Fukushima: A Nuclear Threat to Japan, the
U.S. and the World
Japan Disaster Could Have Far-Reaching
Consequences
26
comments OPINION
By STEPHEN BROZAK and HENRY BASSMAN
April 6, 2011
For several weeks, radioactive leaks from
the Fukushima nuclear power plants
have been incapacitating a large part of
Japan.
Information from the Japanese government and
TEPCO, the power company that operates the
site, has been sparse, often incomplete and
sometimes contradictory. A confidential
assessment by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission obtained by The New York Times
suggests that the damaged Fukushima Daiichi
plant is far from stable. The report
concludes that the Fukushima plant is facing
a wide array of fresh threats that could
persist indefinitely.
The Fukushima disaster has become more
than a local, regional or national Japanese
event. The worldwide implications of the
event are becoming apparent: though a major
leak in a maintenance pit of the plant has
been plugged, there is still a great
likelihood that significant amounts of radioactive water will
continue to be released into the Pacific
Ocean; the worldwide Just-In-Time
manufacturing cycle has been interrupted; and
increased levels of radiation have been
detected on the U.S. East Coast. Though the
amount of radiation to reach the U.S. is
small and poses no present danger, its
presence demonstrates that the Fukushima
event has global impact.
Circumstances are still evolving too fast
and too out-of-control for the consequences
to be fully appreciated in real time. Every
day brings new revelations of failure and
growing frustration in Japan and elsewhere.
It has become obvious that not all the facts
about the Fukushima tragedy will be known
until the danger is long past.
In Japan, there continues to be
uncertainty about the extent of the danger
from radiation exposure and lack of
information about how many people have
already been exposed to health-impairing
radiation. We don't know how much
contamination has leaked into surrounding
land and water or when and how those leaks
can be repaired.
The Japanese government announced an
evacuation zone extending 19 miles from the
crippled Fukushima plants, the same distance
as the exclusion zone around Chernobyl in
Ukraine. But Japan is neither as large or as
sparsely populated as Ukraine. Close to 73
percent of Japan is unsuitable for
agricultural, industrial, or residential use.
Millions of people could be dislocated in
addition to those already homeless because of
the quake. These people will need to be
relocated and new homes will have to be
created for them.
With the international challenge of wars
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and national
concerns about Congress being unable to agree
on Federal Government funding, the U.S. news
spotlight that was on Fukushima has been
pointed elsewhere. However, smart investors
and social observers continue to monitor the
responses to the Fukushima tragedy and gauge
its potential impact on world markets.
It will take the equivalent of billions of
dollars for the Japanese to recover from
these disasters and the U.S. economy is
closely linked to theirs. The Japanese
government and Japanese investors comprise
the second largest holders of U.S. Treasuries,
at $885 billion. The Bank of Japan also is
reported to hold $493 billion in its reserve
balance to avert credit problems. Some
financial observers have speculated that the
earthquake and tsunami may force Japan's
government and investors to liquidate much of
the U.S. debt they hold. This possibility
doesn't even consider that there is no
transparency as to what plans exist for using
these funds.
The wholesomeness of much of Japan's food
supply has come under question. Farmers have
been forced to destroy crops and dispose of
dairy products. Because of continuing
contamination of seawater, the healthfulness
of seafood from the Pacific Ocean is in
question. Japan is already a net food
importer. In response to a continuing
shortage of Japanese home-grown food, the
Japanese government may encourage importation
of even more foreign food, which is likely to
increase the price of food in a nation where
food is already an extremely expensive
commodity. Worldwide, increased competition
for food is likely to affect prices, causing
some people in marginal economies to go
hungry.
Japanese manufacturers are increasingly in
competition with other Asian countries. With
the domestic Japanese industrial base
severely damaged by the earthquake, delivery
of Japanese-manufactured products to the U.S.
has been disrupted. Some U.S. plants using
Japanese parts have been forced to slow down
or halt production. They will probably
recover when Japan begins exporting a full
supply again, but in an already shaky economy,
that could take months. If severe enough, the
postponements could cause demand to disappear.
Some industries where Japan now has a
predominant position are already threatened.
Pre-Fukushima Japan produced a significant
percentage of the world's supply of silicon
wafers, the base on which integrated circuits
and memory chips are made. Because of the
earthquake, it has been estimated that wafer
supply has diminished by 25 percent.
A shortage of silicon wafers is likely to
cause the price to rise, thus increasing the
price of chips worldwide, which would have
impact on the price of all sorts of goods
from jumbo jet airplanes to programmable
coffee makers. Korean manufacturers said they
would fill the void. If customers establish
supply agreements with new manufacturers in
Korea, return to their former suppliers in
Japan will become even more difficult.
Japan is a culturally unified nation, with
more than 98 percent of its population
sharing the same ethnicity. It also is a
nation where the social norm is to achieve
consensus and conform to standards. Japanese
people are careful about expressing dissent
or participating in controversy. Yet, we are
seeing increased, almost unprecedented
criticism of TEPCO and the government
beginning to be expressed. If this is
possible in such a polite and restrained
society, imagine the response to a similar
disaster elsewhere.
Increasingly, reports of heroic workers,
dubbed the Fukushima Fifty by the press, have
made their way into Western news media. There
may be as many as 1,000 workers who are
sacrificing themselves to prevent additional
damage and repair existing damage to the
nuclear reactors. It is possible some of
these workers have been exposed to so much
radiation that their lives will be changed in
unforeseeable ways. It is likely many of
these workers will suffer the long-term
effects of radiation exposure, including
increased likelihood of leukemia within a few
years and other cancers as much as a decade
or more from now. DNA damage to workers could
become apparent only when these workers have
children.
Though the aftermath of Fukushima will be
with us for decades, and perhaps generations,
immediate attention to this matter is
imperative to save lives, provide knowledge
that will avert a similar disaster elsewhere,
and minimize domestic and worldwide economic
impact.
After almost a month, there continue to be
more questions than answers. There has been
marginal success in cooling the at-risk
reactors and little success stemming the flow
of radioactive waste water. We have no
credible estimate of the impact this disaster
will have on the Japanese economy in
particular or the world economy in general.
There have been no credible steps in the U.S.
or by the International Atomic Energy Agency
to begin learning from this event and its
aftermath and to apply those lessons to avert
or minimize future tragedies.
The Japanese authorities, with the help of
other experts, will have to muddle through
this disaster, making up solutions as they go
along. Hopefully, the damaged reactors will
be brought under control before serious
permanent harm is inflicted on national and
international resources.
Looking to the future, as fossil fuels are
depleted and become more costly, the world
inevitably will become more dependent on
nuclear power. It is likely that another
nuclear disaster will occur sooner or later.
Depending on ad-hoc solutions to disasters of
this magnitude is shortsighted at best. In
the U.S., we have seen no concerted response
by U.S. regulators and nuclear power
operators to re-examine safety standards in
the 104 nuclear plants in this country. Most
of them are decades old, some are based on
the same design as Fukushima, and some sit on
or near fault lines as unstable as those in
Japan.
What is needed,
in our opinion, is a permanently staffed,
international nuclear rescue team. The team
could have a core staff of full-time team
members with stand-by team members, drawn
from government and industry experts, who
would be activated in the event of a disaster.
The team would be furnished with the
scientific, technical and equipment resources
necessary to address an equivalent or a worse
level of nuclear disaster than Fukushima. It
would create scenarios, plans and tactics for
remediating disasters when they occur. It
would train to prepare to respond to a
nuclear accident as a cohesive unit. Such
a resource would not provide a fool-proof
solution to inevitable nuclear disasters.
However, it is a necessary first step in
controlling the potentially cataclysmic
effects of a Fukushima-scale, or worse,
nuclear reactor tragedy. After Chernobyl,
Three-Mile Island and Now Fukushima, failure
to prepare in advance for another such
tragedy would be foolishly self-destructive.
Steve Brozak is President of WBB
Securities, an independent broker-dealer and
investment bank specializing in biotechnology,
medical devices and pharmaceutical research.
Henry Bassman is a Managing Director at WBB
Securities.
COMMENT: It takes about 40 years to
decomission an undamaged nuclear plant - but
all the parts comprising it (euphemistically
rated as 'low-level radiation' materials) are
still lethal for hundreds of years. The spent
fuel is lethal for thousands of years. It is
time the world woke up and rather spent more
on research and development of safer power
than persisted with the most dangerous way of
boiling water - and risk more such tragedies,
which are more certain than the possibility
of an asteroid strike.Posted by:
Zygyk 11:24
AM