LAND OF THE SETTING SUN

The linear thinkers that dominate the mainstream media and the halls of power in Washington D.C. are assessing the series of disasters in Japan without connecting the dots of history. Their ideological desire to convince people that things will go back to normal in short order flies in the face of the facts. It makes me wonder whether these supposed thought leaders lack true intelligence or whether their ideological biases convince them to lie. At the end of the day it comes down to wealth, power and control. If those in power were to tell the truth about the true consequences of demographics, debt, disasters, and devaluation, their subjects would revolt and toss them out. Before the multiple disasters struck Japan last week, the sun was already setting on this empire. The recent tragic events will accelerate that descent.  

 

Japanese Beetle Meet Windshield

 

Smart financial minds have been expecting a Japanese economic tsunami for the last few years. John Mauldin described Japan’s predicament in early 2010:

“I refer to Japan as a bug in search of a windshield. I am not so sure about the timing, however, as the economic and fiscal insanity that is Japan may be able to go on for longer than many think possible. But to me it is not a question of whether there will be a crisis, but when there will be one. This year? 2011? 2012? I doubt Japan makes it to the middle of the decade with a very serious and sad day of reckoning.

The downside to the continuation of running massive deficits is that when the break does come, it will be all the more painful and difficult to deal with as the debt mounts. If there is an upside, it is for the rest of the world to see what can happen to a developed country like Japan when massive deficits are allowed to pile up one after another. It will be a morality play writ large upon the walls, which cannot be dismissed.”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard expected a 9.0 debt earthquake to strike Japan in 2010:

“Weak sovereigns will buckle. The shocker will be Japan, our Weimar-in-waiting. This is the year when Tokyo finds it can no longer borrow at 1% from a captive bond market, and when it must foot the bill for all those fiscal packages that seemed such a good idea at the time. Every auction of JGBs will be a news event as the public debt punches above 225% of GDP. Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii will become as familiar as a rock star.

Once the dam breaks, debt service costs will tear the budget to pieces. The Bank of Japan will pull the emergency lever on QE. The country will flip from deflation to incipient hyperinflation. The yen will fall out of bed, outdoing China’s yuan in the beggar-thy-neighbor race to the bottom.”

Mr. Pritchard was either wrong or early, depending upon your point of view.  

                                       JAPAN INTEREST RATES

Japan can still borrow for 10 years at 1%. Despite the highest government debt as a percentage of GDP on the planet at 225%, Japan has not felt the wrath of the bond vigilantes. Not only did the Yen not fall out of bed, but it soared to a post-war high against the USD last week after the earthquake/tsunami. Investors drove the value of the yen higher, anticipating a huge rebuilding program in Japan. Japanese financial institutions would need to convert foreign assets into yen to pay for damage claims and construction expenses, a process that would strengthen the currency. In anticipation, investors piled into yen, helping drive up its value. Central banks across the globe intervened and weakened the currency, for the time being. When the world comes to its senses, the Yen will weaken on its own.

Japanese Yen (JPY) to 1 US Dollar (USD)

Debt & Demographics

 

Japan is a one trick pony that just broke two legs and is waiting to be put down. They have experienced a two decade long recession. Their stock market is still 70% below its 1990 peak. They have no natural resources. They allow virtually no immigration. And their population is in a death spiral. The one and only thing they have going for them is their phenomenal ability to manufacture high quality products and export them to the rest of the world. The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan severely damaged their just in time manufacturing machine. A surging yen would destroy their export machine by making their products more expensive. Hundreds of high tech Toyota, Honda, and Sony factories are shut. Four hundred miles of ports and harbors have been wiped out. There are rolling blackouts, with one million households without electricity. Over 500,000 people are still homeless.

The short-term impact of this disaster will push Japan into recession. The rebuilding efforts over the coming years will create a positive GDP figure, but will not do anything to benefit Japan over the long haul. The billions designated to rebuild will be money not invested in a more beneficial manner. The linear thinkers conclude that over the long-term Japan will be OK. These people are ignoring the double D’s – Debt and Demographics. When Japan entered its two decades of recession and experienced the Kobe earthquake in 1995, its government debt stood at 52% of GDP. Today it stands at 225% of GDP. Twenty one years ago, the Japanese population was still relatively young, with only 12% of the population over 65 years old. The population of Japan peaked in 2004 and now is in relentless decline. Over 23% of the population is over 65 and the median age is 45 years old. For comparison, the median age in the U.S. is 37 years old, with only 13% over 65. The projection portion of the chart below paints a picture of death. The population of Japan is aging rapidly and will decline by 4.4 million, or 3.5% in the next ten years. 

Table 2.2 Trends in Population

The question I pose to the mainstream thinkers is, “How can a country with a rapidly aging population and nearly one quarter of its population over 65 years old generate the necessary dynamic enthusiasm for rebuilding a shattered country?” Youthful enthusiasm and hope for a brighter future is essential to any enormous rebuilding effort. Japan does not have it in them. News reports already indicate a lethargic and seemingly insufficient response by emergency workers. The devastation seems to have overwhelmed this aging country. The psychological impact of this type of natural disaster will likely have two phases. Psychology professor Magda Osman describes the expected human response:

“After a disaster, typically small communities become incredibly co-operative and pull together to help each other and start the rebuilding process. There’s an immediate response where people start to take control of the situation, begin to deal with it and assess and respond to the devastation around them. The problem is that we aren’t very good at calculating the long-term effects of disasters. After about two months of re-building and cleaning up we tend to experience a second major slump when we realize the full severity of the situation in the longer term. This is what we need to be wary of because this triggers severe depression.”

This would be the normal response of a traumatized populace. An aged populace is likely to experience worse depression and not bounce back from this tragedy. Japan is still the 10th most populated country on earth, with the 3rd largest economy. China just passed Japan to become the 2nd biggest economy in the world. India will pass Japan by 2012.

Table 2.1 Countries with a Large Population (2009)

Youthful countries across the world are gaining on Japan. The wisdom of the elderly doesn’t cut it in a global economy. Global competition is cutthroat. China, India and the other emerging Asian countries will take advantage of Japan’s misfortune by filling the hole left by Japanese manufacturers. The short-term issues of power, supply lines, and reconstruction are minor when compared to a mass die off of the Japanese population that will result in a population that is 25% smaller in 2050 than it is today. Demographics are a bitch. 

Figure 2.4 Proportion of Elderly Population by Country (Aged 65 years and over)

With the amount of debt hanging over the Japanese empire, it might be a good strategy to commit hari-kari. The non-thinking pundits on CNBC contend that since Japan hasn’t had any detrimental effects from running their debt to 225% of GDP, running it to 300% won’t be a problem. Reinhart and Rogoff studies concluded that once a country breaches the 90% level, growth slows and a debt crisis is likely to ensue. Japan has been stuck in a 20 year recession, as they chose Keynesian shovel ready projects, quantitative easing, currency manipulation, and covering up the true financial condition of its banks over accepting the consequences of a debt bubble. Remind you of anyone? The result is their real GDP is lower today than it was in 1995. The Paul Krugmans of the world would contend that they just didn’t spend enough.

 

The only reason Japan has not collapsed is due to its homogeneous population willing to buy virtually all of the debt issued by its government for the last twenty years and its prodigious ability to produce high quality products that the rest of the world wants. Japan has maintained a consistent trade surplus, and its government debt has been held mainly by its own people, with 95% of Japanese government bonds in the possession of Japanese, meaning the country was able to finance itself without depending upon fickle foreign investors who might prefer a return greater than 1%. This ain’t 1990. The savings rate of the Japanese population had already declined from 14% in 1990 to 2% by 2008. In a recent article, Mike Shedlock explained the situation prior to the recent devastation:

“The Government Pension Investment Fund, which oversees 117.6 trillion yen ($1.4 trillion), in September forecast that it would sell 4 trillion yen in assets in the business year ending March 31 to fund payouts. Sales by the fund, which helps oversee public pension funds for Japan’s 37 million retirees, come as the first of Japan’s baby boomers is set to turn 65 in 2012, making them eligible for pension payments. Japan choices are to default on its debt, print money to fund interest on the debt, raise taxes effectively robbing savers of their money, or undertake huge spending cuts. The dilemma stems from years of Keynesian and Monetarist stupidity.”

The new tragedy will just accelerate the conversion of Japanese savers into forced spenders. Millions of Japanese savers will be forced to spend their savings on survival, as many have lost their jobs and businesses due to the monumental damage to northern Japan.

Setting Sun – Race to the Bottom

 

Traders figured out what must happen over the coming years. A large swath of Japanese insurers and companies will begin repatriating assets held in other currencies to begin the rebuilding effort at home, driving the value of the Yen higher. At a time of crisis a stronger Yen would severely damage Japan’s export based economy even further. Therefore, Central Banks around the world jointly intervened. The Bank of Japan spent Y2 trillion ($25 billion), while central banks across Europe contributed $5 billion and the Federal Reserve spent $600 million to push down the yen on Friday. The Bank of Japan is doing what they do best – printing money. Quantitative easing is an art form perfected by all Central Banks across the globe. Every disaster over the last twenty years, whether man made (wars, internet collapse, housing collapse, debt meltdown) or caused by nature, are met with the exact same solution – PRINT MONEY.

This method works until it doesn’t work. Japan’s central bank cannot reverse the demographics. From this point forward the population of Japan will be net sellers of government debt. Japanese insurance companies will be on the hook for $33 billion in claims. They will need to sell government bonds in order to make those payments. The World Bank has estimated the cost of rebuilding to be $235 billion. The government will need to borrow this money. At least 30% of its energy needs are off-line. It already imports 95% of its oil and coal. They will need to increase energy imports to make up for the nuclear energy shortage. Its positive trade balance was already in decline.  The clueless CNBC pundits can drone on about how this natural disaster will be good for the Japanese economy because of the substantial rebuilding program, but they are dead wrong. Japan is trapped, with no way out. They will need to issue hundreds of billions in new debt, which cannot be bought by its citizens, pension funds, or insurance companies. How many foreign investors will buy a 10 Year Japanese government bond paying 1%, knowing that Japan wants to weaken its currency? NONE. The only choices are to raise interest rates to attract buyers or print more money. With an already suffocating level of debt, they can’t allow interest rates to rise. They would choke on the interest.

The Bank of Japan will follow the same script as Ben Bernanke. They will print new Yen and buy the newly issued debt. What an original idea. Japan is caught in a debt stranglehold and demographic nightmare. Their currency will ultimately collapse like a nuclear reactor after a tsunami. When Japan defaults on their debt, the pain will be intense, as they will be throwing their own aged population under the bus. America, on the other hand, will throw the whole world under the bus when we default.

The Japanese own $886 billion of US Treasuries and have bought $256 billion of our debt since October 2008. Timmy Geithner will need to issue $1.5 trillion of new bonds per year. Japan will no longer be a buyer. They will be a seller. This will put upward pressure on U.S. interest rates. Japan’s reconstruction needs will put pressure on commodity and energy prices. Production and supply problems for Japanese parts and goods are already creating problems for GM and other car companies in the U.S. Lack of supply leads to higher prices. The great earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown of 2011 will result in more quantitative easing in Japan and the U.S. This will result in even more inflation than we are experiencing today. Once the inflation genie is out of the bottle, the race to the bottom will accelerate. Gold will decide who wins the race. It has been a neck and neck race since 2001. I’m not sure it is a race anyone wants to win. But the destination is certain.

 

“The endeavors to expand the quantity of money in circulation either in order to increase the government’s capacity to spend or in order to bring about a temporary lowering of the rate of interest disintegrate all currency matters and derange economic calculation.”Ludwig von Mises

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james narad
james narad

Dear Mr. Quinn,

I wrote to you about a year or so ago. I believe I had mentioned Michael Hodge’s “Grandfather Economic Report”. You had replied that you regularly referred to his charts, etc. Sometime since then, his website has disappeared. Do you know, perhaps, what has become of him? He seemed like a fine individual with a great spirit. I hope he is O.K.

Thank you,

Jim ( P.S…. Please do not put this note up on your website. Thank you for your great work )

llpoh
llpoh

James – you posted it on the open forum. There is a chance Admin may delete it. He’s probably in bed now.

jimbo
jimbo

Japan is over populated. They can feel the pain now and downsize to a sustainable population or grow and run into natural resource limitations such as oil, coal and other commodities. The natural resource wall will hurt them much more than weaning themselves off of the growth paradigm that most seem to adore. I figured here it would be acknowledged that there is a limit to growth, how wrong I was. Anyhow, in the long run, the Japanese will be better off by allowing their population to decline. If they won’t they will starve as so will many others around the world.

Thunderbird
Thunderbird

This situation is starting to turn into Dante’s Inferno; a raging furnace spewing out radioactive fallout that is going to affect the entire world. It is beginning to appear that the reactors with their spent fuel rods are no longer salvageable and some type of containment has to be devised.

I would think that the nuclear power industry would have some well thought out contingences for situations like this. If not then we are in trouble.

Reverse Engineer

From Steve on Economic Undertow.

RE

Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Nothing Is Happening.

The issue is not absolute safety costs as in lives- per- plant but rather, the perceived nature of the costs. This is the relative marginal costs of cheap base load electricity versus the anxiety cost that ‘cheap’ nuclear inflicts the same customers.

The slow- motion train wreck @ Fukushima Daiichi continues. Despite the happy talk from Japanese authorities, the situation appears to be deteriorating.

•People are warned not to eat vegetables or drink milk sourced from Fukushima Prefecture area due to the presence of radioactive cesium and iodine found on samples.

•Water supply in Tokyo tests positive for radiation, leading to warnings to keep tap water away from infants. According to the same report, temperatures within reactors one and three exceeded design limits: that is beyond 305° C. Radiation levels adjacent the reactors are @ life threatening levels: 500 millisieverts per hour. Ten hours @ that level and half of you are dead from acute radiation poisoning.

•Twenty five embassies have relocated out of Tokyo or are in process. Numerous companies have escaped or are escaping out of Tokyo as well. US military dependents are also leaving along with nationals of other countries including France and China.

•The big picture is the glaring absence of an overall plan to either shut the reactors or to entomb them. Instead of a plan there are bromides. These don’t build confidence: the soothing reassurances from the Japanese establishment suggests that circumstances are driving events while the operators are spectators.

Since the period approximately 8 hours after the crippling tsunami — when auxiliary battery power for emergency cooling finally failed — operators have relied on a series of ad hoc fixes: flooding the cores with sea water pumped into the reactors with fire trucks, hosing the buildings down with more fire trucks and a concrete pump, running a long extension cord, bombing the buildings with water drops, etc.

Nothing works because the problems are out of reach of small solutions. The piecemeal approach insures that any grasp is going to fall far short of the efforts needed to force a positive outcome.

One would think Botswana is battling its nuclear nightmare: Japan needs more than a handful of fire trucks and the ‘Faceless Fifty’ it needs everything and everyone the nation can spare, thousands of trucks, men, lead, sand, boron, concrete, digging machines, pumps … whatever is available and more!

Japan also needs someone in charge and a reality check. The reactor problems aren’t going to go away by themselves, they are going to keep getting worse.

Instead of a full- court press, there is a contest between TEPCO and the establishment on one side versus the public on the other over the perception of the establishment! This does not matter. Like America, the Japanese establishment has had a multi- decade problem with facing its energy deficit. Policy has made selling magical thinking and the application of ‘stimulus’ by money authorities a substitute for accepting changed conditions on the ground.

The medium is no longer the message: the reactor ‘fix’ is the same as more credit bubbles by Bernanke. The fifty- plus reactors in Japan are a hedge against declining fossil fuel availability accompanying rising costs. Faced with a literal blowup of the hedge, the choice made by the establishment is to re- animate it as if the ‘hedge concept’ still has validity. TEPCO and the rest attempt to inflate another ‘reactor bubble’ by pretending the multi- reactor meltdown in Fukushima isn’t as bad as it obviously is.

This defective logic is fatal under current circumstances: the real contest is between Japan as a functioning entity on one hand and its crumbling nuclear infrastructure on the other. The cost of managing the emergency appears to be outside the reach of the Japanese social economy, that is, the cost- benefit mechanism that directs a nation toward collective action.

Demanding collective action would illuminate the establishment’s intellectual and moral bankruptcy: that events have escaped its ability to manage the same way the Chernobyl disaster unmasked the lazily accepted authority of the USSR.

This presents a dilemma for the establishment, it must either sacrifice itself and its precious toys or the entire scheme is undone by the laws of physics. The establishment chooses to finesse the issue and send forth an endless stream of karaoke klowns to provide distractions until the reactors somehow cure themselves.

The problem isn’t the handful of reactors, it is all of the reactors and the system that supports them! How will the collective deal with these other reactors? The actions of the past two decades in Japan has been to ‘wither’. The Japanese have been living in a nuclear- powered dream world. Denial isn’t going to work any more! If not this emergency, what?

The sacrifice demanded now is to do what is necessary at any cost to rein in the out- of- control cores, then come to terms with the ‘discovered’ costs of the others. Japan needs leadership and there is none: if it costs 20- or 20 thousand lives to neutralize these cores, this price must be paid, regardless of the effects of that payment on the industry! There is no choice as the 20- or 40- or however many more are already in the balance as the outcome of circumstance. HELLO! The folly of the post- pop ‘now’ or whatever anyone wants to call it is the insistent rejection of any sense that circumstance matters. The so- called ‘safety’ of these particular nuclear plants or nuclear plants in general no longer applies. For Japan the issue is to win or die, to win ugly is acceptable but pretending not to understand how to win is fatal to Japan.

If Japan rouses itself to defeat the reactors rampaging across the countryside the reactor industry is finished because the delivered cost of its product(s) will be recalculated to reflect their true worth. Modernity is challenged: costs will render it unprofitable or the out- of- control reactors will destroy ‘Modern Japan’ the same way Leslie Grove’s atomic bombs annihilated Hirohito’s militarism.

The establishment cannot bear, the pundits err: the issue is not absolute safety costs as in lives- per- plant but rather, the perceived nature of the costs. This is the relative marginal costs of cheap base load electricity versus the anxiety cost that ‘cheap’ nuclear inflicts the same customers. No power company can meter anxiety: if the cost of cheap watts is balloon- headed kids there will be no electricity at all (NY Daily News):

.

The tsunami was and is a massive tragedy but ten in a row would not destroy Japan. The ‘Fuckyoushima Reactor Inc. Keystone Kops Nuclear Repair Department’ is a rocket sled aimed at a wall. The public relations department would rather focus on running an extension cord and turning on some lights rather than mobilizing a nationwide blitz to put the reactors out of their misery.

Maybe the extension cord will work and maybe not: mobilize the nation and people start asking questions: who pays for the next series of reactors when these melt down? Certainly not a bankrupt Japan, done in by its mis- investment in nuclear power. Can you see the contradictions, now?

Melt they will, every single one. Reactors require constant, expensive tending for long periods even after shutdown(s). The fuel components need the same expensive tending for centuries and more. Without a vital, industrial economy there are insufficient returns to service the massive energy debts these reactors represent. The sunk costs of ‘Reactors Inc.’ do not allow returns: the reactors have become millstones around Japan’s neck.

Time is running out for the Keystone Kops to get a grip. They need a plan and fast. Instead of Hello Kitty they have to think Chernobyl and marshal the tens of thousands of ‘volunteers’ to mine under the reactors to keep cores from melting into the water table, to carry lead shielding to the uppermost levels of the containments or to heave radioactive concrete chunks out of the way so that spent fuel ponds and pressure vessels can be stuffed with sand and boron.

The four reactors are severely damaged with extremely high levels of radiation adjacent to them. On several occasions workers have been withdrawn from the plant because of the level of radiation exposure. Without a more- or- less instant fix the increasing radiation will prohibit anyone from working @ the entire site. The reactors will then melt down. Greater ineptitude is hard to imagine:

•Authorities have not said — and may not know — which particular reactor is leaking the greatest amount(s) of radiation.
•Authorities have not said — and may not know — the level of damage to the reactor cores of the three reactors containing operating fuel.
•Authorities have not indicated — and may not know — the amount of damage done to spent fuel pools in the four reactors and whether fuel rods have melted down or whether fuel components have escaped from any of the pools. They do not know or have not said whether the fuel in the pools is covered with water or debris, whether they are leaking and which the fuel in the pools is ‘hot’ radioactively and which is not.
•Nobody knows whether the spraying efforts have cooled the reactors or reduced radiation. Right now all four reactors are emitting steam. Offline reactor number 5 has experiencing a cooling pump failure.
•Nobody can explain the series of fires that have taken place @ reactor number three. This is today’s fire courtesy of NHK World in English:

Nobody knows, nobody talks: meanwhile, unknown amounts of radiation is spewing out of the four reactors:

Edwin Lyman, senior scientist at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program said the levels were worrying:

“The fact that radiation releases are approaching the level they did in Chernobyl is a cause for concern, a sign of the severity of the accident that’s already taken place,” said Lyman, especially given the way Chernobyl exploded.

“One has to remember that there’s still no evidence that the containment structures of the damaged (Fukushima) reactors 1, 2, and 3 have been significantly breached, which is a difference from Chernobyl where the confinement structure was destroyed in the very early stages of the accident.”

Wotawa said it was difficult to make day-by-day comparisons with Chernobyl, but he added: “For caesium and iodine … the source terms (amounts released from the two accidents) are not so different.”

He said iodine — linked to cancer if found in high doses — and caesium were both “volatile substances” which escape relatively easily when there are nuclear accidents.

Only minor traces of radiation have been detected in countries outside Japan, but the U.N. nuclear watchdog this week said “high levels of contamination” have been measured around the Fukushima plant, about 250 km north of Tokyo.

Japanese authorities advised parents on Wednesday not to let infants drink tap water in the capital because of raised radiation levels, and the United States became the first nation to block some food imports from Japan.

Right now it appears the primary institutional impulse is to cover up and hope the problems go away.

PlatoPlubius

Holy moving rocks Batman! Watch this 2 minute video and pay close attention to the asphalt! It seems as though it is breathing! Is there water rushing beneath it? If so, what is the possible outcome??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCM8oJ2DlY&feature=player_embedded

Andrew
Andrew

Push Japan into a recession? You’re nuts! It’s just this kind of event that brings countries out of recession. Japan has lots to fix, and that takes effort. In order to do so, though, it has to spend, of course. Are you saying that Japan can’t afford to fix it’s infrastructure? Poppycock. Japan, like the US, is beholden to no party for money. It’s just paper, you know. Japan does not need to depend on anyone to purchase it’s debt, it can simply spend money into existence.

The one problem that Japan does have is that it has to import the resources it needs, but as long as its exports are in demand, someone has to trade them the resources they need in order to acquire their exports.

You may not like the idea of monetary sovereignty, but that doesn’t not make it a reality.

PlatoPlubius

Neutron Beam detected 13 different times over Japan….
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80539.html

Neutron beam observed 13 times at crippled Fukushima nuke plant
TOKYO, March 23, Kyodo

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster.

TEPCO, the operator of the nuclear plant, said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 kilometers southwest of the plant’s No. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour and that this is not a dangerous level.

The utility firm said it will measure uranium and plutonium, which could emit a neutron beam, as well.

In the 1999 criticality accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant run by JCO Co. in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, uranium broke apart continually in nuclear fission, causing a massive amount of neutron beams.

In the latest case at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, such a criticality accident has yet to happen.

But the measured neutron beam may be evidence that uranium and plutonium leaked from the plant’s nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuels have discharged a small amount of neutron beams through nuclear fission.

==Kyodo

Dutchsinse on the neutron beam and its significance: (2.5 min video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEwxNA6MTrE

james n.
james n.

Dear Mr. Quinn,

re: Michael Hodges’ “Grandfather Economic Report”.

Thank you kindly for taking the time to provide me with his link.

Best Wishes

Jim

moine
moine

Japanese officials are now asking people who are still residing in the exclusion zone (20km-30km from Fukushima Daiichi plant) to voluntarily evacuate the area, ahead of a potential forced evacuation in coming days. Based on how the Japanese government has issued information over the past two weeks, I’d say it’s a lock that a forced evacuation is coming, and in less than a “few days.”

PlatoPlubius

Based off of my understanding of the situation, the northern half of Japan could possibly slip off the shelf into the ocean. The tsunami would be mind boggling if this happened…Time frime? Who knows, it could happen slowly or suddenly….but over 730 earthquakes in the past 12 days is quite alarming.

Thinker
howard in nyc

@plato
at least that would cool off the nukular fuel.

PlatoPlubius

@ howard

and radiate the ocean, but what the hay right?!

I say this often, but it is sooo true,

WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES

Reverse Engineer

Radiation battle gets rougher
NHK via Reuters

Smoke rises from the nuclear reactors of Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in an NHK video image from Thursday.
By Alan Boyle

The battle to stabilize Japan’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex just got tougher, due to the radioactive water that is apparently leaking from the reactors. The leak doesn’t change the battle strategy — to get water into the reactor buildings to stabilize “hot” fuel rods — but it does raise more uncertainties about how to get that done.

“The operators are having to do a lot of improvisation to figure out what best to do to keep the amount of radiation being released into the atmosphere to a minimum,” nuclear engineering expert Elmer Lewis, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University, told me today.

The uncertainties currently focus on the leak, which exposed three workers wading through the water to so much radioactivity that they had to be hospitalized for radiation burns.

——————————————————————————–

Some reports suggested that the skin radiation exposure amounted to 2,000 to 6,000 millisieverts. Exposure to that much full-body gamma radiation over the course of an hour would be deadly. However, in this case the burns were due to shorter-range beta radiation. The gamma radiation exposure was estimated at 170 to 180 millisieverts.

So where is that water coming from? “The data we’re seeing is contradictory,” said former nuclear engineer David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ nuclear safety project. It could be coming from the spent fuel rods stored near Fukushima Dai-ichi’s Unit 3 reactor, or from the reactor vessel itself. The workers who came in contact with the water were working in the turbine room connected to Unit 3.

NBC News’ Robert Bazell quoted outside nuclear engineers as saying that the water contained radioactive iodine-131, which could come only from the rods in the reactor’s pressure vessel. That led some experts to say that the vessel was breached, but Lochbaum said that didn’t mesh with the pressure readings being taken inside and outside the vessel.

“Either the pressure data we’re seeing is inaccurate, or the breach isn’t as serious” as some have claimed, Lochbaum told me.

If the water is leaking from the reactor vessel, it should still have been contained within the primary containment chamber that surrounds the vessel. However, there might be some sort of leak in the plumbing between the vessel and the Unit 3 turbine room. That’s the scenario favored by Tom Crimmins, president at Executive & Nuclear Consulting. “There’s a larger-than-expected leak somewhere in the system that’s releasing this radioactive water,” he said on MSNBC.

Whatever the cause, the leak is bad news for workers at the nuclear complex, “primarily because it makes working conditions there more difficult or potentially impossible,” Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel said on MSNBC.

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James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said workers might have to pull back from the turbine rooms — not only at Unit 3, but at Units 1 and 2 as well, where elevated radiation levels have reportedly been detected. “Work in those areas is clearly going to be massively hampered, if not stopped entirely,” he said, “but if radiation levels on the site as a whole don’t rise, then work across the site can presumably continue.”

Unit 3 is of particular concern, because that’s the only reactor at the Fukushima site that uses a mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, also known as a mixed-oxide fuel or “MOX.” But Lewis said some commentators are making too much of that distinction.

“Whenever you’re burning uranium, you’re always producing some plutonium,” Lewis told me. “It’s a matter of degree. The plutonium, like the uranium itself, is a ceramic element, and it’s not very volatile at all. So I doubt seriously whether the water in the turbine room contains much if any plutonium. It tends not to be released except at very high temperatures. I think they’re seeing fission-product radiation.” (That is, radioactivity from elements such as iodine or cesium.)

Virtually all the experts are dismayed that the plant still hasn’t been brought under control. “There’s still too much energy coming out of that fuel to walk away,” von Hippel said. “They still have to keep trying to cool it. The problem is that we’re now two weeks after the accident started, and they don’t have a handle on the situation yet.”

The strategy remains the same as it has been for the past week: Make sure the fuel rods in the reactors as well as in the spent-fuel pools are covered with water and wait for the radioactivity in those rods to cool down.

Because Fukushima lacks electrical power to get water circulating through the reactors and the pools, workers have had to pump seawater into the works — and that could be creating a fresh round of problems, including corrosion in the plumbing and releases of radioactive steam. The prime objective right now is to get the standard water-cooling system working again.

“My own criterion for when I’ll breathe easier is when they don’t need seawater any more,” Lewis said. So that means workers — or perhaps robots — will have to find a way to continue with the job of spraying water on the reactors, hooking up electrical power and regaining control of the nuclear battlefield.

——————————————————————————–

Unwelcome_Messenger
Unwelcome_Messenger

When I read posts, such as what was been written by Apollo, I fully understand how & why so many sheeple can be so easily snowed by the MSM.

… To say nothing of of how sheeple’s manipulated views are assisted by concepts such as Nationalism, Patriotism, Racism and of course, utter & complete Sheer Ignorance.

After reading Apollo’s posts I really feel depressed. It helps to further my realization that there really isn’t any hope, because as long as sheeple have the capacity to think/believe as does Apollo, there is nothing that can stand in the way of the Elite’s efforts to maintain the status quo.

The utterly _unsustainable_ maddening ”status quo.”

It’s sad. So very, very, sad.

Reverse Engineer

The MSM is coughing up the Truth, that the Nuke problem is NOT under control. Continuing to levitate the Nikkei may be impossible as the truth gets widely dispersed and the market capitulates.

RE

Radiation spreads as crisis likely to continue for “a long time”

TOKYO, March 26 (Xinhua) — Low levels of radioactive material iodine-131 were detected Saturday in Heilongjiang Province, north of Beijing, China’s National Nuclear Emergency Coordination Committee said.

The radioactive material was likely to have come from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, the agency said.

However, since the radiation level was below one-hundred-thousandth of the average natural background radiation, it did not pose a risk to public health or the environment, and no protective measures were required, the agency said in a statement.

Repair work at the troubled Fukushima nuclear plant has continued into a third week. More countries are beginning to detect tiny amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium in the air that have drifted across oceans from the overheated nuclear reactors in Fukushima, where a tsunami following a 9.0-magnitude earthquake knocked out its crucial cooling system on March 11.

The Austrian capital of Vienna detected very low concentrations of radioactive particles Friday, believed to have come from Fukushima, the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) said.

The detected radioactive materials were iodine-131 and cesium-137, and the tiny amount would pose no threat to human health, the Austrian agency said.

It was the first time the two radioactive materials were detected in the country since the quake struck Japan.

Sea water samples taken from about 330 meters south of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Japan’s east coast showed radioactive iodine 1,250.8 times above legal limit near the drain outlets of the reactors, local media reported Saturday.

The reading was taken on Friday morning, recording the highest radiation level so far from the surveys begun this week, plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said.

However, radioactive materials would “significantly dilute” by the time they were consumed by marine species, Kyodo News reported, citing the agency.

The agency said the radiation would not have a significant impact on fishery products because fishing was not conducted within 20 km of the plant.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said Saturday the situation at the stricken plant remained unpredicable, and it would be “a long time” until the crisis was over.

“To prevent situations going worse, we’re trying to restore electrical supply at the plant and inject freshwater into the nuclear units to make essential improvements,” Edano said Saturday. “We have to remain alert.”

Japan switched to using fresh water to cool the reactors Friday, fearing salt accumulation would hurt waterflow and cooling effects. Tokyo Electric plans to launch fresh water injection at the spent fuel rods pool on Sunday, and it has injected fresh water into the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors so far, national broadcaster NHK reported.

“The situation inside the reactor cores is not very stable and we can’t say specifically how long that’s going to last,” Sakae Muto, executive vice president of Tokyo Electric, said late Saturday.

Koyama Kota, deputy chief of TEPCO Fukushima office, told Xinhua the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi plant was very complicated. It was difficult to determine when the clean-up would be completed, he said, since the major task at present for the company was to control radiation leakage.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Friday for international organizations and individual states to review and strengthen their nuclear safety plans.

“The existing institutional arrangement, including the Joint Radiation Emergency Management Plan of the International Organizations, with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) as the main coordinating body, needs to be reviewed and strengthened,” Ban said in a statement.

According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the catastrophic earthquake and ensuing tsunami had left more than 10,400 people dead and 17,000 others unaccounted for by 19:00 p.m. local time on Saturday (1000 GMT).

Kilian

Funny how he leaves out all the numbers for Germany, because its demographics are probably closest to Japan and they’re doing not too bad. But that would have tainted his nicely drawn picture of doom…

PlatoPlubius

Dr Michio Kaku says that the Japanese Prime Minister coming out and saying they havea “breach” is huge!! Kaku said, “one speck of plutonium will cause cancer”!

HOLY SHIT MAN! This is getting worse by the day!

2 minute interview of Kaku
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdq4l58VoLI

trish
trish

We all need to realize that with 7 billion mouths to feed on our vastly overcrowded earth with no increase in food supply, Peak Oil hit in 2006, Peak Food along with it, old people like myself (I am 54) need to cancel our soon-to-be-obsolete retirement, abandon any thought of future major medical care, abandon any thought of free money like social security, abandon any expectations of pensions which will disappear w hyperinflation, and bite the bullet and work as we can and scrounge til we drop dead! No big deal…. We’ve had our day in the sun and now it is time to eventually sacrifice ourselves for the young. The old must always sacrifice for the young… the young are the future. In any case, we have no choice, because the few young there are, are not going to be slaving for us many many geezers…. So we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that we will die off prematurely…. no big deal…. anyone over 40 has already lived quite a nice life… And that is a whole lot better than people of 19 dying prematurely…. So, in these chaotic times, give up retirement, medical care, the expectation of a long life, etc etc etc and do the next right thing today right now–and decrease your stress….. that is the only way I have found to live well today in the present and deal with the inevitable future chaos…

howard in nyc

hee hee hee, yeah, ok. thanks, but no thanks.

besides, youguns make for better eatin’. better i have a nice, tender human veal, than a 19yo have to ruin his teeth on my tough,wrinkled carcass.

llpoh
llpoh

Trish – fuck that.

PlatoPlubius

@ Trish,

Yeah, take one for the team Trish so that your unappreciative, ungrateful grandkids who are obsessed with killing one another through their video game consoles and constantly jacked into their I PODs or who are habitually updating their dating status on Facebook can RULE THE WORLD like Pinky and the Brain?!

I’m in my early thirties and am going to fight to make as best a place possible for my soon to be born son! Instead of laying down why don’t you do something useful like strap some dynamite to yourself and walk into any U.N. office or the Bernanke’s lair!

llpoh
llpoh

plato – congrats on the upcoming happy event! Hope all goes well.

Nice comment to Trish. You said it better than me. Brevity is one of my stong suits.

PlatoPlubius

@ IIPOH

Thank you, I can’t wait! Everyday that passes it becomes less sureal and more exciting!

llpoh
llpoh

I hope you still have time for us after the birth – what with midnite feedings, no sleep, etc.

The Tail Chaser

Here is a full presentation on why it looks like a great opportunity to short Japan now…

http://thetailchaser.blogspot.com/2011/06/and-kyle-bass-is-out-again-with-thesis.html

Full 77 page preso.

コンバース

みましょうそれらのすべて点灯、の夜明確なホット-ライト、Luminatorsのペアまたは光沢つま先、最も革新的な点滅でファッション。材料自身は最も可能性の高い用任意設計はファブリックとファブリックどの専門家は主張のようなが表示されます革ベース。

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