It appears the workers cannot perform their functions after a certain level of disruptions http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16workers.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business âWe believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.â So the probability of a large nuclear event will increase significantly after 1 meltdown
"If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled â it needs to remain covered with water at all times â radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant. " "In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether, and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to meltdown, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials." This is however, now, public information so the markets might be aware this will be an all or nothing kind of situation
Its interesting how people can be smart sometimes, yesterday that knowledge gave me an edge for a possible trade but it took only 1 day to become front page in the NYTs
I'm preparing for the worst. I'm switching a part of my currencies from my FX hedge basket from AUD, NZD, CAD(Synthetic ways to hedge the fact that my costs are in Brazilian Real and my assets in USD) to CHF and JPY
I'm not a nuclear expert and find most of the jargon hard to understand and complex. I'm a big fan of simplicity So far the situation on the nuclear units have only gotten worse, the worse they get, the worse they are likely to get. At some point people will have to leave(up to this point workers had only to leave temporarily) My common sense tells me a meltdown one more than one unit is inevitable. This is quite different from the BP situation where they had time to come up with all kinds of strategies and then they got lucky as animal life digested the oil(apparently). Its also different from disasters in financial markets where fear comes to a point where it cant get higher and it naturally reverses itself I want to stay open minded here because this is totally outside my area of expertise but I fail to see how they can prevent the meltdown
You are probably correct - especially when you hear that the U.S military is bailing out. From a simple engineering view - If they manage to activate the cooling pumps then there will be no need for random manual cooling methods as now. The probem here is both mains power and standby backup generator power failed simultaneusly. Its very rare for that to happen as these are usually fail-proof systems. Even if they manage to get the cooling pumps going - the rods are contained in steel shell boiler type vessels - the random heating and cooling has naturally stressed the shells making them weaker and are likely to rapture anytime (mechanical fatigue) due to uncontrolled metal expansion/contraction caused by continous & gyrating shell temperature profiles.
Events in Middle East just as important as Japan going forward. Despite public statements saying the opposite, I believe the US gave the go-ahead for the Saudi Arabian military to get involved in Bahrain. Saudi troops entered one day after defense sec Gates met w/Bahrain's leaders. Once again, we bend over for the Sunni dictators over oil fears. This invites a response from Iran, which given the way BO is viewed overseas (weak as shit) could be quite likely. Japan has overshadowed the disastrous response of the West towards events in MENA.