Without Nuclear Power, Supply Crunch Still Looms
TOKYO Nikkei–Kyushu Electric Power Co. 9508 managed to avoid blackouts Friday, but precarious power supply conditions will continue among Japanese utilities as long as their nuclear reactors remain idle. Just three reactors in Japan are operating today, but they will join their idle counterparts by the end of April, moving the nation completely off nuclear power.
But if utilities are forced to continuously operate fossil-fuel-burning plants to make up for dormant nuclear power stations, it would likely increase the chance of breakdowns, as one of Kyushu Electric’s plants did Friday.
Boosting the reliance on fossil fuels will also result in higher power rates.”We want to get through this summer without issuing any power conservation orders,” Economy and Industry Minister Yukio Edano said. But his comment is merely wishful thinking since it lacks any hard numbers to back up its feasibility.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is holding discussions toward finalizing by around early May measures to address power issues. But it is becoming clear that conservation will have only a limited effect. To avoid creating hardships for citizens and disrupting businesses, the government must stop kicking the nuclear can down the road and present a clear road map for ensuring a sufficient power supply as soon as possible.
The Nikkei Feb. 4 morning edition
via 2012/02/04 05:40 – ANALYSIS: Without Nuclear Power, Supply Crunch Still Looms.
Jane Eyre Movie Trailer Official HD – YouTube
Update: Though she would never have put it so indelicately, in this quote (from a letter, August 16, 1849 ), Charlotte Brönte kicks ass, with spirit and decision!
I do not respect an inconsistent critic. He says, ‘if Jane Eyre be the production of a woman, she must be a woman unsexed.’ In that case the book is an unredeemed error and should be unreservedly condemned. Jane Eyre is a woman’s autobiography, by a woman it is professedly written. If it is written as no woman would write, condemn it with spirit and decision
(thanks to Dear Literary Ladies)
Just read this for the first time recently. It was so good, I immediately borrowed more novels by Charlotte Bronte, and enjoyed those too. I hope the movie doesn’t make it “just a love story”. It really helps to understand the social background of the times to appreciate the dramatic events. Charlotte Bronte felt very strongly the limitations on a woman of those times: you had to be rich or beautiful (preferably both) to have any hope of getting married, and if you didn’t marry you were limited to being a governess or a nursemaid or similar servant, with the lifelong bitterness of knowing you were not and never would fulfil your potential, and would have only a tiny chance of meeting someone who appreciated your mental abilities and character.
Being an 18th-century novel, it has its share of melodrama – the rather (to our 21st-century senses) strained coincidences, and the odd incident of second-sight – but I didn’t find they distracted from the story. Bronte was criticized for other things in the novel, too: her description of the dress of the upper-class ladies, for instanced, or their conversation, were laughed at as being unrealistic, and revealing of how little Ms Bronte knew about the world she was trying to depict (which was a “nice” way of saying she was out of her class, in more ways than one).
I’m looking forward to seeing the movie. Here’s the trailer below, and there’s more info on the excellent IMDB website.
2012/02/02 13:07 – Japanese Oil Firms Shift Focus To Chemical Business
Japanese oil companies are increasingly shifting their focus away from their core refining businesses toward the more promising chemical sector.
As the domestic market for oil products such as gasoline continues to shrink, these companies are hoping to cash in on rapidly growing demand for petrochemical products throughout the rest of Asia. But it remains to be seen whether these Japanese firms will be able to easily expand their chemical operations, due to their relative lack of international competitiveness, as new players are emerging across Asia and the Middle East.
via 2012/02/02 13:07 – Japanese Oil Firms Shift Focus To Chemical Business.
2012/02/02 13:31 – Japan’s 1st Budget Airline Seeks ‘Trains In The Sky’
I have much respect for entrepreneurs, and especially for Japanese ones, given the culture.
CEO Shinichi Inoue, 53, has been hands-on in nearly every stage of the Izumisano, Osaka-based carrier, from the initial concept to crafting its business plan over the past four years.He describes the concept for the airline as providing “trains in the sky,” aiming to offer flights with the availability, ease of use and cost of rail travel.
All Peach Aviation seating is economy class. Booking tickets online has no service fee, but does if made over the phone. There are also baggage fees and extra costs for requesting a specific seat. There is no mileage point service. But as a trade-off, fares are around half that of major carriers — 4,780 yen for an Osaka-Sapporo flight, for instance.
…
Back in January 2008, when Inoue announced plans for the airline, he still harbored doubts that budget carriers would fully catch on in Japan, he recalled. His feelings changed after meeting Patrick Murphy, former chairman of Europe-based Ryanair, the world’s biggest budget airline, … in spring 2008, and asked for on-the-spot guidance. …
“Mr. Murphy changed my mind-set. He pulled me back each time I tilted toward ANA’s way of thinking,” Inoue recalls.
Peach Aviation is banking not just on low prices to attract business, but also its image. This partly explains why its name features a fruit — which simply would not fly for strait-laced Japanese airlines.
…
With about a month to go before his company’s inaugural flight, Inoue, whose personal motto is “everything should be interesting,” continues to wrack his brain for ways to wow people.
via 2012/02/02 13:31 – Japan’s 1st Budget Airline Seeks ‘Trains In The Sky’.
2012/02/01 04:23 – Govt To Aid Disaster-Hit Firms In Export Projects
Japan is a land proud of its traditions. Some things never change. (For “aims to prevent a hollowing out of the Japanese industrial base”, read “fears a major reduction in its tax base”.)
TOKYO (Nikkei)–The government plans to support companies affected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami by granting them priority in handling portions of overseas infrastructure projects totaling roughly 1 trillion yen, The Nikkei has learned.
The government has decided to promote 10 projects in emerging and developing countries, mostly in Asia. By boosting infrastructure exports, it aims to prevent a hollowing out of the Japanese industrial base. It also hopes to speed up reconstruction from the disaster by having businesses in the hardest-hit areas handle about 10% of the total value of the projects.
via 2012/02/01 04:23 – Govt To Aid Disaster-Hit Firms In Export Projects.
Fissures in the Land of Wa?
Fissures within Japan’s business community have been getting wider in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake. And the situation is threatening to undermine the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) – long the nation’s most influential business lobby.
Some member companies are none too happy about Keidanren’s support for the government’s plan to raise the consumption tax. The same goes for the organization’s calls for restarting idle-for-inspection nuclear power plants.
via 2012/01/30 – Ground shaking beneath Keidanren.
They’re back! (Well, will be soon) – the Fukushima robots
TOKYO Nikkei–The Chiba Institute of Technology has built two improved versions of a robot designed to help with the cleanup efforts at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the school announced Monday.
The Quince No. 2 and No. 3 nuclear-cleanup robots are more rugged than their predecessor.Dubbed Quince No. 2 and No. 3, the machines are based on their predecessor, Quince, which the university developed with two other institutes and was deployed at the Fukushima plant last year.
They are operated remotely via control devices linked to the robots via communication cables. In addition to cameras and dosimeters, they are loaded with laser scanners that can capture 3-D images of debris and other obstacles inside the reactors.
via 2012/02/01 12:29 – Revamped Robots Ready For Nuclear Recon Mission.
No Big Fukushima Health Impact Seen, UN Official Says: Scientific American
VIENNA, Jan 31 Reuters – The health impact of last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan appears relatively small thanks partly to prompt evacuations, the chairman of a U.N. scientific body investigating the effects of radiation said on Tuesday.
…
“What we have seen in Chernobyl – people were dying from huge, high exposures, some of the workers were dying very soon – nothing along these lines has been reported so far (in Japan),” he said. “Up to now there were no acute immediate effects observed.”
via No Big Fukushima Health Impact Seen, UN Official Says: Scientific American.
The “several thousand children” who developed thyroid cancer due to radioactive iodine poisoning after Chernobyl were signalled by “acute immediate effects” right after Chernobyl blew up. The fact that “no acute immediate effects” have been observed does not mean that there will be no negative health effects from released radiation. But it does bode well.
And from the World Nuclear News website:
If nuclear reactors do not restart, Japan faces the challenge of meeting summer peak demand without a large part of its usual power supply, although it is thought that continued energy austerity might be able to bridge the gap.
The cost of this extended nuclear shutdown, however, is catastrophic: Importing an extra ¥4.3 trillion ($55 billion) of fossil fuel tipped Japan’s trade balance into the red for 2011; and today Bloomberg reported financial results from six Japanese power companies that counted total losses of ¥463 billion ($6.0 billion) due to increased fossil fuel costs and idled nuclear capacity.
via IAEA reviews Japan’s nuclear restart process | WNN
No doubt we will get the usual flood of “They’re just saying that because they believe in nuclear power/(insert your favourite bête noire)”
Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis: Premature Dollar Obituaries and Mainstream Economists’ Monetary Insanity; Keynes-Inspired Great Depression; Lessons Not Learned
One might have thought the Monetarists and Keynesians would have learned something from Japan. Instead, and in spite of debt to the tune of 230% of GDP, they came to the amazing conclusion “Japan did not do enough”.
Two Rules
- There is never enough debt to satisfy Keynesians.
- There is never enough fiat currency to satisfy Monetarists.
I confidently predict Japan will have a currency crisis before the US and when it happens I am equally confident Krugman and the Keynesians will make an excuse for it rather than admitting they were dead wrong.
All of which was predicted long, long ago by Mises (originally in German, in 1940):
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of the voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. – “Human Action” (p. 570) Ludwig von Mises, LvMI, 1998).
Interest rates are at rock bottom. The Treasuries don’t want them raised, presumably because that will increase the costs of borrowing money in the future, and increase the cost of paying back the interest in existing debts. So we are unlikely to see a “voluntary abandonment of credit expansion” any time soon. Which leaves the alternative.
The whole Mish article is long but repays study. It includes long excerpts from various posts by Austrian economist professor Antal E. Fekete.
Kyle Bass gives Japan just 18 months to live
Kyle Bass (click here for my blog posts where I mention Kyle) gives Japan just 18 months to live, in this interview in the Nikkei:
日本国債バブル「18カ月以内に崩壊する」米サブプライム危機を予見した男、「日本売り」公言
via 日本国債バブル「18カ月以内に崩壊する」 ：日本経済新聞.
His final words of advice: don’t trust the State; think for yourself:
「世の中で正しいと思われていることを、そのまま受け入れないということです。自分の力で考えて、常に論理的であろうとすること。我々はこれまで、中央銀行の バンカーたちが提示する世界観を受け入れるよう求められてきました。まるで彼らだけが真実の箱の中身が何かを知っているかのように。その彼らは今、無制限 にお金を刷り、経済の安定を何とか保とうと躍起になっています。しかし、この経済政策に限界が来ているのは明らかです。もはや、国家を信用することはでき ません。自らの力で考え、生き残っていかなければならない時代が来ているのです」