Global scare

The nuclear crisis in Japan will have serious consequences for the rest of the world, particularly for the nuclear industry.

THE gargantuan scale of the disaster that struck Japan caught the international community unprepared. Countries, big and small, were quick to offer help after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami hit eastern Japan on March 11. But the international community, like Japan itself, seems paralysed in the wake of the nuclear crisis that is unfolding at a rapid pace. This time, the disaster threatens to have an impact on the rest of humanity.

Many countries have already ordered the closure of their embassies in Tokyo fearing a nuclear meltdown. The United States government has now openly disputed the threat assessment of the Japanese government. The U.S. has advised its citizens within a radius of 80 km of the stricken nuclear plant to evacuate. U.S. officials have warned that radiation levels will become lethal in the coming days. They fear that a full-blown meltdown of the reactors will release radioactive elements into the air and contaminate the food chain.

Though the focus has shifted to the fallout from the exploding nuclear reactors, the international community has been providing humanitarian relief. An estimated 7,00,000 people have been rendered homeless by the tsunami on the eastern coast. Freezing temperatures and the damage to the infrastructure have added to the problems. Food and essential medicines are in short supply.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs despatched nine of its top experts to Japan immediately after the disaster struck. The U.N. also announced that four search and rescue teams from the U.S., Australia, South Korea, China and New Zealand had been sent on the request of the Japanese government. Seventy countries, including India, have sent in help. The Japanese government, which in 2005 politely refused international assistance when an earthquake flattened the city of Kobe, has thrown open its door for disaster relief this time. Singapore, Switzerland and Britain were among the first countries to send expert search and rescue teams. Many of the countries have since withdrawn their teams following the escalation of the nuclear threat.

The team sent by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission included experts on boiling water nuclear reactors. The U.S. already has a large military presence in Japan. Russia and China, which Japan considers rivals for influence in the region, have committed to offer unconditional aid. China has already sent a 15-member team along with four tonnes of equipment for search and rescue operations. The Chinese government has also provided around $5 million in relief supplies for those affected by the disaster.

India was quick to despatch a planeload of blankets. Almost all the Asian countries, including Afghanistan, chipped in with aid. The southern Afghan city of Kandahar announced that it was donating $50,000.

As Japan battles to bring its nuclear blaze under control, there are indications that more international help and solidarity will be needed. Nuclear scientists and officials from Western countries said in the third week of March that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was nearing the severity of the Chernobyl incident, which was labelled a Level 7 accident, the highest in the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).

It is clear that we are at Level 6, that is to say, that we are at a level between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Andre-Claude Lacoste, the president of France's Nuclear Safety Authority, told the media. On March 15, the French government advised its citizens either to leave Japan or head towards the south of the country. Moscow, too, has told its citizens to leave as high levels of radiation were detected in the Siberian city of Vladivostok. Indians working or studying in Japan have already started coming back.

Memories of earlier nuclear accidents are beginning to haunt the international community. At least 30 people were killed as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were contaminated from the nuclear fallout. The core meltdown at Three Mile Island in California in 1979 caused no deaths, and only low levels of radiation were found in the surrounding areas. It's like a third atomic attack on Japan. But this time we made it ourselves, said Keyura Matsishima, an 82-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima bombing.

Japanese authorities have not ruled out the danger of radiation spreading to a wider swathe in case there is a reactor meltdown. The radiation from the Chernobyl disaster affected people more than 200 km away. An American pharmaceutical company, Nukepills.com, has given 50,000 potassium iodide tablets to a hospital in Tokyo as a precautionary measure. Potassium iodide, according to the company, is recommended by health officials worldwide to prevent thyroid cancer of those exposed to radioactive iodine in the event of a nuclear reactor accident.

The accident at the Japanese nuclear plant has galvanised the anti-nuclear movement worldwide. In Europe, there have been protests against nuclear power plants in many cities. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to the situation in Japan by suspending plans to extend the life of its existing nuclear plants, though it was only last year that her government decided to extend the life of the country's 17 nuclear power plants by another 12 years despite protests from opposition parties and peace groups. On March 15, Angela Merkel announced the closure of seven plants that went into operation before the end of 1980. The government will review the situation in another three months. If a highly developed country like Japan, with high safety standards and norms, cannot prevent the consequences for nuclear power from an earthquake and a tsunami, then this has consequences for the whole world, the Chancellor said.

All the 17 power plants were originally supposed to shut down in a phased manner by 2021. The opposition is threatening to make the issue of atomic power generation a central plank in the coming elections. The popular German weekly Der Spiegel said that the shock in Japan has been enough to bring us to the end of the nuclear era. All that is needed is the right chain of fatal circumstances. Fukushima is everywhere.

Public opinion

Public opinion in Germany and other European countries seems to have decisively moved against nuclear power. More than 50,000 people demonstrated in front of one of Germany's oldest nuclear power plants on March 12. In Italy, a referendum will be held on the issue later this year. After the Chernobyl disaster, Italians had voted to close down their nuclear power plants. Mainstream Italian political parties want the re-establishment of nuclear power plants and had successfully lobbied for another referendum on the issue. But after the catastrophic events in Japan, anti-nuclear feelings are once again on the ascendant among the Italian public.

A total of 144 nuclear plants in Europe produce 30 per cent of the electricity consumed by the continent. Austrian Environment Minister Nikolaus Berlakovich has pleaded for a stress test on all the nuclear power plants in Europe. His proposal has been accepted by the European Union. The European Union's Commissioner of Energy, Guenther Oettinger, said the tests would be done on a voluntary basis to examine whether the nuclear plants were able to withstand earthquakes, tsunamis and terror attacks.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has also called for a review of the future of the country's atomic sector. At the same time he insisted that the country had the technological means to ensure the stable, accident-free work of nuclear power stations. Belarus, Poland and Lithuania have plans to set up nuclear powers plants in this decade.

The Swiss government has announced suspension of plans to replace the country's ageing reactors. The Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreyev blamed greedy corporations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for wilfully ignoring lessons from the world's worst nuclear accident 25 years ago in order to protect the nuclear industry's expansion. In 2007, as many as 12 Japanese companies running nuclear power reactors had admitted to thousands of irregularities in reporting past problems.

There have been calls by the Green Party in France for an end to the dependence on nuclear fuel. France gets 79 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power stations, the highest percentage in the world. The country also exports electricity to neighbouring states such as Germany. The French Federal Office of Energy has now suspended plans for the replacement of nuclear power plants until security standards can be carefully re-examined and, if necessary, adapted. The government has ordered its Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear Security to analyse the exact causes of the accident in Japan and to draw conclusions on possible stricter new standards. President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted that the accident in Japan had provoked across the world a number of questions about the safety of nuclear power stations and the energy mix. But he stressed that nuclear energy was an essential element of France's energy independence and the struggle against greenhouse gases.

The Barack Obama administration continues to swear by nuclear energy. A White House statement released after the explosions in the Japanese reactors said that information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from them and ensuring that nuclear energy is produced safely and responsibly in the U.S. President Obama announced federal loan guarantees of more than $36 billion in the 2012 budget outline to facilitate the setting up of new power plants in the country. Already there are 110 nuclear power reactors in operation in the U.S. American companies such as General Electric are raking in billions by setting up reactors in countries like China and Japan. They are in line to enter the lucrative Indian power sector.

GE was the designer of the nuclear power plant in Japan that is on the verge of a meltdown. Many experts allege that design flaws could have precipitated the disaster. GE will be able to escape liability to the extent of hundreds of billions of dollars because Japanese law makes the operating company, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), liable. American companies that want to operate in India are angry with the liability clause introduced in the Indian Parliament, which makes the companies liable in case of unforeseen disasters.

The disaster will adversely impact the global economy. The Japanese government has predicted considerable impact on a wide range of the country's economic activities. Japanese stocks have been plummeting since the crisis began. We possibly cannot ignore the impact that this quake will have in terms of geographic span and scale as well as the psychological impact, a leading Japanese strategist told The Wall Street Journal.

Japan is one of the biggest sources of foreign direct investments in Asian countries, including India. Japanese companies will now have to focus more on rebuilding the shattered economic infrastructure of their homeland and re-channel their investments from foreign countries such as China and India.

Japan is also one of the largest buyers of U.S. treasury bonds. The crisis could put more pressure on the ailing U.S. economy too.