GLOBAL IMPACT? Shipping Lines Shun Japan., page 1

Global Supply Lines at Risk as Shipping Lines Shun Japan

The economic disruptions from Japan’s crisis have cascaded into another, crucial link in the global supply chain: cargo shipping.

Fearing the potential impact on crews, cargo and vessels worth tens of millions of dollars, some of the world’s biggest container shipping lines have restricted or barred their ships from calling on ports in Tokyo Bay over concerns about radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Meantime, ports in China are starting to require strict radiation checks on ships arriving from Japan. And in California on Friday, the first ship to reach the Port of Long Beach since Japan’s earthquake was boarded and scanned for radiation by Coast Guard and federal customs officials before being allowed to dock.

Big Japanese ports much farther south of Tokyo, like Osaka and Kobe, are still loading and unloading cargo. But the Tokyo Bay ports of Tokyo and Yokohama are normally Japan’s two busiest, representing as much as 40 percent of the nation’s foreign container cargo. If other shipping companies join those already avoiding the Tokyo area, as radiation contamination spreads from Fukushima Daiichi 140 miles north, the delays in getting goods in and out of Japan would only grow worse.

And they will....

But first, the Port of Tokyo is one of the largest Japanese seaports and one of the largest seaports in the Pacific Ocean basin having an annual traffic capacity of around 100 million tonnes of cargo and 4,500,000 TEU's.

The port is also an important employer in the area having more than 30,000 employees that provide services to more than 32,000 ships every year.

Now consider this:

China rejects ship from California with “abnormal” radiation — Had only been in Tokyo for a few hours

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines has not yet decided what it will do with its container ship when it returns to Japan this week, a company official said on Tuesday, after China rejected the vessel for "abnormal" radiation levels.

The MOL Presence is the first ship barred from unloading its cargo at a foreign port over radiation concerns since Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant was crippled by the March 11 earthquake, a spokesman for the Japanese Shipowners Association said.

...

If radiation levels are confirmed to be too high on the vessel, MOL may be forced to dispose of the machinery, furniture and other cargo on the ship and reimburse its clients since insurance companies do not cover radiation exposure linked to nuclear accidents, industry experts said.

The vessel would also need to be thoroughly cleaned before it can set sail again.

Chinese authorities detected a maximum of 3.5 microsieverts per hour on MOL's ship when it arrived at the port of Xiamen in eastern Fujian province last week, the company spokeswoman said.

That is above the global average of naturally occurring background radiation, but half of the cosmic radiation experienced on a Tokyo-New York flight.

So while at first blush the exposure amounts in this case don't seem meaningful in a health sense, they are enough to cause havoc in an economic sense! Remember, this ship was in Tokyo's port for only a few hours-- and a week ago, when radiation levels were supposedly even smaller than over the past few days.

Now do you see where this is going?