Category: Japan

Phrases I Do not Wish to Hear in the Context of a Nuclear Meltdown

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Whack-a mole. That phrase worries me:

Japan’s government will lead “emergency measures” to tackle radioactive water spills at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, wresting control of the disaster recovery from the plant’s heavily criticized operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

“We’ve allowed Tokyo Electric to deal with the contaminated water situation on its own and they’ve essentially turned it into a game of ‘Whack-a-Mole’,” Trade Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters today at Fukushima. “From now on, the government will move to the forefront.”

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which is led by Motegi, “is working to draw up, by some time in September, both emergency measures and more fundamental steps to eliminate the roots of the contaminated water problem, as well as measures to be carried out going forward,” the Prime Minister’s office said in a response to written questions.

More than two years after the March 2011 nuclear disaster, Tokyo Electric’s recovery effort has taken a turn for the worse. Japan’s nuclear regulator last week questioned the company’s ability to deal with the crisis, echoing comments earlier in the month by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

There are any number of phrases one does not want to hear in the context of nuclear accident, but “Whack-A-Mole” is definitely in the top ten.

I think that I’m going to stick with fish from the Atlantic Ocean.

I’ll use the ones from the Pacific as a night light.

Wankitude from Bloomberg

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Yes, they are reporting about the panic in Japan because the aggressive action by their central bank has caused mortgage rates to skyrocket:

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s stimulus policies are backfiring in the housing market, where mortgage rates are rising even as the central bank floods the financial system with cash.

While 35-year home-loan costs rose one basis point to 1.81 percent this month from an all-time low of 1.8 percent in April, any increase will be undesirable for the BOJ, according to Mizuho Securities Co. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s monetary easing almost halved 30-year U.S. mortgage rates since 2008 to 3.35 percent on May 2.

Yes, one whole basis point (0.01%), and government debt rose by 4.5 basis points (0.045%).

Obviously, Abenomics, the idea of explicitly targeting increased inflation to attempt to defeat a decades long deflationary spiral, is a complete failure, after only 5 months, because interest rates rose by one basis point.

Anyone have a sense that this news organization has been determined to write this story since December, and used this as an excuse to push their agenda?

H/t Tim Duy’s Fed Watch.

I Was Wondering When Someone Would Do This

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It’s a fact that from its beginnings, the 7-inch diameter AIM-120 AMRAAM has outperformed its 8-inch diameter predecessor, the AIM-7 Sparrow, (30 miles for the final version of the Sparrow as versus 40+ for the first version of AMRAAM) even though it weighs less than half as much, and contains less far less fuel than its predecessor.

Part of this is due to improvements in propulsion, new propellants and whatnot, and part of it is because the aerodynamic configuration (tail steering rather than the Sparrow’s mid body control surfaces), but most of this is from an optimized flight path, because with its active seeker and sophisticated autopilot, the AMRAAM does not need to keep its nose constantly on target.

I’ve always wondered why someone hasn’t applied active radar homing on a Sparrow sized missile.

Well, it looks like Japan is looking at doing this (paid subscription required):

Japan already has bought Raytheon AIM-120 Amraams, so why is it spending ¥36 billion ($468 million) to upgrade about 60 F-2 fighters with the Mitsubishi Electric Corp. AAM-4B missile?

Although the benefits to Japanese industry are obvious, details of the upgrade and the missile itself suggest that the program is giving an enormous boost to the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries fighter’s ability to counter enemy aircraft. The weapon has at least one advanced feature that other such missiles lack: a seeker with an active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.

The program will move into high gear in the financial year that begins April 1. The work is progressing in two parallel programs: integration of the AAM-4B missile, and upgrade of the J/APG-1 radar to a more powerful standard called J/APG-2. The improved radar, needed to exploit the new missile, will incidentally raise the capabilities of the aircraft by offering greater detection ranges.

Both systems have been developed by the Japanese defense ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute with considerable help from contractors, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the missile integration and Mitsubishi Electric for the radar. The same companies are contracted to do the installation work. Ministry officials tell Aviation Week that development went smoothly and is now complete.

Early in the development program, in 2001, the ministry gave rough indications of the AAM-4B’s capabilities. It could be launched at a 20% greater range than could the then-current AAM-4 and at least as far as an “AIM-120B+,” a standard that was expected to appear around 2004. The crucial claim was that the AAM-4B could switch to autonomous guidance at a 40% greater range than either of the other two missiles and would similarly outperform what was expected to be the 2009 standard of the Russian R-77 (AA-12 Adder). In a 2010 paper, the ministry attributed the seeker’s greater performance to the higher transmitting power available from the AESA.

The implication is that an F-2 firing AAM-4Bs can stop tracking the target for missile guidance much sooner than an unmodified F-2 can—and officials tell Aviation Week that the key aim of the project is indeed to increase the range at which an F-2 can turn away.

The AAM-4B won’t make any international sales, of course, because the Japanese constitution, and it won’t fit in the F-22 or F-35 weapons bays, but I can see a larger being an equalizer on other aircraft.

Japan Orders F-35

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This is very good news for Lockheed-Martin.

I think that the devil will be in the details though.

The details that most likely cause problems is that, “But Japanese companies are likely to be excluded from work on the confidential and more lucrative stealth and radar capabilities of the fighters.”

Seeing as how Japanese defense contractors are constitutionally prohibited from exporting their wares, I think that this might end up a major area of contention with their defense contractors.

Oh Sh%$!!!!

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They’ve found radiation spikes in Tokyo neighborhoods:

An extraordinarily high level of radiation was detected in one spot in a central Tokyo residential district Thursday, prompting the local government to cordon off the small area, local officials said.

Radiation levels were higher in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward than in the evacuation area around the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to ward Mayor Nobuto Hosaka.

“We are shocked to see such high radiation level was detected in our neighborhood. We cannot leave it as is,” Hosaka told reporters.

And it’s not just Tokyo, as authorities “detected 40,200 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of sediment collected from one part of a roadside ditch,” over 8x the limit for rice fields.

H/t Barry Ritholtz, who also notes the following:

The Japanese government’s response? To stop testing for plutonium, and to tell people they shouldn’t use geiger counters to test for themselves.

The Japanese government has been caught blatantly under-reporting radiation levels in general, and Japanese professors are starting to fear for Japan’s future.

I’m feeling so much better now.

Oh Crap!

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The Japanese have just raised the nuclear alert level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to 7, the highest possible level, and only reached once before, at Chernobyl:

Japan is to raise the nuclear alert level at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to a maximum seven, putting the emergency on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Nuclear safety officials had insisted they had no plans to raise the severity of the crisis from five – the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 – according to the international nuclear and radiological event scale.

But the government came under pressure to raise the level at the plant after Japan’s nuclear safety commission estimated the amount of radioactive material released from its stricken reactors reached 10,000 terabecquerels per hour for several hours following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country’s northeast coast on 11 March. That level of radiation constitutes a major accident, according to the INES scale.

This ain’t an attempt to corner the market on glow in the dark watches, this is serious.

So Why is the Yen Skyrocketing?

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Normally, a disaster has a country’s currency falling, but the earthquake, and the nuclear power plant problems have the value of the Yen hitting a post World War II high.

So, why is this happening?

Two words: Carry trade.

You see interest rates in Japan are very low, so some people borrow money in Japan, and invest it elsewhere at higher interest, and thereby pocket the difference in interest rates.

The risk here is that the loans have to be paid back in Yen and if the currency strengthens, then you can end up owing more than you borrowed, a lot more than what you borrowed, and because this is typically very highly leveraged, it means that you lose a lot of money.

What is happening here is the concern that Japan will cash in, or more likely stop buying, US treasuries, because they need to spend the money on reconstruction, which strengthens the yen.

As the ¥ strengthens, the hedgies decide that they need to get their cash back into Yen before it appreciates any more, and so magnifies their losses.

So while normal concerns push the Yen up, you also have panicked (is their any other kind) traders who are desperately trying to buy into a rising market, which pushes up the Yen, which panics the traders more, who try to sell more $AUS or South African Rands to buy Yen, which further pushes it up.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

Oh Crap

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In a news conference, the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary said that they were pulling everyone out of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, though it appears that a small number of workers have elected to stay on:

11:13 P.M. |Core Group of Workers Remain at Plant

The Times’s Hiroko Tabuchi reports that a small group of workers remains at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, contrary to what an English translation of the chief cabinet secretary’s remarks had implied.

10:22 P.M. |Chief Cabinet Secretary’s News Conference

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, is holding a news conference that is being broadcast live on Japanese television. Mr. Edano said radiation readings started rising rapidly Wednesday morning outside the front gate of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. “All the workers there have suspended their operations. We have urged them to evacuate, and they have,” he said, according to a translation by NHK television.

This is not good, that if the situation is as reported, those men remaining at the plant have to know that they are at very real risk of death.

We also have a report that a fire has restarted at the power plant, though it is unclear where this fire might be.

If this is the zirconium cladding of the spend fuel rods in the cooling pools, this could get very ugly very quickly.

If interested, you can see satellite and U-2 imagery here.

Busy Day, But I Am Relieved

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That a friend of mine who lives in Japan is fine, as is his wife, and the earthquake did no damage to his home.

A word of note, if this hit anywhere in the US, we would not have the infrastructure of personnel to handle this, and we would already be seeing private profiteers cheating people.

Also note that the Republican budget cuts include cuts to the Tsunami warning system.

Japan Makes Banzai Charge Against Chinese Currency Manipulation

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As a result of Chinese currency manipulation, the Bank or Japan has started selling Yen to keep it from strengthening it too much, which wold kill exports and likely create a trade deficit.

This the first time that this has happened in 6 years, but there is a twist to what the BoJ is doing:

At first glance, the action looks like a something-must-be-done-this-is-something -therefore-this-must-be-done move: a new prime minister and a “bold action” doomed to be proved ineffectual. The FX markets are so enormous (dollar/yen alone trades some $750 billion per day) that it’s hard to believe a single sale of less than $20 billion in yen could even have the short-term effect we saw last night, let alone have any lasting consequences.

But this isn’t just about FX-market intervention. This is also about monetary policy, and that could make a real difference:

………

In other words, the Bank of Japan isn’t simply selling yen, it’s printing yen. (And then selling them.) Given (a) that it’s the central bank and that it can print as many yen as it likes, and (b) that it would actually welcome a bit of inflation, there’s actually a non-negligible chance that this kind of non-sterilized intervention could work.

The term “non-sterilized” means printing money.

The Federal Reserve could do the same thing, and getting the dollar to a reasonable level versus the Chinese Yuan, and some inflation right now would be a good thing.

Ah, This is Obviously Some Strange Usage of the Phrase “Not an Aircraft Carrier” With Which I Was Previously Unfamiliar

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Click for full size

This is not an “Aviation Destroyer”
(Background)

The next generation of Japanese naval aviation will be the 22DH ships, which are the size of the Essex Class fleet carriers of World War II.

The kicker here is the fact that they are looking at deploying the F-35B STOVL fighter on the ship.

I understand why the Japanese are leery of saying that they have an aircraft carrier.

It makes them nervous.

Hell, it makes me nervous.

That being said, this is not a helicopter carrying destroyer.

The Voters Have Spoken…Those Bastards!

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And once again, when the elites speak, and the ordinary folks listen to what is actually said, and educate themselves on the issue, they conclude that the elites are full of sh%$.

Case in point, the recent Japanese elections, where the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took a drubbing, because they threw out their old party leader, Yukio Hatoyama, and replaced him with Naoto Kan, who was big into Hoovernomics: His proposal was to raise the VAT in Japan from 5% to 10%, because the problem that Japan has, locked into a decades long deflationary spiral, is that ordinary people have too much money.

As a result of the elections, the DJP has lost its majority in the upper house of the Diet, and so must cut deals with the corrupt Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for most of the past 65 years, or with the rather eclectic “Your Party,” in order to get its legislation to pass.

Now might be a good time for the DPJ to work on what is ostensibly one of their major goals, to reassert the control of the democratically elected government over the entrenched Japanese bureaucracy, particularly since, in this area, they are in complete accord with the Your Party.

Economics Update

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H/t the Big Picture

It’s jobless Thursday, and the new numbers suck wet farts from dead pigeons, specifically, they are up 12% over the past 2 weeks,to 496,000, up 22,000, and well over the consensus estimate 460,000.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, both the The 4-week moving average and the continuing claims rose by 6K, to 473,750 and 4.617 million.

Note however, that he Snowpocalypse may have had something to do with this.

Note also that that the durable goods orders number sucked too, it was up only because of aircraft orders, and as the picture on the right shows, there really is no increase at all once you take out spending on military items going back a very long time.

Meanwhile, in Japan, their consumer prices fell by 1.3% year over year, which is triggering a shouting match between the Finance Ministry, who want QE, and the Bank of Japan, who are still inflation hawks.

Meanwhile in currency, the dollar rose, largely on concerns about Greece and Euro Zone.

And yes, I know, I need to post something about the Greek problem, but it’s sprawling, and I’m still trying to make a synthesis.

In energy, the crappy jobs numbers drove oil down.

Economics Update

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The lede today is that consumer confidence fell much more than expected, down to 46.0, when the consensus forecast was 55.0, a 10 month low.

Additionally, home prices fell in the 4th quarter, though the housing optimists are noting that the year over year drop is “only” 2½%.

When one considers the fact that the 4th quarter was juiced by tax credits, it’s worse than it looks.

Japan, on the other hand, Japan’s exports grew sharply in the 4th quarter, with a 40.9% year over year, the biggest jump since 1980, largely on increases in exports to China.

Still the dismal consumer confidence numbers put the market in a mind to doubt that there will soon be a robust recovery, which drove oil prices down, and led to a flight to safety which pushed the Yen and the dollar up.