Japan catastrophe sends shock waves By Victor Kotsev As the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant continues to deteriorate, increasing panic has gripped Japan and the world. By early Thursday, last-ditch attempts to prevent a full-blown disaster appeared desperate, and fears about the status of spent fuel at the plant added to speculation that the authorities were withholding vital information about the scope of the catastrophe. The signs of distress to the plant struck by a magnitude 9 earthquakelast Friday are everywhere; foreigners are leaving the island nation en masse. In North America, which is down wind from Japan, frantic buying led to a shortage of potassium iodide and Geiger counters. A number of countries, including Germany and China, halted operations at older reactors and/or construction   plans for new nuclear power plants, pending an exhaustive review, and it now appears that a major debate on the future of nuclear energy will follow. The wider geostrategic consequences of the crisis are only beginning to emerge, and speculation ranges from a new economic recession to repercussions in the Persian Gulf and global energy markets. On Wednesday, authorities admitted that the inner container vessel of a second reactor - number 3, running on a mix of plutonium and uranium fuels - may have ruptured, and extraordinarily high levels of radiation at the plant halted for a brief period of time all efforts to relieve the troubled reactors. Reports indicate that the army is becoming increasingly involved in dousing the fires; on Thursday, Japanese military helicopters were sent to dump sea water on the plant, at great personal risk for the pilots. without any clear results. [1] The Japanese government turned to the United States with an appeal for help even as American military personnel were ordered to stay clear of the plant. Nuclear operators stationed at Fukushima reportedly sent their families farewell messages, adding to the sense of a deja-vu with the Chernobyl catastrophe (where the army was similarly forced to intervene, helicopters flew through highly radioactive clouds in brave attempts to contain the meltdown, and firefighters and nuclear engineers sacrificed their lives). Moreover, accusations surfaced that the Japanese authorities were withholding important information about the meltdown. According to many experts, the 30-kilometer safety perimeter set up around Fukushima is grossly inadequate. American officials characterized the radiation levels as "extremely high',' and warned all American citizens to stay at least 80 kilometers away from the damaged plant. The New York Times writes, "American officials concluded that the Japanese warnings were insufficient, and that, deliberately or not, they had understated the potential threat of what is taking place inside the nuclear facility." Though, according to the official narrative, only "small amounts" of radioactive material have reached Tokyo, a sense of gloom hangs over the capital, 240 kilometers from Fukushima. Sources on the ground report a subtle shift in government messages: while up to now the authorities have claimed there was no danger to people there, more recently they started saying that there was no "immediate" danger. In a culture known for very carefully measured statements, this speaks volumes. Some of the panic, at least internationally, is clearly excessive. A nuclear fallout map that surfaced this week and caused distress by predicting high levels of pollution in North America appears to be a hoax, since most of the radiation would dissipate within a few days and over a few hundred kilometers of distance. [2] Even so, the map captured more or less accurately the wind patterns that would deliver at least some radioactive dust to the United States and Canada. [3] This prediction is bolstered by anecdotal evidence and by what appears to be a declassified map of nuclear fallout from a "small" Chinese nuclear test in 1966. [4] More precise predictions of the fallout patterns are hard to come by; early on Thursday, The New York Times quoted a United Nations report that confirmed the above projections. "The agency declined to release its Japanese forecast," the American newspaper wrote, adding that it obtained it "from other sources". Meanwhile, grave additional concerns arose as some of the attention shifted from the reactors themselves - where the situation is bad enough as it is - to spent nuclear fuel stored at the plant. On Wednesday, the chairman of the United States Nuclear RegulatoryCommission, Gregory Jaczko, pointed to reactor number 4, where spent fuel had ignited and caused explosions alongside major radiation pollution. According to most experts, the stored fuel can be almost as dangerous as the active rods themselves. To top off these concerns, there is a lot of speculation about the status of spent nuclear fuel at the rest of the afflicted reactors. For example, information about storage pools at reactors 1 through 3 is pointedly missing from reports provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency. [5] In the analysis of Kirk James Murphy, "Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods," accumulated over several decades, whose ignition threatens to lead to "Chernobyl on steroids". [6] While it is not immediately clear that Kirk James Murphy is a definitive authority on the issue, numerous other reports also suggest that there were spent fuel tanks on top of all the reactors at Fukushima; it is hard to imagine that the blasts that damaged severely the structures of the first three reactors spared these tanks. Satellite images of the plant add weight to these suspicions and to speculation that tons of radioactive fuel rods might have been sent up in the air by the explosions. [7] The presence of plutonium, both in spent fuel and in active fuel at reactor number 3, is also a major source of worry. More information on the health effects of plutonium can be found here. Aside from pressing concerns for human safety, the shock waves of the nuclear meltdown in Japan will be felt on many other levels; these repercussions are only beginning to emerge. Amid a massive sell-off of stocks, many have speculated that the global economic recession might return in force. [8] Russian analysts have suggested that if Tokyo is spared major radiation damage, such a scenario would be averted, but currently both the premise and the result are open to question. The global nuclear industry faces an uncertain future, especially in light of revelations that Japan ignored several warnings that its plants would not withstand a major earthquake. [9] "In the short term," Leon Gettler wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald, "we can expect what's happening in Japan to completely rewrite the debate on nuclear power as the solution for climate change." Some observers are predicting that in the long run, the catastrophe could lead to an increasing dependence on natural gas, which in turn would be a positive development both for the environment and for the economy of the United States. According to Steve LeVine writing for Foreign Policy, "The implications are serious for geopolitics - countries endowed with much natural gas, such as Qatar, Australiaand the United States, will see shifts in their relative influence. Another big shift will be in climate presumptions - gas emits just one-third of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] as coal, and half that of oil." If this analysis is correct - LeVine cautions that "other analysts predict an interregnum while safety concerns are addressed, and then a revived nuclear buildout" - Russia (another major natural gas exporter) would undoubtedly benefit as well. In fact, Russia might benefit even more than the United States. It is even possible to foresee collusion in the long run between Russia and Japan. The two countries are still technically at war over the Kuril Islands, but Japan's pressing need for energy, exacerbated by the loss of the nuclearreactors and instability in the Persian Gulf, might force it closer to its former enemy. [10] In turn, Russia's need for new technologies would almost certainly make it prone to compromise. Such speculation is still far-fetched, but it is not altogether ungrounded. (Yet more bizarre are statements by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Russian politician with the reputation of a loose cannon, who on Sunday called on the Japanese to "leave the dangerous islands" and to settle in unpopulated Russian territories). American think-tank Stratfor suggests that in the wake of the disaster Japan might reconsider its foreign policy course: Japan's nuclear power sector seemed invulnerable, which no other part of its energy infrastructure was. For Japan, a country that went to war with the United States over energy in 1941 and was devastated as a result, this was no small thing ... The question is how the political system will respond. In dealing with the Persian Gulf, will Japan continue to follow the American lead or will it decide to take a greater degree of control and follow its own path? The likelihood is that a shaken self-confidence will make Japan more cautious and even more vulnerable. Beyond Japan's reaction, the nuclear meltdown will almost certainly have wider consequences for the Persian Gulf crisis, and these are far from straightforward, but will probably surface soon. On the one hand, the disaster will likely make the international community even less accepting of Iran's nuclear program. On the other hand, however, tolerance toward sabotage of Iran's nuclear program, which both Israel and the United States have allegedly carried out with striking success, might plunge even lower. It might be that the nuclear crisis will put paid to any plan to strike Iranian nuclear installations. Overall, at this stage it is difficult to predict the extent of damage - much less the precise geostrategic consequences - of Japan's unfolding nuclear catastrophe. It appears certain, however, that the world will not be the same in its wake. Notes 1. Radiation level unchanged despite choppers dousing nuclear reactor, Japan Today, March 17. 2. Projected Nuclear Fallout Map, Japan.org. 3. JAPAN NUCLEAR FALLOUT MAP PREDICTION MARCH 12 - 18, Stormsurf.com via www.youtube.com. 4. http://www.ki4u.com/free_book/nw151.jpg, ki4u.com. 5. IAEA Update on Japan Earthquake, International Atomic Energy Agency. 6. Fuel rod fire at Fukushima reactor “would be like Chernobyl on steroids”, March 14, 2011. 7. New Satellite Image of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site in Japan From March 16, 2011 Institute for Science and International Security, March 16, 2011. 8. World Markets Dive as Investors Retreat to Safety, New York Times, March 15, 2011. 9. Japan earthquake: Japan warned over nuclear plants, WikiLeaks cables show, The Telegraph, March 15, 2011. 10. Kuril islands dispute between Russia and Japan November 1, 2010. Victor Kotsev is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv. (Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. 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