Multiple disasters are heartrending as we take a sobering look at how things in Japan go wrong when conditions are right. A betting man may have laid a wager on a number of places expected to host the next big calamity. After Chernobyl and Deepwater Horizon, it was obvious to foresee some wayward country or corporation endangering society, the economy and the environment somewhere in the world. Few would have put any money on a country that survives severe earthquakes, wars and nuclear bombs, and still comes out giving the world sake, sushi and karaoke (in that order).
As the aftermath of the earthquake continues to unfold in Japan, the world has all the more reason to watch live footage of the devastation in stunned silence. With the worlds third largest economy going into disaster management mode, it also helps to keep things in perspective. This isnt a country immersed in poverty such as Haiti, or fragmented and underdeveloped like Pakistan and New Orleans. The land of the rising sun is renowned for being well organized and technologically equipped to deal with disasters and environmental challenges. But as televised footage begins to flood our screens, we see how even a country that oozes technical expertise can falter when its best science falls short of predicting the destructive power of nature.
By now a clearer picture has emerged of what happens when an earthquake triggers a tsunami that triggers a nuclear emergency, and it all follows a logical chain of causation. What is important to appreciate is that rigorous implementation of stringent building codes led to only modest damage caused by the earthquake in itself, but coastal towns and cities could not stand up to the tsunami and the debris smashing through. Once the waves hit stand by generators (crucial to maintaining power for the nuclear reactors cooling systems during shutdown) one knew that this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions.
Experts now agree that the generators were situated in a low spot on the assumption that coastal sea walls were high enough to protect against any likely tsunami a fatal miscalculation. Several hundred aftershocks and tsunami warnings later, no one knows exactly when rescue and relief efforts will cease and we can begin to assess the loss to Japan and the global economy. Amidst a rising death toll and massive destruction to infrastructure assets no one can tell when the rehabilitation efforts will be underway.
Most puzzling of all remains the nuclear question that threatens to undermine global acceptance of nuclear power plants. Perhaps the appreciable aspect is that the incident in Japan is less about nuclear power plants per se, and more about nuclear power plants situated on fault lines. While the former are instrumental to meeting our long-term energy needs, it appears the latter are less so and can only cause long-living economic damage.
Still struggling to recover its lost economic years when expansion was halted, the past two decades have seen Japans beleaguered economy take a turn for the worst. And now Japans resilience is again being tested.
We might feel isolated enough to be impartial observers through this debacle, but there are serious implications for Pakistan and its economy if things dont go so well for Japan. After all, one doesnt get to be the worlds third largest economy simply by flogging Hello Kitty merchandise and manga. Instead, Japan serves as a global market for luxury products, automobiles, and an array of technological instruments. It is troubling when an economy so advanced has to experience rolling power blackouts and the shuttering of industrial units, businesses and service providers in the wake of the disaster. While Pakistanis may identify with this particular predicament, the disruption to the supply chain for Japanese products is bound to create problems for the global community that has to contend with fluctuating exchange rates, higher consumer prices and capital markets wary of what is to follow.
Great peril lies in store for the world if containment of the nuclear radiation should fail. Even a twenty kilometer evacuation zone will be insignificant if nature should interfere with recovery efforts. The wild card here is the weather which threatens to diffuse radioactive particles into the lower and upper atmosphere. Strong winds or the jet stream up can mix and carry the radiation for many hundreds of miles across land and sea and deposit it in countries far away from Japan. With the continuous venting of radioactive steam into the atmosphere and irregular explosions sending particles upwards, there is clearly more to this disaster than meets the eye.
This would be an opportune time for Pakistan to review our resilience and the safety of our own nuclear facilities, especially those situated on fault lines. If we fail to learn from the calamity in Japan, then our decision makers are better off committing hara kiri.
The writer is a consultant on public policy.