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On Friday, The market closed marginally up
and traders felt that this secular bull market was regaining footing and that
all was well in the world. Spring was in the air and we would be spending our
Saturday cleaning our gardens, take our wives to dinner and enjoying life.
Sunday would be spent reading Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal and
eating bagels. That was 56 long hours ago.
After spending the weekend learning about
“The Ring of Fire”, Roentgens, subduction, plate tectonics,
iodine, Cesium 137, Strontium 90, hydrogen failures, core exposure and fuel
rod sheathing I have come to the conclusion that I am nowhere. According to
Thomas S. Drolet from Drolet and Associates Energy Services, Inc. “the
worst that can happen is that the nuclear materials become wholly uncovered
and that they reach a point of sufficient heat… several thousand
degrees C… to melt through the various depths of defense that
exist.” According to Mr. Drolet “thus far this seems only seems a
very remote possibility.” Having said that I know we have the smartest
people in the world working to insure there is not a meltdown. There is,
however, conflicting reports that the fuel rods in reactor #2 at the Fukujima
site have become fully exposed. If there is a meltdown in this reactor it will
make the accident at Chernobyl in Russia pale in comparison. The reason is
that the Fukujima site, unlike Chernobyl, is in a densely populated area of
Japan. The further loss of life would be unimaginable.
Here is what I know. On Friday there was a
massive earthquake 8.9 (on the Richter scale) a few miles off shore of Japan
in the Sendai region. This created a tsunami of epic proportions. If you have
watched TV at all, you have seen the wave that devastated the coast of Japan.
The fail safe that was built into the reactors called for the reactor rods to
drop into the shielding. The fail safe calls for the electric pumps to
automatically kick on and pump water into the core to cool down the core and
stop overheating. Because of the earthquake and ensuing tsunami there was no
electricity to pump water into the core. There is a fail safe for this. It
calls for diesel generators to kick on and created the electricity needed to
pump water into the core. Well the tsunami was so great that it washed away
the diesel generators. The only thing the team could come up with was to use
portable generators to pump sea water into the core with boron that slows
down nuclear reactions. As I previously stated there are conflicting reports
as to whether this is working.
The estimates of loss of life are estimated
at 10,000 but are surely to rise in the next week. The uncertainty that
exists at the Fukujima reactor site only further adds to the uncertainty of
this catastrophic event.
There is only one thing that I know with
certainty. The markets hate uncertainty. Already, the political
figures of the US are rushing to be the 1st, or 2nd or 5th to
call for “putting on the brakes” to the US drive toward nuclear
energy. Senator Lieberman (I- Connecticut), whom we would have hoped would
know better, called for putting an end, at least for the near term, for any
further building of nuclear power facilities. This is all the more sad and
more consequential in that Senator Lieberman has been heretofore one of the
strongest advocates of nuclear power in the Congress. We will keep a careful
eye on the events in Japan as they unfold.
To add even more fuel to the fire, Moammar
Gaddafihas made good his promise to crush the rebel uprising using lethal
force in what can only be characterized as a mass slaughter of his people.
Libya’s government said it had taken
over the oil terminal of Brega on Sunday and would press eastward to the
rebels’ self-styled capital of Benghazi, as Western diplomats remained
mixed over intervention in the Libyan crisis.
The takeover of Brega came three days after a
similar capture of Ras Lanuf, another oil port 77 miles further west,
following heavy bombardment.
“Brega has been liberated,” said
Col. Milad Hussein, an army spokesman, adding that he did not anticipate a tough
battle in Benghazi. He said that the government hopes to resolve the crisis
“through reconciliation” with tribal leaders in eastern Libya but
that the rebel movement is not proving to be a potent adversary.
“To deal with them you don’t need
full-scale military action,” the Libyan spokesman said. “They are
groups of people who, when you come to them, they just raise their hands and
go. ”
Abdul Fattah Younis, chief of staff of the
rebel army and former interior minister in Gaddafi’s government, told
reporters that rebel forces conducted a strategic retreat from Brega. And he
vowed to protect Ajdabiya, the next rebel-held town to the east, 49 miles
from Brega.
The government’s announcement came as
world leaders debated the merits of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya to
prevent airstrikes by Gaddafi forces.
The Arab League on Saturday endorsed the
idea, which is to be discussed by NATO representatives this week. France
supports the plan and has officially recognized the opposition government.
But the United States has shied away from a
position, fearing an anti-American backlash if it becomes involved in
military action in another Muslim country in addition to Iraq and
Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to meet
with Libyan opposition leaders in Paris on Monday.
Supporters of a no-fly zone fear it may come
too late to be useful. The area around Benghazi, the center of rebel command,
appeared increasingly unstable over the weekend.
On Saturday, an al-Jazeera cameraman was
fatally shot in an apparent ambush outside the city, according to the
network, the first report of a journalist killed in Libya since the conflict
began.
Ali Hassan al-Jaber, a native of Qatar, was
returning to Benghazi from a nearby town after reporting on an opposition
protest when the car he was traveling in came under fire, killing him and
wounding a colleague.
One of those who fled Brega on Sunday was
Yousef Sanoushi, an architect from Brega who was interviewed by phone from
Benghazi. “They started the attack at 6 a.m., and it went on
during the day,” he said. “They were using heavy shelling and
launching rockets from trucks.”
Opposition strongholds across Libya have been
shelled to rubble in recent days, including the western town of Zawiyah,
where witnesses, in phone conversations, described massive destruction before
disappearing from contact.
A similar fate appeared to threaten Misurata,
Libya’s third-largest city and the only one outside the east still
under rebel control and surrounded by government forces.
There was word of dissent within government
forces there Saturday and Sunday, with the sound of heavy clashes coming from
10 miles or so outside the city for two nights in a row, one witness said.
“According to what we know, these were
internal clashes within the Khamis Brigade between Gaddafi loyalists and
those who have shifted their alliance to the rebels,” said Misurata
resident Mohamad Sanusi, 42, by phone Sunday.
Sanusi said he had heard that “there is
a senior officer that is heading this group that’s engaged in a mutiny.
They did not join the rebels, but they have said that they refuse to attack
the civilians.”
Hussein, the army spokesman, denied a Reuters
report that some soldiers had defected to the rebel side. “These people
are trained and they believe in Brother Moammar Gaddafi, and they won’t
leave him for these gangs,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that rebels still
control the town.
“There are gangs inside,” he
said, describing the rebels. “Some have handed back their weapons and
some will be dealt with.”
Misurata, 131 miles east of Tripoli, still
had access to gas and basic food supplies, but medical supplies were
dwindling, Sanusi said.
In government-held Ras Lanuf, an oil facility
was burning days after the violent retaking of the city, and the head of
Libya’s National Oil Co. asked Italian oil company Eni SpA for help
extinguishing it, citing the danger of environmental damage to the
Mediterranean Sea, the Associated Press reported.
In Tripoli, government military vehicles were
reportedly headed west from the city Sunday, according to a resident who said
he saw them as he drove 15 miles out of the city to use his mobile phone.
He said he assumed they were heading toward
the “western mountains” 120 miles away, where rebels are holed
up.
“They are armed and in
difficult-to-reach places,” said the man, who asked not to be
identified for fear of reprisal. “Trucks can’t go there, but they
could bombard them from the air. . . .They’re expecting to be bombed any minute.”
As opposition fighters across Libya face
starkly uneven odds against Gaddafi’s forces, Sanusi and the Tripoli
resident said their hopes were pinned on international intervention.
“We are all waiting for the United
Nations Security Council to take its decision on declaring the no-fly
zone,” Sanusi said. “After that will happen, the balance of power
will shift and the rest of the areas will be liberated.”
Stay Tuned as these events unfold.
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