Confronted with an earthquake catastrophe on this scale Japan is showing the resilience and
ability to cope that has seen it recover from previous disasters. Everyone looking at the graphic images of destruction wrought by last Friday's tsunami realises how much they will need such a
spirit, along with help to overcome it. Prime minister Naoto Kan says this is the worst disaster to
have hit Japan since the second World War
It far exceeds the impact of the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and is in fact one of the most powerful
ever recorded. The growing crisis over nuclear safety brings that fully home to an anxiously
watching world.
Japanese people are used to earthquakes and well- prepared for them. This can be seen from the
minimal physical damage caused in Tokyo compared to the waste lands and cities along the
northeast coast which was exposed to such a sudden and massive tsunami. Even the current estimate
of 10,000 immediate deaths must be seen as an underestimate when its full power and effects are
assessed. On top of that comes the millions made homeless and lacking food, water and shelter in
the last few days. Worries about further severe aftershocks and potential supplementary tsunamis
compound the picture. The wider impact on transport, power systems and economic life brings out
the challenge for Japanese people to work together and draw on international support as they do so.
Initial estimates that it will cost about $120 billion to rebuild the region are another indication of
this earthquake's scale. That would be an extraordinary boost to Japan's sluggish economy, even
though many already worry how it would affect the country's government debt of 200 per cent of
gross domestic product, one of the highest in the world. Japanese people are now older than the
generations who rebuilt the country after 1945 and then drove its development further in the 1970s
and 1980s to become the second largest economy in the world after the United States. This ranking
has only recently given way to China. That such a highly developed society is open to such a
natural catastrophe is a salutary reminder of its physical vulnerability.
That brutal fact is well illustrated in the radiation crisis now unfolding at three nuclear power plants
north of Tokyo. Their safety systems withstood the earthquake but were overwhelmed by the
tsunami which destroyed back-up cooling equipment. Efforts to find substitute methods for dealing
with the problem are hampered by physical access and damage already incurred. Inevitably there
are questions raised about the safety of these particular plants exposed to such a major adjacent
faultline in the earth's tectonic plates, as well as to the dangers posed by tsunami waves notwithstanding
their 40 safe years of energy production since they were first commissioned.
Experts say this should not to be compared with Chernobyl in 198-6 but rather with the less serious
meltdown accident at the US Three Mile Island plant in 1981. But a worldwide debate on the safety
of nuclear energy is bound to follow, whatever happens this week in Japan.
ability to cope that has seen it recover from previous disasters. Everyone looking at the graphic images of destruction wrought by last Friday's tsunami realises how much they will need such a
spirit, along with help to overcome it. Prime minister Naoto Kan says this is the worst disaster to
have hit Japan since the second World War
It far exceeds the impact of the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and is in fact one of the most powerful
ever recorded. The growing crisis over nuclear safety brings that fully home to an anxiously
watching world.
Japanese people are used to earthquakes and well- prepared for them. This can be seen from the
minimal physical damage caused in Tokyo compared to the waste lands and cities along the
northeast coast which was exposed to such a sudden and massive tsunami. Even the current estimate
of 10,000 immediate deaths must be seen as an underestimate when its full power and effects are
assessed. On top of that comes the millions made homeless and lacking food, water and shelter in
the last few days. Worries about further severe aftershocks and potential supplementary tsunamis
compound the picture. The wider impact on transport, power systems and economic life brings out
the challenge for Japanese people to work together and draw on international support as they do so.
Initial estimates that it will cost about $120 billion to rebuild the region are another indication of
this earthquake's scale. That would be an extraordinary boost to Japan's sluggish economy, even
though many already worry how it would affect the country's government debt of 200 per cent of
gross domestic product, one of the highest in the world. Japanese people are now older than the
generations who rebuilt the country after 1945 and then drove its development further in the 1970s
and 1980s to become the second largest economy in the world after the United States. This ranking
has only recently given way to China. That such a highly developed society is open to such a
natural catastrophe is a salutary reminder of its physical vulnerability.
That brutal fact is well illustrated in the radiation crisis now unfolding at three nuclear power plants
north of Tokyo. Their safety systems withstood the earthquake but were overwhelmed by the
tsunami which destroyed back-up cooling equipment. Efforts to find substitute methods for dealing
with the problem are hampered by physical access and damage already incurred. Inevitably there
are questions raised about the safety of these particular plants exposed to such a major adjacent
faultline in the earth's tectonic plates, as well as to the dangers posed by tsunami waves notwithstanding
their 40 safe years of energy production since they were first commissioned.
Experts say this should not to be compared with Chernobyl in 198-6 but rather with the less serious
meltdown accident at the US Three Mile Island plant in 1981. But a worldwide debate on the safety
of nuclear energy is bound to follow, whatever happens this week in Japan.
