Monday’s earthquake in Japan was not only the deadliest earthquake in the tremor-prone country since October 2004, it’s also turning out to be one of the most costly in terms of the country’s nuclear and automotive industries.

This week’s earthquake on Japan’s northwestern coast killed at least nine people and injured more than 900, flattened hundreds of buildings and left thousands homeless.

Nuclear Mishaps
Now the world’s biggest nuclear power station and Japan’s entire nuclear industry face an uncertain future. The tremors caused some 50 problems at the nuclear plant, including water leakages, fire and the toppling of more than 400 drums containing low-level radioactive waste, some of which broke open.

Nuclear reactors in the affected area shut down automatically, but the earthquake also caused a small fire at an electrical transformer at a nuclear plant in Kashiwazaki, a coastal town close to the quake’s epicenter.

The plant later leaked “a small amount” of water containing radioactive materials into the Sea of Japan.

The Tokyo Electric Power company (TEPCO), which operates the plant, said the amount of radioactivity in water that leaked into the sea during the earthquake was 50 percent higher than it announced originally on Monday night. The firm blamed a calculation error and said the levels were still well within safety standards, saying the radioactivity level posed no danger to people or the environment.

According to UK paper The Guardian:

It also said that 400 drums of low-level radioactive waste — not 100 originally reported — had toppled over during the quake. About 40 lost their lids, spilling their contents on to the ground. The spillage was one of more than 50 malfunctions the plant experienced in the immediate aftermath of the quake.

The company, the largest power producer in Japan, also delayed acknowledging the leak for several hours. TEPCO is now under pressure to explain why it took so long to inform the authorities of radioactive leaks and why only four employees were on hand to tackle a fire inside an electrical transformer that was only extinguished after firefighters arrived almost 90 minutes later.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant — the world’s largest in terms of output capacity — was shut down indefinitely on Wednesday. “With 20 percent of the world’s nuclear reactors in seismically active zones … nuclear power plants are designed with shaking in mind,” notes The Associated Press (via The Japan Times).

All the reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant were built according to government-set standards requiring resistance to epicentral earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.5, according to Japan’s Kyodo News. But Monday’s earthquake had a recorded magnitude of 6.8, and its epicenter was located only 16 kilometers from the nuclear power plant.

The Guardian reports:

The mishaps have raised questions about the wisdom of building nuclear power stations in a country where earth tremors are recorded, on average, every few minutes. New safety regulations were brought in last year, but upgrading [aging] reactors so that they can withstand tremors of a greater magnitude than 6.5 will require huge investment.

According to AP:

Plants in many countries have survived quakes more powerful than the one that hit Niigata Prefecture on Monday, suggesting the poor performance of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility is more illustrative of recent safety problems in Japan’s nuclear industry than any inherent vulnerability of the technology.

Japan depends greatly on nuclear power, and its nuclear industry has been afflicted by scandals and cover-ups for quite a while. The country’s 55 plants supply almost a third of the country’s electric power output.

Automotive Shutdown
The devastating earthquake also caused damage at one of Japan’s major auto parts suppliers, forcing the country’s top automakers to halt production for the next few days.

Assembly lines across the country are grinding to a halt because the 6.8 magnitude quake knocked out the main production plant of key supplier Riken Corp., a maker of transmission and engine parts.

Monday’s quake damaged warehouses and knocked over equipment including metal molds, electrical tools and precision measuring devices at the factory, Japan’s biggest engine piston ring producer said in a statement. Riken, which supplies only Japanese plants, said it hoped to replace damaged equipment in the next few days, but it would need to conduct a detailed inspection of the plant and go through trial runs.

As a result, Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Mitsubishi Motors Corp., Fuji Heavy Industries and Suzuki Motor Corp. all said yesterday that they would stop production in Japan until Riken Corp.’s auto parts plant at Kashiwazaki city, near the epicenter of the 6.8 quake, comes back on line, according to AP. The problems at Riken are also threatening production at Honda Motor Co.

According to Forbes:

• Toyota stopped its assembly lines in central Aichi prefecture from Thursday afternoon through Friday due to the lack of key parts. Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said it was “too early to tell” whether the production halt would affect deliveries to domestic and overseas dealers. Toyota said it would assess the situation at Riken before deciding whether to resume production Monday.

• Nissan said it would halt some production lines at two factories on the main island of Honshu for at least two days starting Friday. Nissan subsidiary Jatco shuttered three of its nine plants from Wednesday afternoon because of supply delays from Riken, according to Nikkei News. Jatco’s clients also include Suzuki Motor and Mazda Motor.

• “If things don’t get better today, we’re going to stop, too,” Takeo Fukui, president of Honda, told public broadcaster NHK. “We are just able to hold out until the weekend.”

Now, in the wake of Monday’s quake, “the famously lean inventories of Japanese automakers have turned from a virtue into a weakness,” Forbes notes.

Morgan Stanley said that the shutdowns could cost the Japanese auto industry in the neighborhood of 20 billion yen ($164 million) a day. It estimated Toyota would lose 9.2 billion yen a day; Honda, 2.5 billion yen; and Nissan, 2.2 billion yen.

Earlier: Drilling Holes, Understanding Quakes, Saving Lives

Resources

Asia Times

NYT

Kyodo News

AP, via The Japan Times

The Guardian

International Herald Tribune

Forbes

AP, via The Houston Chronicle