AP
NEWS OF THE WEEK
JAPAN'S INDUSTRY STANDS STRONG NATURAL DISASTER: Many firms resume operations as buyers make supply chain adjustments
S Infrastructure repair got under way in Iwaki, Fukushima prefecture.
UPPLIES OF ELECTRONIC materials from
Japan may bounce back more quickly than previously thought. Japanese producers last week were showing good progress in recovering from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami as buyers in turn began adjusting their sourcing patterns. Still, plants close to the quake’s epicenter will likely take several more months to resume operations, say firms with operations in that broad area. Mitsubishi Gas Chemical expects to restart production in early May at a plant in Fukushima prefecture that makes bismaleimide triazine resin. The plant produces about 50% of the world’s output of the material, which is important for making printed-circuit boards. Depending on their buying clout, component producers may be able to sail through the resin supply disruption, says Andrew Lu, a Hong Kong-based semicon-
ductor industry analyst at Barclays Capital. Major users such as Qualcomm and Mediatek “will not even feel a thing,” he predicts. But Lu warns that smaller firms will likely stop production for as long as two months. Another electronic materials producer, JX Nippon Mining & Metals, says its indium tin oxide targets plant in Ibaraki prefecture will resume shipments in late May. The company is the world’s largest producer of ITO targets, which are used to make liquid-crystal displays. Meanwhile, Shin-Etsu Chemical can’t properly inspect its downed silicon wafer plant in Fukushima prefecture because of aftershocks, a spokesman says. The facility produces 20% of the world’s supply of the semiconductor building block, according to the electronics market research firm IHS iSuppli. But this outage won’t be a problem, Barclays’ Lu anticipates. He expects that other companies will be able to pick up Shin-Etsu’s share, which he believes is less than 20% of the world’s wafer supply. Outside the electronics industry, Merck KGaA says a pigment plant in Fukushima prefecture will remain down for some time. The facility makes a pigment called Xirallic, used in car coatings. The material was developed in Japan and has been produced only at the Fukushima plant, Merck says. Production will restart within eight weeks of the power grid and roads being repaired, the firm anticipates.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
math of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group. Japanese authorities have restricted emergency evacuation to 12 miles from the release site. But IAEA recommended that Japanese officials increase the evacuation NUCLEAR POWER: Japanese engineers zone around the reactor complex, and two weeks ago fight to regain control; Congress the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recomreviews U.S. nuclear plant practices mended an evacuation zone of four times that distance. The Japanese disaster and its impact on the U.S. nuclear power industry were discussed last week in ADIATION CONCERNS continued to heighten Congress. The safety of spent fuel pools was the focus of last week at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Power Station, which suffered catastrophic dam- Committee. Subcommittee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein age from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. At the (D-Calif.) urged NRC to require U.S. reactor owners facility, radiation was leaking from reactor cores and to more quickly move spent fuel from pools to abovespent-fuel pools, and it appeared likely ground storage canisters. that the four damaged reactors have been NRC maintains that pool storage is safe but acknowlirreparably destroyed. edges that the practice will be included in its review of Radiation levels varied considerably in lessons learned from the Japan disaster (see page 27). areas around the plant, but the InternationPeter B. Lyons, a nuclear energy administrator at the al Atomic Energy Agency found particularly Department of Energy, noted for the subcommittee high levels of cesium-137—a radioactive that the fate of radioactive waste is under examination fission by-product—near the village of by DOE and NRC, as well as by the presidential Blue Iitate, 25 miles northwest of the plant. The Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. 3.7-megabecquerels-per-m2 measurement That panel was set up to examine the fate of nuclear exceeds the IAEA criterion waste in light of an Obama Administration VIDEO ONLINE for evacuation, the agency redecision to halt consideration of the Yucca ports. It’s also twice the level Mountain nuclear waste repository in Neset by the Soviet Union in 1990 as the trigvada. The commission’s draft report is expected in late ger for compulsory relocation in the afterJuly, Lyons noted.—JEFF JOHNSON
JAPANESE REACTOR SAGA CONTINUES
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TOKYO ELECTRIC POWER CO.
Water is applied to a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in an attempt to lower temperature and pressure.
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