Bloomberg News, and The San Francisco Chronicle both report similar headlines. The Wall Street Journal adds that a devastating financial report predicting possible bankruptcy, and restructuring is probable a more likely explanation for the stock drop. And, the Daily Star, and Kyoto News reports that plutonium has been found 1.7 miles from the reactors, at levels comparable to those found during the US atmospheric nuclear bomb testing.
This post, is just a very quick set of reports and links so you can check out these stories for yourself. I got distracted and spent too much time on doing my other two diaries, so now am 7 hours past my bedtime and the sun is already coming up. So please forgive the minimal level of analysis, interpretation, and connection to other reports. They did get on the recommended list, though, and I'd be delighted if you checked them out too.
Jason Clenfield of Bloomberg, starts us off with this report that Tepco Slumps to Record Low on Radiation Spike
Tokyo Electric Power Co. fell to a record low in trading today after reports that radiation levels surged at its crippled Fukushima plant and the president of Japan’s largest stock exchange said the utility should be liquidated. The owner of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant plunged as much as 28 percent to 206 yen, the most since the utility known as Tepco starting trading in 1974. The stock traded 24 percent lower at 218 yen at 11 a.m. in Tokyo and was the biggest decliner in the Topix Electric Power & Gas Index.
Radiation readings inside the No. 1 reactor building spiked to the highest level yet, almost three months after the disaster started, Kyodo News reported June 4, citing data from Tepco. In a separate report, the Asahi newspaper cited Tokyo Stock Exchange President Atsushi Saito as saying that the utility should undergo restructuring similar to Japan Airlines Co., which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010.
The power producer, which posted the biggest loss on record for a non-financial Japanese company, last week had its long- term credit rating cut to junk status by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.
Arirang News reports Highest Radiation Levels Detected at No. 1 Reactor at Fukushima Nuclear Plant
The operator of Japan's crippled nuclear power plant says it has detected what is believed to be the highest level of radiation found in the air at the Fukushima Daiichi plant so far. Radiation of up to 4-thousand millisieverts per hour was detected in the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the plant.
The radiation is so high now that any worker exposed to it would absorb the maximum permissible dose of 250 millisieverts in only about four minutes.
...
Meanwhile, Japan's NHK reported on Sunday that trace amounts of plutonium were detected in soil samples some 1.7 kilometers away from the Fukushima nuclear facility.
This is the first time plutonium has been found outside the power plant.
Kyodo News reports
Plutonium detected in soil outside Fukushima nuke plant.
...
It is the first time that plutonium believed to have been spewed from the Fukushima plant damaged by the March 11 mega earthquake and tsunami has been detected in soil outside the plant.
Masayoshi Yamamoto, professor at Kanazawa University, said, however, the level of the plutonium detected in samples of soil collected in the town of Okuma in Fukushima Prefecture, about 1.7 kilometers from the front gate of the nuclear plant, is lower than the average level of plutonium observed in Japan following past bomb nuclear tests abroad.
Kana Inagaki and Kosaku Narioka, of the Dow Jones Newswire report
in the Wall Street Journal Online, that:
Separately, the head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange said in an interview published on Asahi Shimbun's website that the utility should undergo court-backed restructuring--Japan's version of bankruptcy protection. The shares were briefly down 28% at Y206, their allowed daily limit, before recovering some ground. At midday, they were at Y218, a loss of 24%.
Kyodo news reported the fiscal year loss figure and said it is being driven in part by an extra Y830 billion in fuel costs as the utility--which serves the Tokyo area--shifts to conventional thermal power generation due to the shutdown of nuclear plants. Kyodo said it got the figures from an internal document.
"Market players are starting to price in the possibility that Tepco's net assets will be wiped out," said Hiroaki Osakabe, a fund manager at Chibagin Asset Management Co. "It's very difficult to assess what the final net loss will be, since the compensation costs have not been calculated yet," he added.
The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has put together a plan to compensate those affected, creating a state-backed company to be funded by assessments charged to Tepco and other utilities that provide nuclear power.
But Kan's own future is in doubt after he agreed Thursday to eventually step down to avoid an ouster through a no-confidence vote. -By Kana Inagaki and Kosaku Narioka, Dow Jones Newswires; 813-6269-2795; kana.inagaki@dowjones.com
The above article is longer than the others and contains information about the uncertainty over the compensations plans being proposed by the government, and Kan's political future.
A separate Wall Street Journal article reports
TOKYO (Dow Jones)--The Japanese government, providing fresh evidence on the severity of a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, more than doubled Monday its estimate for the amount of radiation released from the plant in the first week of the crisis in March.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a government nuclear watchdog, also said it believes that reactor cores at some of the units at the complex melted much more quickly than the plant operator previously suggested, citing recent evidence suggesting initial efforts to inject seawater water into the reactors failed to achieve positive results.
NISA said it now estimates the total amount of radiation released into the atmosphere in the first week of the crisis at 770,000 terabecquerels. This compares with NISA's previous estimate, released on April 12, of 370,000 terabecquerels for the first month of the crisis. NISA has pointed out that most of the radiation was released in the first week. A terabecquerel is equivalent to 1 trillion becquerels
.
The new estimate brings NISA's estimate more in line with that of another government watchdog, the Nuclear Safety Commission, which has projected the total radiation release at 630,000 terabecquerels. -By Mitsuru Obe, Dow Jones Newswires; +813-6269-2770; mitsuru.obe@dowjones.com
FishOutOfWater had an excellent diary day before yesterday.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Please forgive me as I take our Birman Cat to the Vets, I'll be back in about two hours.
Happy Reading.