Hours after Port director/CEO Jeff Bishop discounts North Spit siting concerns raised by Jody McCaffree, saying, “…we generally don’t make long term decisions based upon geological time”, time caught up with him. More specifically, time caught up with nuclear energy developers in Japan who forty years ago, arrogantly thought the same thing and irresponsibly conducted business without regard for future costs.
McCaffree was talking about Oregon’s infamous subduction zone and the folly of building LNG terminals or sewage systems on a known fault line.
Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus of geology at Oregon State University, says, “This is our wake-up call.” If people didn’t already get the message from recent disasters in Sumatra and Chile, they should pay attention now.
Regrettably, too little regard is given when considering energy and infrastructure to failure modes and the associated costs. The Nikkei Index fell 10% despite a massive influx of cash from the Bank of Japan over fears of the looming nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daichi power plants. Global markets are also feeling the pinch.
Fears of a potential radiation disaster in Japan hammered world stocks to a near three-month low yesterday and fuelled a 2 percent fall in oil prices, as investors fled for the safety of American and German government bonds.
Reports of rising radiation near Tokyo prompted funds to bail out of Japanese stocks, triggering an almost 17 point fall in the Nikkei 225 stock average.
They also prompted an across-the-board rout of risky assets. A measure of European equity volatility jumped 30 percent to a 10-month high and the Swiss franc hit a record high against the dollar. US treasury yields fell 13 basis points as investors bought bonds.
A state of emergency in Bahrain added to the mood.
Wall Street stock index futures fell more than 2.5 percent before the market opened.
Tokyo stocks fell 14 percent at one point after Japan said the risk of nuclear contamination was rising.
Jeff Bishop: “Unfortunately we generally don’t make long term decisions based upon geological time. I am not sure exactly what…how that would scale in that particular situation.”
Unfortunately, Bishop’s short term thinking is not uncommon and Japan’s current crisis is just another example in a long list of what happens when short term profits blind developers to the empirical evidence right in front of them. Even more unfortunate is the repeated failure on the part of the Port commission to properly shepherd and administer the funds and resources of the people’s Port.
UPDATE:Yen Strengthens to Record Against Dollar on Radiation Concern
March 16 (Bloomberg) — The yen rose to a post-World War II high versus the dollar risk of radiation leaks from crippled nuclear plants in Japan added to speculation insurers and investors will redeem overseas assets to pay for damages.
The four-day rally in the yen prompted speculation the Bank of Japan may intervene for the first time since September in an effort to counter repatriation flows and shore up the competitiveness of Japanese companies. The yen erased earlier losses after Tokyo Electric Power Co. said a reactor containment vessel may have been breached at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant, deepening Japan’s nuclear crisis and increasing the risk of radioactive leaks.
“It’s a mix of risk aversion and repatriation that’s driving the yen to strengthen,” said Brian Kim, a currency strategist at UBS AG in Stamford, Connecticut. “If there is repatriation coming back to Japan, the stronger yen is making it even more expensive to purchase yen.”
The yen gained as much as 1.2 percent to 79.59 per dollar, passing its a post-World War II high of 79.75 reached in April 1995.
S&P 500 Erases 2011 Gain on Japan Concern; Treasuries Rise
U.S. stocks sank, erasing the 2011 gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, and Treasuries rallied as Japan’s nuclear crisis worsened. The yen rose to a post-World War II high versus the dollar on speculation investors will buy the currency to fund rebuilding projects.
The S&P 500 lost 2 percent to 1,256.88 at 4 p.m. in New York, leaving it down 0.1 percent on the year. Futures on the index slumped 0.9 percent at 6:02 p.m., and contracts on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average traded for 8,205, or 8.3 percent less than the closing level of 8,950 in Singapore. Ten-year Treasury yields fell 10 basis points to 3.20 percent, the lowest since December. The yen appreciated against all 16 major peers, rising to as strong as 79.24 per dollar.
Equities extended their retreat as U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko told lawmakers that all the water has drained from the spent-fuel pool at a crippled atomic reactor north of Tokyo and high levels of radiation have been released. The United Nations’ nuclear agency planned to call an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis and said the three reactor cores containing fuel are damaged.
“The selling today is exacerbated by the nuclear situation, which makes it much more difficult to assess Japan,” said Christopher Sheldon, the Boston-based director of investment strategy at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, which oversees $166 billion globally. “Investors are selling on the appearance of a negative situation with the nuclear reactors and you can’t say it’s unfounded because we don’t know how bad this may get.”
