Ripples from the epic earthquake and tsunami that wreaked vast and tragic havoc in Japan last Friday are still spreading in that quake-shaken country, and several are bound to spread far beyond the crisis-gripped nation.
The foremost issue in Japan at the moment is the enormous death toll and the need to help the victims and survivors cope with their injuries and losses and their need for aid. Though the toll of the dead was officially pegged at around 2,000 Monday, there was clear evidence that thousands more – perhaps well over 10,000 – would soon be added to that number as an accounting of losses of entire seaside villages and towns and their populations were documented.
Given the enormous human toll, the government’s most urgent crisis-management issues are search-and-rescue work in the ruins, the extension of aid to the survivors, and the restoration of lost services to devastated towns and communities. Beyond that, the government must cope with the broader national issues of significant damage to the world’s third largest economy, and an electric power system reeling from rotating outages, nuclear radiation leaks and the possibility of a major nuclear catastrophe.
The multidimensional crisis further threatens Japan’s domestic economy, which has been anemic for years. To mitigate the fallout, the Japanese government is wisely pouring billions of yen into contingency funds to bolster lending to businesses that will need ready cash to recover from the damage. It will also have to spend heavily to restore lost infrastructure in highways, rail and port systems, and to repair its crippled nuclear electric plants.
In the short term, Tokyo’s injection of crisis-driven spending should give Japan an economic shot in the arm. It will also help keep the country’s vaunted export machine operating in nominally high gear. But it will add immensely to Japan’s monumental government debt, which is already around 200 percent of Japan’s GDP, or about twice the size of the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio. And that will constitute a larger, long-term drag on Japan’s economy.
Aside from the effort to find and help survivors, however, the government’s next most urgent task is to get the damaged nuclear power reactors under control and to restore as much power production as possible. Three of the six reactors at the Fukishima Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants apparently have experienced significant damage to their reactor and containment vessels. That has led to emergency releases of radioactive steam, and the damage now threatens complete meltdowns of the radioactive fuel rods in two of the three reactor cores.
Nuclear power experts say that the earthquake and tsunami severed outside electricity supplies to the plants that powered circulation of cooling-water systems designed to keep the fuel-rod cores from overheating. Then the back-up diesel generators exhausted their batteries after several hours and quit working. By the time emergency batteries arrived, the resulting rise in reactor core heat had boiled off the uncirculated cooling water, causing plant workers to vent radioactive steam. They then undertook emergency cooling by trying to inject cold seawater into the containment vessels, or buildings, which are supposed to contain radioactive emissions in the event of an emergency. One analyst reportedly likened that to trying to pour water into an inflated balloon. The injection of seawater reportedly means a reactor ultimately would have to be demolished.
Analysts say the fuel rods in at least two of the reactors are now partially damaged by melting, and that it could take months to contain and repair or decommission the reactors. In the meantime, the electric company may have to allow the periodic venting of radioactive steam, which would continue to spread radioactive particles – either across Japan, or out to sea. The reactor damage has already prompted a massive evacuation of residents near the Fukishima plants. It also is now feared that greater loss of cooling could cause a full meltdown of the fuel rods, and a possible breach of the containment building, the most catastrophic scenario.
The nuclear energy crisis has spread doubt in Japan, an earthquake-prone and resource-poor country, about its heavy reliance on nuclear power and the consequences to its world-renowned manufacturing prowess. At the same time, its world-leading architectural techniques for designing earthquake-proof buildings has also been shaken, stirring concern that the focus needs to be on “earthquake-resilient” building techniques that allow people to survive in buildings, but then require the buildings to be demolished.
Those two concerns will have ramifications in other nations with known earthquake faults, including the United States’ west coast and the New Madrid fault area, which includes west Tennessee and portions of six nearby states. In the same vein, the use of nuclear power plants, which are notoriously water-intensive for cooling purposes, will also come under heightened scrutiny. Nuclear plants close to the seas and those on rivers known to flood will be forced to review the efficacy of their backup cooling systems vis-à-vis the natural dangers associated with their cooling-water sources.
In witness to the concerns over nuclear safety and light-water reactors, which account for most nuclear plants in the United States, President Obama on Monday injected a note of caution about nuclear power plans, and other officials in Washington immediately began talking about reconsidering the nuclear power option.
Such is the reach of an epic earthquake and tsunami halfway around the globe in a world intertwined by trade and heavily dependent on hazardous fossil fuels.