Japan, Shaken: Radiation Leaks and Economic Losses Continue to Rock the Country
DEVELOPMENTS
More than three weeks since a magnitude 8.9 earthquake rumbled off the coast of Japan and sent 97-foot waves crashing inland, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan has conceded that there will be a “long-term battle” to curb the damage caused by the radioactive leakage from a nuclear plant as the country executes post-disaster reconstruction. Yesterday, Kan stated that the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima was not “sufficiently stabilized.” According to some reports, the latest outflows of radiation may reach Taiwan by April 6. The Japanese National Police Agency has reported that nearly 12,000 people have been confirmed dead, and over 15,500 remain missing. Meanwhile, 165,000 people are living in shelters.
BACKGROUND
On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. JST, a powerful earthquake — which since has been named the “Great Eastern Japan Earthquake” — violently shook for five minutes the northeast coast of Japan, 140 miles from Tokyo. Shortly thereafter, the quake had caused a wave to surge across the Pacific Ocean at the speed of a jet. By the time the wave had reached Japan, the waters had built up into a tsunami the size of a three-story building that was swallowing up entire villages, while sweeping up people, cars and infrastructure in its path. The quake was so strong that it actually widened Japan’s landmass and pushed it 13 feet eastward, according to geophysicist Ross Stein. NASA scientists have said that the quake also may have tilted the earth’s axis.
The strongest earthquake in Japanese history also set off a nuclear crisis. Owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which houses six nuclear reactors, had been designed to withstand both powerful earthquakes and tsunamis. At the time of the quake, the three reactors that were online shut down automatically. However, because reactors continue to release massive amounts of heat after shutdown, the offline reactors began to overheat because the cooling systems failed.
Without cooling, the overheated reactors set off a string of explosions and partial meltdowns. To bring down the temperature of the overheated fuel rods and prevent a full meltdown, the government and TEPCO have employed a “feed and bleed” strategy of splashing cold water onto the rods in order to “bleed” away the excess heat. However, this has created a new problem: how to dispose of tons of contaminated water, leaking into the ocean through an eight-inch crack in the containment pit near one of the reactors. According to TEPCO, the radiation level of the water seeping from the reactor was 1,000 millisieverts an hour, or four times the yearly limit of radiation exposure allowed for nuclear workers at Fukushima. The New Yorker has reported that there is “fresh evidence that Iodine-131 has leaked into the Pacific Ocean near the site—it surged to a new high of 3,355 times the legal limit.”
Meanwhile, Kan’s leadership throughout this crisis has received mixed reviews. The public appears to acknowledge the magnitude of the crisis and that Kan’s government has broken from past precedent by standing up to TEPCO’s executives, saying that if they abandoned the nuclear plant, he would “guarantee Tepco will collapse.” Former diplomat and high-level adviser Yukio Okamoto said to The New Yorker, “The Prime Minister has, unfortunately, been barking at TEPCO. He must place orders and instructions. This is the time to encourage them, because the fate of the nation is in their hands.” There has been increasing tension between the Prime Minister and TEPCO, in large part, because of the belief that TEPCO, which enjoys a monopoly on Tokyo’s power supply, has not been under sufficient supervision due to its “cozy” relationship with Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI.) Although Kan was criticized for failing to visit the quake’s site in a timely manner, he has been successful in quickly mobilizing the military’s delivery of aid and reaching out to allies, including the Americans, to help contain the crisis. However, public opinion polls have wavered on the question of whether Kan has been providing clear and decisive leadership throughout this disaster.
ANALYSIS
Japan will continue to incur significant economic costs as it attempts to recover from this disaster. The World Bank has estimated $235 billion in damages, making the quake one of the most expensive disasters in modern history. TEPCO’s plummeting stock price has erased over $30.3 billion in market value, but the Prime Minister’s office has said that it intended to focus on disaster response before making any decisions about nationalizing the Japanese electric company. The damage, however, is not limited to TEPCO. According to Goldman Sachs, Japan’s auto industry is hemorrhaging almost $1.5 billion per week. Additionally, Japanese media outlets have estimated that the associated health costs of radiation leakage, not yet accounting for radiation-related illness, will amount in trillions of yen. The economic effects of Japan’s quake will cause aftershocks that will ripple down the world’s supply chain. Some Asian countries, like India, Indonesia and the Philippines, that have depended on Japan for development aid have expressed fear at losing a crucial source of income.
Domestically, the tsunami destroyed billions of dollars worth of anti-tsunami infrastructure. Northeastern Japan’s concrete seawalls and other anti-tsunami safeguards are considered among the “most elaborate anti-tsunami infrastructure” in the world. In the city of Kamaishi, Japan had just completed the world’s deepest breakwater, which took 30 years and $1.5 billion to build. Some experts question whether the cost of rebuilding these expensive coastal defenses is worth the marginal protection they may or may not have provided in this case. However, the failure to rebuild these defenses in northeastern Japan, which were constructed in Japan’s economic heyday, would deter residents from moving back and could be commensurate with what one city official in Kamaishi has called “abandoning rural Japan.”
The Japanese nuclear crisis has had a chilling effect on China, which is reconsidering its own nuclear development program. The Chinese government, which has been working on the world’s large nuclear expansion program, reduced its 2020 target for nuclear power capacity and pledged to build more solar power farms. The Chinese State Council has mandated safety checks at China’s existing plants and stopped—for the time being—the granting of safety approvals to new nuclear plants. However, it is unclear, as domestic fears of radiation subside, how the Chinese government will make substantive, long-term changes to the safety of its nuclear power development plan.
Neighbors South Korea and Russia have been among the most significant contributors of aid to Japan, but it is China’s outreach that is the most noteworthy, given the long chill in Sino-Japanese relations. Last year, Sino-Japanese relations had sunk to a low after Japan detained the Chinese captain of a fishing trawler, which had collided with two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in the disputed territories in the East China Sea. In addition to offers of condolences and manpower, a Chinese tanker will unload 10,000 tons of gasoline and 10,000 tons of diesel fuel in Western Japan, to be distributed to hard-hit areas. However, whether these efforts will be sufficient for Japan to make a full recovery is yet to be seen.
