Asia This Day:Japan Quake Business Effects-plus an update

Japan is bracing for rolling power blackouts today.Several nuclear plants are offline-one of them permanently,crimping the country's electricity supply.Japan needs 40 million kilowatts,but has been reduced to 10 million.In consequence,there will be 3-hour blackouts for each district.The central business district in Tokyo,where government offices are located,will not be affected.
There is also a shortage of fresh food,water,candles,batteries and rice.Relief supplies are beginning to make their way northward,but many areas have yet to see any.
Cooling efforts continue at four nuclear reactors.U.S. officials said that contamination is not expected to reach America's shores,even though 180,000 Japanese have been evacuated from the reactor zones.Singapore is testing all food imports from Japan for radiation.The imports are predicted to become more expensive as their supply dwindles.
The Japanese stock market reopened Monday,with the Nikkei 225 index down 4.46 at lunchtime.The more broadly based Topix index fell 5.85,while the yen rose 0.45 against the U.S. dollar.Construction stocks were up as high as 62%.
Citigroup said Japanese industrial production would fall 1-2% because of the quake,but will ultimately benefit as reconstruction gets fully underway.Societe Generale feels that the quake will lower bond yields,but the Japanese economy will recover.
The Bank of Japan moved its scheduled meeting up an hour.It is injecting trillions of yen into the system to ensure liquidity.
Update:Nils Diaz,former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,says the Japan nuclear accident is relatively low level.He ranked it as a 2 or 3 out of seven.The Japanese workers have it well in hand,carefully releasing small amounts of radiation.It isn't an uncontrolled event such as Ukraine's Chernobyl accident was in the 1980s.As well,the Japanese reactors are more advanced in design and are recovering from a natural disaster,not human error as occurred at Chernobyl or Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
Toyota and Nissan have shut production down for the moment.Toyota's stoppage will mean a cut of 40,000 vehicles.On the other hand,Toshiba is restarting a chip factory,though Sony has shuttered facilities.
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