahiro Sakashita, who had prepared for the worst from the very beginning, but knew he could not leave. The director of the Fukujuen elderly care center, just 15 miles from one reactor, he sent his younger employees home as Japan’s battle to prevent nuclear catastrophe started, telling them to flee.
He and 19 other senior staff members stayed behind to keep caring for the center’s 100 or so mostly bedridden residents, the oldest of whom is 102. He said they were cut off from the outside world, with electricity and delivery of food and other supplies disrupted. “I figured that at most we had enough food and water to last five, maybe six days,” said Mr. Sakashita, who spoke by phone from Minamisoma. “We were going to stay with them to the end.”
The end came Friday, when a similar care center in distant Yokohama, near Tokyo, volunteered to take in Fukujuen’s residents after seeing their plight reported on television and sent six buses to rescue them.
Minamisoma has been using buses to begin evacuating the tsunami survivors and other residents to areas farther away from the nuclear plant. Other cities have helped by sending buses, as have some local companies.
One is the Shima Company, an auto-scrapping business in Minamisoma, which hired buses to take more than 170 of its employees and their families to the city of Yamagata, 55 miles away, the company’s vice president, Kazuki Shima, said on Twitter.
With the help of other cities and the Fukushima prefectural government, Minamisoma has also moved all the tsunami survivors in 8 of its 29 shelters to other areas. At Haramachi No. 1 Elementary School, buses came Thursday to take about 300 survivors and other nearby residents to Gunma Prefecture, outside Tokyo.
The principal, Atsuo Takano, who runs the school’s shelter, said that the school had begun to fill again with new refugees, those driven from their homes because they ran out of food and fuel. While he has sent his own family to an inland city for safety, he said he would keep working until the last person in the school’s shelter was safely evacuated.
“Of course I’m worried, but I am responsible for this school,” he said. “They told us that nuclear power was 100 percent safe, but we see now that nothing can ever be 100 percent safe.”
Many of those left behind are elderly people whose houses survived the earthquake, but who feel abandoned as other residents flee the nuclear crisis. They say city officials and the police are nowhere to be seen, while stores and offices are closed and streets are empty.
Hatsuko Arakawa, 78, said that despite the fact that her city, Iwaki, was outside the area covered by the government order to stay indoors, delivery trucks refused to enter. As a result, she said, she felt marooned in her home, with no more propane for her heater and dwindling supplies of rice and water. She endures the winter cold by spending the entire day wrapped in a futon.
“Unlike those in the refugee centers, I have no contact with the outside,” she said. “My supplies are reaching their limits.”
Misao Saito, 59, said he stayed in Soma, a small port city 27 miles north of the nuclear plant, because of his parents, who are too old and infirm to flee. He said his 80-year-old father had a bad leg, while his mother, 85, suffered from mild dementia. They now live together in an elementary school that was turned into a shelter after the tsunami damaged their home.
Mr. Saito, a fisherman, said he had no way to make a living because the waves destroyed Soma’s fishing harbor.
“It’s scary, but when it comes to the nuclear accident, I have no choice but to die here,” he said. “I think this is the government’s fault. The prime minister should have had a better grip on what was happening at that nuclear plant.”
Some of those who remained said they did so by choice. One, who asked that she be only partly identified as Misako W., seemed proudly defiant in her desire to remain in Minamisoma with her husband, a banker. She was also angry about her community’s fate. “Minamisoma is defunct,” she said.
She asked that her full name not be used because she feared discrimination in the future because of the nuclear crisis, just as survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings were ostracized out of a misplaced fear that they could spread radiation sickness.
“Many here have lost their homes, and now they have to fight the fear of the nuclear plant,” she said. “An earthquake, tsunami and now nuclear fears — there is no other place in the world as unfortunate as here.”
Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 18, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a small port city in Japan in one reference. It is Soma, not Souma.
More in Asia Pacific (3 of 52 articles)
Japan Races to Restart Reactors’ Cooling System
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By MARTIN FACKLER
YAMAGATA, Japan — Some are stuck in their homes, fearful of radiation, heeding government warnings to stay indoors, cut off without electricity or phone service. Others want to leave but have no gasoline. Still more, those whose homes were ruined, wait helplessly for evacuation at crowded shelters. All face dwindling supplies of heating fuel, food and water.
A week after an earthquake and tsunami devastated their communities and set off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the plight of the thousands still stranded in areas near the stricken reactors — many too old or infirm to move — has underscored what residents say is a striking lack of help from the national government to assist with the evacuation of danger zones or the ferrying of supplies to those it has urged to stay inside.
“Those who can leave have already left,” Nanae Takeshima, 40, a resident of Minamisoma, a city of 70,000 about 16 miles from the nuclear plant that lies within the area covered by the advisory to stay indoors, said by phone from her home. “Those here are the ones who cannot escape.”
Instead, the task has fallen to some local governments and even private companies and organizations that have made limited but heroic efforts to help those left behind, adding to the burden of coastal communities already overwhelmed by tens of thousands of people left homeless and the search for bodies, which the nuclear evacuations have now made impossible.
Residents reached by telephone said the order by the government to evacuate a 12-mile radius around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, as well as the request for those who live 12 to 18 miles away to stay indoors, has turned communities like Minamisoma into virtual ghost towns, populated mostly by the unwilling and the unlucky.
One is Masahiro Sakashita, who had prepared for the worst from the very beginning, but knew he could not leave. The director of the Fukujuen elderly care center, just 15 miles from one reactor, he sent his younger employees home as Japan’s battle to prevent nuclear catastrophe started, telling them to flee.
He and 19 other senior staff members stayed behind to keep caring for the center’s 100 or so mostly bedridden residents, the oldest of whom is 102. He said they were cut off from the outside world, with electricity and delivery of food and other supplies disrupted. “I figured that at most we had enough food and water to last five, maybe six days,” said Mr. Sakashita, who spoke by phone from Minamisoma. “We were going to stay with them to the end.”
The end came Friday, when a similar care center in distant Yokohama, near Tokyo, volunteered to take in Fukujuen’s residents after seeing their plight reported on television and sent six buses to rescue them.
Minamisoma has been using buses to begin evacuating the tsunami survivors and other residents to areas farther away from the nuclear plant. Other cities have helped by sending buses, as have some local companies.
One is the Shima Company, an auto-scrapping business in Minamisoma, which hired buses to take more than 170 of its employees and their families to the city of Yamagata, 55 miles away, the company’s vice president, Kazuki Shima, said on Twitter.
With the help of other cities and the Fukushima prefectural government, Minamisoma has also moved all the tsunami survivors in 8 of its 29 shelters to other areas. At Haramachi No. 1 Elementary School, buses came Thursday to take about 300 survivors and other nearby residents to Gunma Prefecture, outside Tokyo.
The principal, Atsuo Takano, who runs the school’s shelter, said that the school had begun to fill again with new refugees, those driven from their homes because they ran out of food and fuel. While he has sent his own family to an inland city for safety, he said he would keep working until the last person in the school’s shelter was safely evacuated.
“Of course I’m worried, but I am responsible for this school,” he said. “They told us that nuclear power was 100 percent safe, but we see now that nothing can ever be 100 percent safe.”
Many of those left behind are elderly people whose houses survived the earthquake, but who feel abandoned as other residents flee the nuclear crisis. They say city officials and the police are nowhere to be seen, while stores and offices are closed and streets are empty.
Hatsuko Arakawa, 78, said that despite the fact that her city, Iwaki, was outside the area covered by the government order to stay indoors, delivery trucks refused to enter. As a result, she said, she felt marooned in her home, with no more propane for her heater and dwindling supplies of rice and water. She endures the winter cold by spending the entire day wrapped in a futon.
“Unlike those in the refugee centers, I have no contact with the outside,” she said. “My supplies are reaching their limits.”
Misao Saito, 59, said he stayed in Soma, a small port city 27 miles north of the nuclear plant, because of his parents, who are too old and infirm to flee. He said his 80-year-old father had a bad leg, while his mother, 85, suffered from mild dementia. They now live together in an elementary school that was turned into a shelter after the tsunami damaged their home.
Mr. Saito, a fisherman, said he had no way to make a living because the waves destroyed Soma’s fishing harbor.
“It’s scary, but when it comes to the nuclear accident, I have no choice but to die here,” he said. “I think this is the government’s fault. The prime minister should have had a better grip on what was happening at that nuclear plant.”
Some of those who remained said they did so by choice. One, who asked that she be only partly identified as Misako W., seemed proudly defiant in her desire to remain in Minamisoma with her husband, a banker. She was also angry about her community’s fate. “Minamisoma is defunct,” she said.
She asked that her full name not be used because she feared discrimination in the future because of the nuclear crisis, just as survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings were ostracized out of a misplaced fear that they could spread radiation sickness.
“Many here have lost their homes, and now they have to fight the fear of the nuclear plant,” she said. “An earthquake, tsunami and now nuclear fears — there is no other place in the world as unfortunate as here.”
Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 18, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a small port city in Japan in one reference. It is Soma, not Souma.
More in Asia Pacific (3 of 52 articles)
Japan Races to Restart Reactors’ Cooling System
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18/03 Japan Races to Restart Reactors’ Cooling System
March 18, 2011
By KEN BELSON, HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER
This article is by Ken Belson, Hiroko Tabuchi and Keith Bradsher.
TOKYO — Scrambling to corral a widening crisis, engineers linked a power cable to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station early Saturday as they struggled to restart systems designed to prevent overheating and keep radiation from escaping.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, said it hoped to connect the electric cord to the cooling equipment inside the facility later Saturday in an attempt to stabilize the reactors that were damaged by the powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan eight days ago.
In a brief statement on Japanese television Saturday morning, an official for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that workers had managed to restart a diesel pump and restored cooling functions at two of the reactors, Nos. 5 and 6, early Saturday morning. He did not provide any details.
Those reactors were not in use when the disaster occurred, but they contained spent fuel rods, and engineers were concerned this week when temperatures in the reactors began to rise.
About 150 of its people were working on the electrical cable, the power company said, and they were planning to start with Reactor No. 2, which on Friday was seen spewing steam, perhaps containing radioactive particles.
Officials have cautioned, however, that restoring electricity to the reactor would prove fruitless if the pumps were not working. In that case, a new cooling system would be needed, leading to more delays in an emergency that has bedeviled the power company and the government and caused anxiety and frustration overseas.
The nuclear safety agency said that the crisis now had wider consequences, and raised its assessment of the accident’s severity to Level 5 on a seven-level scale established by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official at the agency, said the assessment was retroactive to Tuesday and based on the fact that officials now assumed that more than 3 percent of the nuclear fuel at the plant had experienced meltdown.
The adjustment was an admission by Japanese officials that the problem was worse than it had previously stated. “We could have moved more quickly in collecting information and assessing the situation,” said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary.
Outside experts have said for days that this disaster is worse than the one in 1979 at Three Mile Island — which the United States classified as a 5 on the international scale but which released far less radiation outside the plant than Fukushima Daiichi already has.
Engineers are starting the power cord effort with Reactor No. 2 because its outer building has not blown off, thus making it hard to spray in water the way they can with Nos. 1, 3 and 4, according to NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, which cited power company officials.
The plan was to lay a 1.5-kilometer power cable between Reactor Nos. 1 and 3 to get to No. 2. If they can hook it up, it will theoretically be able to power all six reactors. The main hazard was the exposure of workers.
Unable to contain the catastrophe on its own, Tokyo Electric has received help from Japanese police and fire departments and the country’s Self-Defense Forces. Assistance has started to flood in as well, with nuclear experts arriving from the United States and international agencies. France and South Korea are also providing support.
Overnight in Japan, crews from the Tokyo Fire Department doused water on Reactor No. 3, which was doused earlier Friday by teams from the Self-Defense Forces and the United States military. Workers planned to continue the spraying on Saturday.
In a further sign of spreading alarm on Friday that uranium in the plant could begin to melt, Japan planned to import about 150 tons of boron from South Korea and France to mix with water to be sprayed onto damaged reactors, French and South Korean officials said Friday. Boron absorbs neutrons during a nuclear reaction and can be used in an effort to stop a meltdown if the zirconium cladding on uranium fuel rods is compromised.
Tokyo Electric Power said this week that there was a possibility of “recriticality,” in which fission would resume if fuel rods melted and the uranium pellets slumped into a jumble on the floor of a storage pool or reactor core. Spraying pure water on the uranium under these conditions can actually accelerate fission, said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer.
Nuclear reactions at the plant were halted immediately after last week’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and before the tsunami arrived minutes later.
In the past two days, Japanese officials have focused on cooling spent fuel rods in a storage pool in Reactor No. 3, but on Friday steam was seen rising from Reactor No. 2. It was one of two hit by an explosion on Tuesday.
Additionally, a senior Western nuclear industry executive said Friday that there appeared to be damage to the floor or sides of the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4, and that this was making it hard to refill the pool with water. The problem was first reported by The Los Angeles Times.
Engineers said Thursday that a rip in the stainless steel lining of the pool at Reactor No. 4 and the concrete base underneath it was possible as a result of earthquake damage. The steel gates at either end of the storage pool are also vulnerable to damage during an earthquake and could leak water if they no longer close tightly.
The senior executive, who asked not to be identified because his comments could damage business relationships, said that a leak had not been located but that engineers had concluded that it must exist because water sprayed on the storage pool had been disappearing much more quickly than would be consistent with evaporation.
Technicians focused Friday on fixing electrical connections at Reactor No. 2 and spraying more water on No. 3 while studying the problem at No. 4.
“They have to figure out what to do, and certainly you can’t have No. 2 going haywire or No. 3 going haywire at the same time you’re trying to figure out what to do with No. 4,” said the executive, who said he had learned of the problem from industry contacts in Japan.
One concern at No. 4 has been a fire that was burning at its storage pool earlier in the week; American officials are not convinced the fire has gone out. American officials have also worried that the spent-fuel pool at that reactor has run dry, exposing the rods.
The new setbacks emerged as the first readings from American data collection flights over the plant in northeastern Japan showed that the worst contamination had not spread beyond the 19-mile range of highest concern established by the Japanese.
While the findings were reassuring in the short term, the United States declined to back away from its warning to Americans there to stay at least 50 miles from the plant, setting up a larger perimeter than the Japanese government had established. American officials did not release radiation readings.
Japanese officials, meanwhile, said Friday that despite their decision to elevate the level of severity, they were not expanding the evacuation zone.
The National Police Agency said Saturday that there were nearly 7,200 confirmed deaths so far, and nearly 11,000 people missing.
At the request of the Japanese military, a Massachusetts company, iRobot, said it put four robots on a plane for Japan on Friday. Colin Angle, the chief executive, said it had sent two small robots that could measure radiation levels close to the reactors and two larger ones that could pull hoses to spray water on the fuel rods.
He said Japanese soldiers could operate the robots from a protected vehicle.
Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald and Kantaro Suzuki from Tokyo, David E. Sanger from Washington, William J. Broad and Christopher Drew from New York, Thom Shanker from Washington and Alan Cowell from Paris.
More in Asia Pacific (4 of 52 articles)
More Foreigners Are Seeking to Flee Japan
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Close
By KEN BELSON, HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER
This article is by Ken Belson, Hiroko Tabuchi and Keith Bradsher.
TOKYO — Scrambling to corral a widening crisis, engineers linked a power cable to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station early Saturday as they struggled to restart systems designed to prevent overheating and keep radiation from escaping.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, said it hoped to connect the electric cord to the cooling equipment inside the facility later Saturday in an attempt to stabilize the reactors that were damaged by the powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan eight days ago.
In a brief statement on Japanese television Saturday morning, an official for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that workers had managed to restart a diesel pump and restored cooling functions at two of the reactors, Nos. 5 and 6, early Saturday morning. He did not provide any details.
Those reactors were not in use when the disaster occurred, but they contained spent fuel rods, and engineers were concerned this week when temperatures in the reactors began to rise.
About 150 of its people were working on the electrical cable, the power company said, and they were planning to start with Reactor No. 2, which on Friday was seen spewing steam, perhaps containing radioactive particles.
Officials have cautioned, however, that restoring electricity to the reactor would prove fruitless if the pumps were not working. In that case, a new cooling system would be needed, leading to more delays in an emergency that has bedeviled the power company and the government and caused anxiety and frustration overseas.
The nuclear safety agency said that the crisis now had wider consequences, and raised its assessment of the accident’s severity to Level 5 on a seven-level scale established by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official at the agency, said the assessment was retroactive to Tuesday and based on the fact that officials now assumed that more than 3 percent of the nuclear fuel at the plant had experienced meltdown.
The adjustment was an admission by Japanese officials that the problem was worse than it had previously stated. “We could have moved more quickly in collecting information and assessing the situation,” said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary.
Outside experts have said for days that this disaster is worse than the one in 1979 at Three Mile Island — which the United States classified as a 5 on the international scale but which released far less radiation outside the plant than Fukushima Daiichi already has.
Engineers are starting the power cord effort with Reactor No. 2 because its outer building has not blown off, thus making it hard to spray in water the way they can with Nos. 1, 3 and 4, according to NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, which cited power company officials.
The plan was to lay a 1.5-kilometer power cable between Reactor Nos. 1 and 3 to get to No. 2. If they can hook it up, it will theoretically be able to power all six reactors. The main hazard was the exposure of workers.
Unable to contain the catastrophe on its own, Tokyo Electric has received help from Japanese police and fire departments and the country’s Self-Defense Forces. Assistance has started to flood in as well, with nuclear experts arriving from the United States and international agencies. France and South Korea are also providing support.
Overnight in Japan, crews from the Tokyo Fire Department doused water on Reactor No. 3, which was doused earlier Friday by teams from the Self-Defense Forces and the United States military. Workers planned to continue the spraying on Saturday.
In a further sign of spreading alarm on Friday that uranium in the plant could begin to melt, Japan planned to import about 150 tons of boron from South Korea and France to mix with water to be sprayed onto damaged reactors, French and South Korean officials said Friday. Boron absorbs neutrons during a nuclear reaction and can be used in an effort to stop a meltdown if the zirconium cladding on uranium fuel rods is compromised.
Tokyo Electric Power said this week that there was a possibility of “recriticality,” in which fission would resume if fuel rods melted and the uranium pellets slumped into a jumble on the floor of a storage pool or reactor core. Spraying pure water on the uranium under these conditions can actually accelerate fission, said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer.
Nuclear reactions at the plant were halted immediately after last week’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and before the tsunami arrived minutes later.
In the past two days, Japanese officials have focused on cooling spent fuel rods in a storage pool in Reactor No. 3, but on Friday steam was seen rising from Reactor No. 2. It was one of two hit by an explosion on Tuesday.
Additionally, a senior Western nuclear industry executive said Friday that there appeared to be damage to the floor or sides of the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4, and that this was making it hard to refill the pool with water. The problem was first reported by The Los Angeles Times.
Engineers said Thursday that a rip in the stainless steel lining of the pool at Reactor No. 4 and the concrete base underneath it was possible as a result of earthquake damage. The steel gates at either end of the storage pool are also vulnerable to damage during an earthquake and could leak water if they no longer close tightly.
The senior executive, who asked not to be identified because his comments could damage business relationships, said that a leak had not been located but that engineers had concluded that it must exist because water sprayed on the storage pool had been disappearing much more quickly than would be consistent with evaporation.
Technicians focused Friday on fixing electrical connections at Reactor No. 2 and spraying more water on No. 3 while studying the problem at No. 4.
“They have to figure out what to do, and certainly you can’t have No. 2 going haywire or No. 3 going haywire at the same time you’re trying to figure out what to do with No. 4,” said the executive, who said he had learned of the problem from industry contacts in Japan.
One concern at No. 4 has been a fire that was burning at its storage pool earlier in the week; American officials are not convinced the fire has gone out. American officials have also worried that the spent-fuel pool at that reactor has run dry, exposing the rods.
The new setbacks emerged as the first readings from American data collection flights over the plant in northeastern Japan showed that the worst contamination had not spread beyond the 19-mile range of highest concern established by the Japanese.
While the findings were reassuring in the short term, the United States declined to back away from its warning to Americans there to stay at least 50 miles from the plant, setting up a larger perimeter than the Japanese government had established. American officials did not release radiation readings.
Japanese officials, meanwhile, said Friday that despite their decision to elevate the level of severity, they were not expanding the evacuation zone.
The National Police Agency said Saturday that there were nearly 7,200 confirmed deaths so far, and nearly 11,000 people missing.
At the request of the Japanese military, a Massachusetts company, iRobot, said it put four robots on a plane for Japan on Friday. Colin Angle, the chief executive, said it had sent two small robots that could measure radiation levels close to the reactors and two larger ones that could pull hoses to spray water on the fuel rods.
He said Japanese soldiers could operate the robots from a protected vehicle.
Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald and Kantaro Suzuki from Tokyo, David E. Sanger from Washington, William J. Broad and Christopher Drew from New York, Thom Shanker from Washington and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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17/03 Japan’s Meltdown and the Global Economy’s
March 17, 2011
By FLOYD NORRIS
Four years ago, there were fears of a financial meltdown — a term borrowed from the nuclear power industry. Now there are fears of a real meltdown.
Comparing the two events may risk seeming insensitive to the rising human toll in northern Japan, but there are similarities in causation. In each case, overconfidence born of experience led to increased risks once a disaster unfolded.
Fortunately, there is reason to hope that the worst fears will not be realized. When — let us hope it is not “if” — the radiation releases are controlled, Japan can begin to rebuild and the worst economic fears could prove to be as exaggerated as the depression fears that paralyzed financial markets two years ago.
In the years preceding each meltdown, the very act of reducing apparent risks may have increased actual risks. In the world of finance, there was a general acceptance of the idea that banks and their regulators had developed sophisticated risk models to prevent a disaster. As lending grew more reckless, there was confidence that no real risks were being taken.
In Japan, the risks of earthquake and tsunami were well known, and believed to have been dealt with. An earthquake could damage a nuclear plant and its vital cooling process if power to the reactor were cut off. So backup generators were built and batteries installed to provide power even if the generator did not immediately kick in. A tsunami could cause flooding. So huge sea walls were built to prevent floods.
All the precautions had worked in previous earthquakes, and that history was reassuring.
Unfortunately, it appears that those building the nuclear plants assumed that the risk from tsunamis had been eliminated by the precautions that others took. The backup generators were behind the flood walls, but they were not on high ground, as would have seemed necessary without faith in the walls. So the generators flooded and the cooling systems broke down. That led to radiation releases. Whether it will lead to something much worse is still unknown.
In the world of finance, the assumption that safeguards would prevent disaster led people to believe it was safe to borrow heavily. There had, after all, been a prolonged period in which markets were not turbulent and there were only profits, not losses, to be realized from taking on the additional risk of leverage. As the economist Hyman Minsky wrote years earlier, “stability is destabilizing” because it encourages confidence that benign circumstances will endure.
We learned from the financial crisis that the comfortable assurances that authorities knew what to do were misplaced. Central bankers had insisted that it was futile and unnecessary for them to look out for bubbles, since they knew how to deal with the results if one did burst. The 2001 recession after the collapse of the technology stock bubble was both short and mild. The Federal Reserve emerged triumphant, its wisdom and capabilities widely admired.
But this time it turned out that easing monetary policy was not nearly enough, and the United States will be dealing for years with problems caused by homeowners who are — to use another term that seems newly inappropriate — underwater. Many, but not all, of those once-confident central bankers now say they were wrong.
It has become clear that the Japanese nuclear industry was ill equipped to deal with the current disaster. Otherwise the cooling systems would have continued functioning even if the earthquake had disabled plants. The cost — in lives and yen — is as yet unknown.
Each case — a collapse of house prices and a cascade of problems threatening a large release of radiation — was viewed as so improbable that it could be virtually ignored in considering risks. Those who counseled otherwise were viewed as alarmists.
What was not considered sufficiently, perhaps, is just how serious an unlikely risk may be. If it is bad enough, the risk may not be worth taking, no matter how good the odds. There is a reason people do not play Russian roulette, even if the odds are highly favorable. It is a game you lose only once.
At a time when brave workers are risking death from radiation, when whole communities have been destroyed by the tsunami and survivors are suffering in makeshift shelters, it seems inhuman to even suggest that of the two meltdowns, the financial one was worse. Bank failures do not kill people.
In economic terms, however, the financial crisis was extraordinary. It caused world gross domestic product to fall 1.5 percent in 2009, according to World Bank calculations. Nothing like that happened during the severe downturns of the 1970s and 1980s. The early estimates of the impact of the disaster in Japan suggest that economic damages will be far less, even though Japan accounts for almost 9 percent of world G.D.P.
But those damages will be significant, and that significance is only increased by the fact the financial crisis weakened developed economies and left governments with vastly increased debts. Even assuming that the radiation damage does not permanently scar a significant part of Japan, that country’s output will fall sharply for a time, and that time could be extended if rolling blackouts remain necessary. Some of that slack could be made up by non-Japanese companies, but in some industries they will be hampered by a shortage of needed components from Japan.
We owe the concept of “just-in-time” inventories to Japan. Now that practice could make the temporary damage to world growth all the more severe. Shortages of some products could drive up prices, making inflation numbers around the world that much worse.
It is, in other words, a recipe for 1970s style stagflation, at least briefly.
Japan’s plight could be worsened by the fact that many Japanese did not buy earthquake insurance, and most such policies that do exist pay half or less of the damage if a home is destroyed. Through a complicated arrangement, the Japanese government is responsible for much of the insurance liability, and if the affected areas are to be rebuilt much of the cost will fall to the government, whether or not the properties had insurance.
Fortunately, there are few countries as well equipped as Japan for the task.
That statement may seem surprising given the attention paid to the large Japanese government debt, which has led to almost hysterical warnings in some circles about an eventual default. How can this overextended government borrow more money?
As it happens, Japan owes the money almost entirely to itself. The private sector has ample resources. Moreover, Japan borrows in yen, the same currency the government can print. Default worries are absurd.
On March 10, the day before the earthquake and tsunami struck, Japanese five-year bonds yielded 0.57 percent. A week later, the yield had fallen to 0.51 percent. That is hardly the sign of fearful investors. Instead, it reflects a flight to safety.
In addition, Japan has the industrial base to undertake rebuilding. It will not need to import workers or expertise.
Finally, the Japanese economy is anything but overheated. There is plenty of spare capacity. Michael T. Darda, the chief economist of MKM Partners, a Connecticut-based research firm, points out that Japan’s G.D.P. is now lower than it was in the early 1990s, when expressed in nominal yen. Adjusted for deflation, there has been some growth, but not much.
If ever there was an economy that needed some stimulus, this is the one. The Bank of Japan now has a good reason to print money.
“Considering Japan’s limited capacity to take on more debt due to its already high debt/G.D.P. ratio, and impending pressures on domestic savings from an aging population,” Mr. Darda wrote, “reflation and debt monetization seem like the most likely path forward.”
For now, it seems reasonable to think that ordinary Japanese may cut back on spending for nonessentials, much as Americans did after Sept. 11, causing further weakness in the economy. Hoarding of some goods — among them milk and gasoline — appears to be happening in areas far removed from the crisis.
The economy is unlikely to stabilize until the nuclear situation is clearly under control, essential goods readily available and survivors living in conditions worthy of a wealthy nation. Only then will the country be in a position to assess how badly it has been hurt and begin the recovery process.
This tragedy has destroyed many lives and much wealth. There is a risk that the government’s response will anger rather than unify the Japanese people, and that a crisis careering out of control will only worsen a reputation of incompetence and indecision that has grown as the country’s economy stumbled through the last two decades.
But there is a chance that the crisis could encourage a national unity of purpose, as Sept. 11 did for a time in the United States. If the Japanese government can maintain that sense of unity and show a new ability to act decisively and effectively, an economic disaster need not be part of the horrible legacy of the March 11 earthquake.
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By FLOYD NORRIS
Four years ago, there were fears of a financial meltdown — a term borrowed from the nuclear power industry. Now there are fears of a real meltdown.
Comparing the two events may risk seeming insensitive to the rising human toll in northern Japan, but there are similarities in causation. In each case, overconfidence born of experience led to increased risks once a disaster unfolded.
Fortunately, there is reason to hope that the worst fears will not be realized. When — let us hope it is not “if” — the radiation releases are controlled, Japan can begin to rebuild and the worst economic fears could prove to be as exaggerated as the depression fears that paralyzed financial markets two years ago.
In the years preceding each meltdown, the very act of reducing apparent risks may have increased actual risks. In the world of finance, there was a general acceptance of the idea that banks and their regulators had developed sophisticated risk models to prevent a disaster. As lending grew more reckless, there was confidence that no real risks were being taken.
In Japan, the risks of earthquake and tsunami were well known, and believed to have been dealt with. An earthquake could damage a nuclear plant and its vital cooling process if power to the reactor were cut off. So backup generators were built and batteries installed to provide power even if the generator did not immediately kick in. A tsunami could cause flooding. So huge sea walls were built to prevent floods.
All the precautions had worked in previous earthquakes, and that history was reassuring.
Unfortunately, it appears that those building the nuclear plants assumed that the risk from tsunamis had been eliminated by the precautions that others took. The backup generators were behind the flood walls, but they were not on high ground, as would have seemed necessary without faith in the walls. So the generators flooded and the cooling systems broke down. That led to radiation releases. Whether it will lead to something much worse is still unknown.
In the world of finance, the assumption that safeguards would prevent disaster led people to believe it was safe to borrow heavily. There had, after all, been a prolonged period in which markets were not turbulent and there were only profits, not losses, to be realized from taking on the additional risk of leverage. As the economist Hyman Minsky wrote years earlier, “stability is destabilizing” because it encourages confidence that benign circumstances will endure.
We learned from the financial crisis that the comfortable assurances that authorities knew what to do were misplaced. Central bankers had insisted that it was futile and unnecessary for them to look out for bubbles, since they knew how to deal with the results if one did burst. The 2001 recession after the collapse of the technology stock bubble was both short and mild. The Federal Reserve emerged triumphant, its wisdom and capabilities widely admired.
But this time it turned out that easing monetary policy was not nearly enough, and the United States will be dealing for years with problems caused by homeowners who are — to use another term that seems newly inappropriate — underwater. Many, but not all, of those once-confident central bankers now say they were wrong.
It has become clear that the Japanese nuclear industry was ill equipped to deal with the current disaster. Otherwise the cooling systems would have continued functioning even if the earthquake had disabled plants. The cost — in lives and yen — is as yet unknown.
Each case — a collapse of house prices and a cascade of problems threatening a large release of radiation — was viewed as so improbable that it could be virtually ignored in considering risks. Those who counseled otherwise were viewed as alarmists.
What was not considered sufficiently, perhaps, is just how serious an unlikely risk may be. If it is bad enough, the risk may not be worth taking, no matter how good the odds. There is a reason people do not play Russian roulette, even if the odds are highly favorable. It is a game you lose only once.
At a time when brave workers are risking death from radiation, when whole communities have been destroyed by the tsunami and survivors are suffering in makeshift shelters, it seems inhuman to even suggest that of the two meltdowns, the financial one was worse. Bank failures do not kill people.
In economic terms, however, the financial crisis was extraordinary. It caused world gross domestic product to fall 1.5 percent in 2009, according to World Bank calculations. Nothing like that happened during the severe downturns of the 1970s and 1980s. The early estimates of the impact of the disaster in Japan suggest that economic damages will be far less, even though Japan accounts for almost 9 percent of world G.D.P.
But those damages will be significant, and that significance is only increased by the fact the financial crisis weakened developed economies and left governments with vastly increased debts. Even assuming that the radiation damage does not permanently scar a significant part of Japan, that country’s output will fall sharply for a time, and that time could be extended if rolling blackouts remain necessary. Some of that slack could be made up by non-Japanese companies, but in some industries they will be hampered by a shortage of needed components from Japan.
We owe the concept of “just-in-time” inventories to Japan. Now that practice could make the temporary damage to world growth all the more severe. Shortages of some products could drive up prices, making inflation numbers around the world that much worse.
It is, in other words, a recipe for 1970s style stagflation, at least briefly.
Japan’s plight could be worsened by the fact that many Japanese did not buy earthquake insurance, and most such policies that do exist pay half or less of the damage if a home is destroyed. Through a complicated arrangement, the Japanese government is responsible for much of the insurance liability, and if the affected areas are to be rebuilt much of the cost will fall to the government, whether or not the properties had insurance.
Fortunately, there are few countries as well equipped as Japan for the task.
That statement may seem surprising given the attention paid to the large Japanese government debt, which has led to almost hysterical warnings in some circles about an eventual default. How can this overextended government borrow more money?
As it happens, Japan owes the money almost entirely to itself. The private sector has ample resources. Moreover, Japan borrows in yen, the same currency the government can print. Default worries are absurd.
On March 10, the day before the earthquake and tsunami struck, Japanese five-year bonds yielded 0.57 percent. A week later, the yield had fallen to 0.51 percent. That is hardly the sign of fearful investors. Instead, it reflects a flight to safety.
In addition, Japan has the industrial base to undertake rebuilding. It will not need to import workers or expertise.
Finally, the Japanese economy is anything but overheated. There is plenty of spare capacity. Michael T. Darda, the chief economist of MKM Partners, a Connecticut-based research firm, points out that Japan’s G.D.P. is now lower than it was in the early 1990s, when expressed in nominal yen. Adjusted for deflation, there has been some growth, but not much.
If ever there was an economy that needed some stimulus, this is the one. The Bank of Japan now has a good reason to print money.
“Considering Japan’s limited capacity to take on more debt due to its already high debt/G.D.P. ratio, and impending pressures on domestic savings from an aging population,” Mr. Darda wrote, “reflation and debt monetization seem like the most likely path forward.”
For now, it seems reasonable to think that ordinary Japanese may cut back on spending for nonessentials, much as Americans did after Sept. 11, causing further weakness in the economy. Hoarding of some goods — among them milk and gasoline — appears to be happening in areas far removed from the crisis.
The economy is unlikely to stabilize until the nuclear situation is clearly under control, essential goods readily available and survivors living in conditions worthy of a wealthy nation. Only then will the country be in a position to assess how badly it has been hurt and begin the recovery process.
This tragedy has destroyed many lives and much wealth. There is a risk that the government’s response will anger rather than unify the Japanese people, and that a crisis careering out of control will only worsen a reputation of incompetence and indecision that has grown as the country’s economy stumbled through the last two decades.
But there is a chance that the crisis could encourage a national unity of purpose, as Sept. 11 did for a time in the United States. If the Japanese government can maintain that sense of unity and show a new ability to act decisively and effectively, an economic disaster need not be part of the horrible legacy of the March 11 earthquake.
More in Business Day (1 of 22 articles)
Japan’s Automakers Expect Longer Delays
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