BREAKING (3/11/2011): Major Earthquake - Japan, Tsunami Warning - HI

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Waves sweep 4 out to sea in Crescent City as tsunami surges reach west coast


C. Johnson Last updated 1 hr ago Posted: 3/11/2011

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CRESCENT CITY, CA (AP) - Officials say the tsunami triggered by the massive earthquake in Japan has killed one person, swept three others out to sea and caused severe damage to the harbor in Crescent City, near the Oregon border.

SLIDESHOW: Quake, tsunami damage

ABC affiliate KDRV confirmed the waves pulled the four out to sea late Friday morning. Two of the other people were found alive and one was still unaccounted for.

Del Norte County sheriff's spokesman Bill Stevens said most boats were pulled out of the harbor in preparation for Friday's tsunami, but 35 vessels that remained are crashing into one another and sinking.

The wooden docks also were breaking apart under the force of the waves.

Crescent City Councilwoman Kelly Schellong said the docks and harbor "are pretty much completely destroyed."

Stevens said the damage cost was estimated to be into the millions, and surges still are expected through the afternoon.

However, the waves have not gone over the 20-foot break wall at the harbor, and no serious injuries or home damage have been reported.

Santa Cruz
The Santa Cruz region experienced several surges in the harbor Friday morning following tsunami warnings that sucked some boats right out of the harbor.
The California Highway Patrolalso issued several advisories regarding road closures in the area including Beach Drive and portions of Riverside. Also Highway 1 in Mendocino County 7 miles outside of Westport was closed.

The CHP also said there was some traffic congestion on southbound Highway 17 near Santa Cruz.

Gas stations in the area were reportedly jammed. Officials urged people to stay away from the shoreline. The Seaside State Park was also evacuated.

Ft. Bragg
Noyo harbor at Ft. Bragg on the Mendocino coast was evacuated Friday morning, according to local emergency officials. No damage had been reported.

Water was receding out of the harbor and surging back in stronger, said Shannon Barney, emergency coordinator for Mendocino. The increased wave activity was expected to continue for several hours and officials were warning residents a tsunami threat was still in effect.

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Japan could dump treasuries to pay for rebuilding costs from the tsunami

I just got done writing this...

Japan could be the next economy to dump treasuries in light of the cost required to rebuild after the tsunami that tore through the Northern part of their country today. As bond insurer Pimco lead the way earlier this week in selling off all their bond holdings, Japan will need to find an income source to help rebuild its infrastructure, and get its economic machine going again.

According to the Treasury Department, Japan is the second biggest holder of government debt (actually third largest since the Treasury doesn't record the debt instruments held by our Federal Reserve), and they have nearly $900 Billion in dollar reserves. This gives Japan a large source of funds to begin rebuilding, but it also comes at a price.
Depending upon how many Treasuries Japan has in reserve should they choose to dump into the market, it could lead not only to bond prices dropping, but it also may trigger other nations such as China to immediately jump in and sell their holdings, causing a crash in the bond markets, and bringing serious damage to our economy.

In an article this morning from Reuters, bond prices are already dropping in the fear that Japan may sell off its holdings to pay for rebuilding the country.

The benchmark 10-year note US10YT=RR was down 5/32 in price to yield 3.38 percent, up from 3.36 percent on Thursday. The yield is down from a high of 3.60 percent on March 4.

Analysts at Credit Suisse also said on Friday that they have closed their long 10-year note recommendation after reaching their target yield level.Some investors, meanwhile, feared that Japan's earthquake may pressure bonds if insurers need to sell high-quality holdings to pay for claims.Yields on 10-year Treasuries rose by around 20 basis points in the days following the earthquake in Japan's Kobe region in 1995."The last time there was a large earthquake, Japanese investors sold things to repatriate and thus the market came off a bit," David Ader, head of government bond strategy at CRT Capital in Stamford, Connecticut, said in a note.

The global market today is so intertwined that a single incident in one country can trigger economic turmoil in many others. We have seen this over the past two weeks in the Middle East over oil, and now with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, we could see the bond markets go into chaos here in the US.

Japan has a track record of dumping their treasuries after large disasters to protect and rebuild their country, and with the tsunami that hit the mainland today, the likelihood of this happening is very good, and could bring strong influence to the economy of the US as well.

http://www.examiner.com/finance-exam...om-the-tsunami

[BRVoice]

BBC - Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan has just announced that residents living within 10km (6.2 miles) of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear station must evacuate their homes, according to the Kyodo news agency. Engineers are trying to fix the cooling system of one of the plant's reactors, which was damaged by the earthquake. The authorities had earlier told some 3,000 residents living within 3km (1.9 miles) to leave.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company has said radiation may already have been released at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant.

[Backstop]

Man on man - the power of this planet is amazing.

[catfish]

It's not looking good for some of these nuclear reactors. This could get even more ugly real quick. Anybody have any idea what a large scale nuclear disaster in Japan might mean for the US?

[BRVoice]

catfish, not only to the US but to the world too.

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Radiation levels at Japanese nuclear power plant 1,000 times normal levels; some seeps outside


TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese nuclear officials say radiation levels inside a nuclear power plant have surged to 1,000 times their normal levels after the cooling system failed.

The nuclear safety agency said early Saturday that some radiation has also seeped outside the plant, prompting calls for further evacuations of the area. Some 3,000 people have already been urged to leave their homes.

The cooling system for a reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant failed on Friday after a massive earthquake caused a power outage.

The continued loss of electricity has also delayed the planned release of vapor from inside the reactor to ease pressure. Pressure inside one of the reactors had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

TOKYO (AP) - Japan's massive earthquake caused a power outage that disabled a nuclear reactor's cooling system, triggering evacuation orders for about 3,000 residents as the government declared its first-ever state of emergency at a nuclear plant.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside one of six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal. Hours after the evacuation order, the government announced that the plant in northeastern Japan will release slightly radioactive vapor from the unit to lower the pressure in an effort to protect it from a possible meltdown.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the amount of radioactive element in the vapor would be "very small" and would not affect the environment or human health. "With evacuation in place and the ocean-bound wind, we can ensure the safety," he said at a televised news conference early Saturday.

After the quake triggered a power outage, a backup generator also failed and the cooling system was unable to supply water to cool the 460-megawatt No. 1 reactor, though at least one backup cooling system was being used. The reactor core remains hot even after a shutdown.

The agency said plant workers are scrambling to restore cooling water supply at the plant but there is no prospect for immediate success.

Edano said the 40-year-old plant was not leaking radiation. The plant is in Onahama city, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

If the outage in the cooling system persists, eventually radiation could leak out into the environment, and, in the worst case, could cause a reactor meltdown, a nuclear safety agency official said on condition of anonymity, citing sensitivity of the issue.

Another official at the nuclear safety agency, Yuji Kakizaki, said that plant workers were cooling the reactor with a secondary cooling system, which is not as effective as the regular cooling method.

Kakizaki said officials have confirmed that the emergency cooling system - the last-ditch cooling measure to prevent the reactor from the meltdown - is intact and could kick in if needed.

"That's as a last resort, and we have not reached that stage yet," Kakizaki added.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said the evacuation, ordered by the local government of Fukushima, affects at least 2,800 people. Edano said residents were told to stay at least two miles (three kilometers) from the plant and to stay inside buildings.

He said both the state of emergency and evacuation order are precautionary measures.

"We launched the measure so we can be fully prepared for the worst scenario," he said. "We are using all our might to deal with the situation."

Defense Ministry official Ippo Maeyama said the ministry has dispatched dozens of troops trained for chemical disasters to the Fukushima plant in case of a radiation leak, along with four vehicles designed for use in atomic, biological and chemical warfare.

Pineville, La., resident Janie Eudy said her husband, Danny, was working at Fukushima No. 1 when the earthquake struck. After a harrowing evacuation, he called her several hours later from the parking lot of his quake-ravaged hotel.

He and other American plant workers are "waiting to be rescued, and they're in bad shape," she said in a telephone interview.

Danny Eudy, 52, a technician employed by Pasadena, Texas-based Atlantic Plant Maintenance, told his wife that the quake violently shook the plant building he was in. "Everything was falling from the ceiling," she said.

Eudy told his wife that he and other workers were evacuating the plant when the tsunami swept through the area, carrying away homes and vehicles. They retreated so they wouldn't get caught up in the raging water.

"He walked through so much glass that his feet were cut. It slowed him down," she said.

After the water started to recede, Eudy and other workers drove to their hotel, only to find it in shambles.

"Most of the hotel was gone," she said. "He said the roads were torn up and everything was a mess."

His hotel room was demolished along with all of his belongings, so Eudy had to borrow a resident's phone to call his wife early Friday morning. The workers were waiting for daylight but contemplating seeking higher ground in case another big wave hit.

"He sounded like he was in shock. He was scared," Janie Eudy said. "They're totally on their own, trying to just make it."

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said staff were trying to collect more information on what was happening.

At the Fukushima Daiichi site, "They are busy trying to get coolant to the core area," Sheehan said. "The big thing is trying to get power to the cooling systems."

Speaking at the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also said U.S. Air Force planes were carrying "some really important coolant" to the site, but administration officials later said she misspoke. The U.S. offered to send Japan coolant to help with the reactor but the Japanese declined, saying they already had the necessary supplies, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said it also stands ready to provide any technical assistance Japan needs.
High-pressure pumps can temporarily cool a reactor in this state with battery power, even when electricity is down, according to Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who used to work in the U.S. nuclear industry. Batteries would go dead within hours but could be replaced.

The nuclear reactor was among 10 in Japan shut down because of the earthquake.

The Fukushima plant is just south of the worst-hit Miyagi prefecture, where a fire broke out at another nuclear plant. The blaze was in a turbine building at one of the Onagawa power plants. Smoke could be seen coming out of the building, which is separate from the plant's reactor, Tohoku Electric Power Co. said. The fire has since been extinguished.

Another reactor at Onagawa was experiencing a water leak.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s.

A tsunami warning was issued for a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations.

At the two-reactor Diablo Canyon plant at Avila Beach, Calif., an "unusual event" - the lowest level of alert - was declared in connection with a West Coast tsunami warning. The plant remained stable, though, and kept running, according to the NRC.

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Tsunami aftermath in Japan

Live coverage from affiliate NHK of the aftermath of the earthquakes and tsunami that hit Japan. Limited Translation
Source: CNN.com Live

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World: Asia-Pacific

Nuclear accident shakes Japan


An irradiated worker is taken to hospital wrapped in a plastic sheet

Japan is facing an unprecedented nuclear emergency after a major uranium leak. Radiation levels at the Tokaimura nuclear fuel-processing plant in north-east Japan are 15,000 times higher than normal.

The authorities have warned thousands of residents near the site of the accident to stay indoors and to wash off any rain that falls on them.

"There is a strong possibility that abnormal reactions are continuing within the facility," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka told an emergency news conference. "There are concerns about radiation in the surrounding areas."
He said that it was very likely that there had been a "criticality incident" at the plant.
Criticality is the point at which a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining.
"The situation is one our country has never experienced," Mr Nonaka said.
Three workers from the plant have been taken to hospital and hundreds have been forced to leave their homes.


One of the three workers in hospital is reported to be in a serious condition, suffering from continuous vomiting.
Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has set up an emergency task force to tackle the accident.
A government request for help from US military forces in Japan for help was turned down. The US said its forces were not equipped to handle such accidents.
Blue smoke
The cause of the leak - detected at 1035 local time (0135GMT) - was not immediately known.
The head of the company's Tokyo office, Makoto Ujihara, said the workers told other staff at the plant that "they saw a blue flame rising from the fuel" and complained of nausea.

Plant manager Makoto Ujihara briefed the press about the accident

"We are still trying to find what exactly happened but we believe the uranium reached the critical point", the spokesman for JCO was quoted as saying.
Local schools were ordered to close their windows and keep pupils indoors.
The Prime Minister postponed a cabinet reshuffle planned for Friday because of the accident.


"Forbidden zone"

BBC Tokyo correspondent Juliet Hindell: "Nobody has accepted responsibility yet."

At a distance of two kilometers (1.24 miles) from the accident, radiation was still 10 times the normal level said Tatsuo Shimada, an official of Ibaraki Prefecture.
Police cordoned off a 6km "forbidden zone" around the uranium processing plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that initial reports suggested a radiation leak in Japan was not a "major incident," although it was waiting for more data.
Early estimates suggested the incident was serious but would not rank above three on a seven-level scale of nuclear incidents, said an IAEA spokesman in Vienna.
The environmental organisation Greenpeace criticised the accident as a symptom of a safety "crisis" in Japan's nuclear industry.


"Today's accident at Tokaimura confirms our fears - the entire safety culture in Japan is in crisis and the use of dangerous plutonium in reactors here will only increase the probablity of a nuclear catastrophe," Greenpeace International activist Shaun Burnie said.
The organisation pointed out that the accident came just one day before a UK-flagged ship was expected to deliver 225 kilograms (495 pounds) of mixed plutonium-uranium oxide (MOX) fuel to a plant in Takahama, central Japan.
History of accidents

Tokaimura was the site of Japan's worst nuclear plant incident in 1997, when 35 workers were contaminated by radiation after a fire at a processing plant was not extinguished properly and caused an explosion.

A series of incidents at Japanese nuclear power stations in recent years has undermined confidence in the safety of this form of energy production, says BBC Tokyo correspondent Juliet Hindell.
In July, cooling water leaked from a pipe in the building that houses the reactor at the Tsuruga nuclear power plant in northern Japan.
It took Japan Atomic Power, the company that operates the plant, 14 hours to shut down operations after the leak was discovered.

Executives in charge of the reactor said radiation from the leak was 11,500 times the safety limit.

The earlier figure given was 250 times the limit, and the change has sparked accusations of a cover-up.

Nuclear programme
Japan has 51 commercial nuclear power reactors that provide one-third of the country's electricity.

With few natural resources of its own, Japan imports nearly all its fuel oil.
Since the oil crisis of 1973, successive governments have made concerted efforts to become self-sufficient.

By the year 2010, Japan wants to produce 42% of its energy in nuclear plants.

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CNN news stream

Live USTREAM

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Japan's earthquake will boost global demand for natural gas

Gallery

Powerful aftershocks shake Tokyo

A massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake and several powerful aftershocks struck the eastern coast of Japan on Friday afternoon, triggering tsunamis that devastated the coastline north of Tokyo.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY


By Ben Farey and Brian Swint
(c) 2011 Bloomberg News
Friday, March 11, 2011; 4:56 PM

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's strongest earthquake on record will boost global demand for natural gas, coal and oil products as production lost from damaged nuclear reactors and refineries is replaced.

Tokyo Electric Power Corp. and other Japanese utilities may increase output at gas, oil and coal-fired plants to replace production from the 11 reactors closed yesterday, Wood Mackenzie Consultants Ltd. said.

Companies will need to import fuel from Asian refineries because the quake shut 20 percent of the country's crude-processing capacity.

The biggest beneficiaries are probably global liquefied natural gas suppliers, analysts at Alliance Bernstein said, a group that includes BG Group Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Reliance Industries Ltd., which operates the world's largest export refinery in India, and other refiners will see demand rise, according to Purvin & Gertz Inc. Power generators in China, Taiwan and South Korea may have to pay more for fuel.

"Over the coming months, it looks like we will need more thermal fuel in Japan, potentially more oil," Francisco Blanch, head of global commodity research at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, said in a television interview.

"Several nuclear plants are down."

BG Group jumped 2.9 percent in London, the biggest gainer in the benchmark FTSE 100 index, on the outlook for gas prices. Reliance advanced 0.7 percent in India on a day the wider stock market dropped.

Xstrata Plc, the biggest miner of coal for power stations, rose as much as 2.4 percent in London.

Tesoro Corp., the San Antonio-based refiner with three plants on the U.S. West Coast, rose the most of any company in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index. Other U.S. refiners posted gains of 5 percent or more today, including Valero Energy Corp., Holly Corp., Frontier Oil Corp., Western Refining Inc., CVR Energy Inc. and Alon USA Energy Inc.

U.K. gas gained amid concern that LNG may be diverted away from Britain to be used in Japan's power generation. The winter contract, for the six months from October, climbed as much as 3.5 percent. Japan has virtually no domestic gas production and no import pipelines, so relies on LNG for its needs.

"If we have a prolonged nuclear shutdown, you would expect it to have a significant impact on prices," said Noel Tomnay, head of global gas research for Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh. "Gas and oil are likely to be more favored. The gas price has a long way to go up before you'd rather burn oil than gas."

More longer term, U.S. natural-gas producers may benefit as applications to build new nuclear plants would be more closely scrutinized for earthquake resistance, said Philip Dodge, an analyst at Tuohy Brothers in New York.

"The plants that were built as part of the necessary expansion would have gas as the first choice and coal as the second choice, but not nuclear," Dodge said in a telephone interview. "It might accelerate what had already been happening, but it would be an inflection point."

Emergency power supply at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Dai- Ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, failed after the earthquake, officials of the trade ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety agency told reporters yesterday. Power is needed to keep cooling the reactor to prevent rising pressure and damage, they said.

About 5,800 residents near the plant were ordered to evacuate yesterday.

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Will The Japanese Earthquake Be The Straw That Breaks Europe's Back?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/11/2011 09:01 -0500

• Eurozone
• Geoffrey Batt
• Insurance Companies
• Japan
• Quantitative Easing
• Shadow Banking

Two months ago many were scratching their heads when Japan announced it was buying Eurozone bonds. After all - why would Europe want to have a marginal buyer (or as the case may be seller) of its debt be the country that is known by all to be the most indebted entity in the world?

Of course, it became promptly clear that it was not the Japanese government doing the buying, but mostly its financial companies, with an emphasis on its insurance and reinsurance companies. Fast forward to today when Japanese insurance companies are getting pummeled in local trading on concerns the payoffs to the decimated Japanese infrastructure will be unprecedented. So what will happen?

Why a scramble for liquidity of course, just like we saw back in September 2008, when cash stricken companies sold all their liquid assets first, resulting in a toxic loop of self-fulfilling prophecy selling which almost tobbled the $25 trillion shadow banking system.

And what will said Japanese insurance companies sell first? Why the very same Eurozone bonds they acquired with so much pomp and circumstance, by the minions of the insolvent Eurozone, back in January of course.

Furthermore, now that Japan will have no choice but to launch a mini round of Quantitative Easing and flood the market with JGBs, there will be a dramatic spike in supply for sovereign paper, which of course means yields across the board will rise.

Which begs the question: if an earthquake flips its wings in Japan, does the Eurozone go bankrupt, especially in the month when its most insolvent countries face billions in debt rollover requirements, tens of billions in maturity funding needs, even more in deficit funding requirements... and no cash?

[BRVoice]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/76992.html


Japan finds radioactive material leak at quake-hit Fukushima plant
TOKYO, March 12, Kyodo

Radiation rose to an unusually high level in and near Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant Saturday following the powerful earthquake that hit northern Japan the previous day, the nuclear safety agency said, making it the first case of an external leak of radioactive substances since the disaster.

While the agency denied the radiation amount will pose an immediate threat to the health of nearby residents, the impact of the quake appeared to widen as the agency added the area close to the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant as a zone that requires evacuation.

Given the adjacent No. 2 plant also has quake-triggered malfunctions, the operator of the two plants in Fukushima Prefecture is set to release pressure in containers housing their reactors under an unprecedented government order, so as to avoid the plants sustaining damage and losing their critical containment function.

But the action would involve the release of steam that would likely include radioactive materials.

The amount of radiation reached around 1,000 times the normal level in the control room of the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

The agency also said radiation has been measured at more than eight times the normal level near the main gate of the plant.

The authorities expanded the evacuation area for residents in the vicinity of the No. 1 plant from a 3-kilometer radius to 10 km on the orders of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who visited the facility.

The government also declared that the Fukushima No. 2 plant is under a state of atomic-power emergency, in addition to the No. 1 plant, and expanded the evacuation area to include the vicinity of the No. 2 plant.

The instruction covers residents living in a radius of 3 kilometers of the Fukushima No. 2 plant. Those living in a radius of 3-10 kilometers of the plant have also been advised to stay inside.

[catfish]

I'm watching Fox, they are reporting an explosion at a nuclear plant.

[catfish]

Fukashima Plant #1 seems to be the one. Also possible meltdown in progress.

[Ryan Ruck]

I just saw that footage. Looked like a big "pop".

I don't believe that was any sort of breach of the reactor vessel. From what I've seen about the Chernobyl disaster, it was accompanied by quite a light show. Granted Chernobyl and Fukushima are two different reactor types but, I'd imagine a catastrophic failure of Fukushima would be equally as impressive as Chernobyl was reported to be.

[Ryan Ruck]

I hope I wasn't being overly optimistic... If this picture is as bad as it looks, this could have instantly gone from bad to terrible.

[Ryan Ruck]

I've seen this Tweet in a couple places:

Tepco says explosion may have been hydrogen used to cool Fukushima plant - Kyodo; Tepco says 4 people taken to hospital after reported explosion, no word on condition - Jiji
by Reuters_TonyTharakan at 3/12/2011 8:20:55 AM3:20 AM

This could very well be.

I don't know the makeup of the Fukushima plant but hydrogen is used to cool turbines. Let's hope that's all it was!

[Ryan Ruck]

FNC seems to be showing pre-recorded crap about Wisconsin. CNN is covering this live now.

[catfish]

Fox is covering now, just saw video of explosion. Not good.