Re: earthquakes and O rings

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bosley, John - BLS" <Bosley.John () bls gov>
Date: July 24, 2007 12:16:52 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: FW: earthquakes and O rings

 Dave, for IP if you wish; a comment from my colleague and friend Joji
Arai, a retired consultant to Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry, on
this event--and a related one.

Joji wrote:

John, an unexpected emergency disrupting a smooth-running precision
JIT/Toyota Production System is a well known defect of the Japanese
system.  When everything is moving on the precisely defined schedules,
the Toyota Production System enables manufacturers to have profitable
operations but unexpected emergencies disrupting the schedules cause
devastating results.  The recent Niigata Earthquake and resulting
stoppage of water supply to the plant caused Riken's loss of production
capacity resulting in the loss of 120,000 automobile production of all
the car manufacturers.

Speaking of unexpected results of the earthquake, an
environment-conscious Italian succor [sic-Joji really means "soccer"]
team canceled their trip to Japan on the ground that the Kashiwazaki
Nuclear Power Station leaked waste materials into Japan Sea forcing
sponsors of the events to refund all the ticket holders.  Joji

Cheers,

John Bosley

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 9:39 PM
To: ip ip
Subject: Re: earthquakes and O rings



Begin forwarded message:

From: Rod Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp>
Date: July 23, 2007 7:22:07 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] earthquakes and O rings

Dave,

A quick follow-up from articles in today's [Tuesday's] Daily Yomiuri:

The seven nuclear reactors may remain shut for eighteen months for
repairs and strengthening; they haven't even inspected the cores yet.
The shutdown will force TEPCO to generate more power using fuel oil and
coal, which at current world prices will cost them an extra several
billion dollars.  If the entire 8,200 megawatts is replaced with coal
for a year, that will increase Japan's CO2 output by about 40 million
tons (the article doesn't say whether that's tons of carbon or of CO2).

In Japan, 31% of electricity is nuclear-generated, up from 6.5% thirty
years ago.  But only 35 of the country's 55 plants are currently
running; the rest are down for various reasons.  (I'm not sure what
percentage of the plants have to be running in order to reach that 31%
figure.)

Some more detail on the piston rings:

Toyota says group production losses will total 55,000 vehicles, about
0.6% of their global total goal of 9.34 million for the year.  They
claim they will make up the shortfall by the end of the year.  About 60%
of the vehicles Toyota produces here are exported.

Among all twelve major automakers, output losses are expected to exceed
110,000 vehicles, nearly three times next-biggest recent disaster, the
Great Hanshin (Kobe) Earthquake in 1995.  The Hanshin quake was a much
bigger humanitarian disaster in a nominally more important industrial
and shipping region, but only caused auto production losses of about
40,000 vehicles.

Riken is partially back in operation.  Most or all of the auto plants
are resuming production today or tomorrow, but probably not at full
capacity for a while yet, so losses are likely to grow somewhat.

                --Rod






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