What the Market Taught Me This Week

• Report this Comment On March 19, 2011, at 5:57 AM, rudeman2k wrote:

  I've not been investing long but I saw something with BP and the off shore drillers, and now I've seen it again with nuclear stocks.

  What I've learned is that the market is a panic attack waiting to happen. At the first sign of a disaster many investors flee a business or even a sector at all costs as fast as they can.

  To sum it up, I learned this week that there is easy money to be made occasionally for an oppurtunistic investor.

• Report this Comment On March 20, 2011, at 2:06 PM, haryyndf wrote:

  For the time being nothing positive will come of the issues at the nuclear power plant in Japan. The media and the public around the world are in total panic mode thanks to the issue regularly being compared to the Chernobyl accident and lack of knowledge on the subject.

  Honestly, I can hope that once the issue has been resolved people can look forward and determine that most of the older reactors, like the one in Japan, need to be replaced and eventually closed. The reactor at Fukushima Daiichi is a first generation build we are around the third or fourth generation now. New nuclear power plants need to be built to replace the old and to further remove our dependence on fissile fuels.

• Report this Comment On March 20, 2011, at 11:49 PM, sailrick wrote:

  The U.S. has 24 reactors of the same design as Fukishima.

  What concerns me about nuclear is human error, which includes siting issues, and underestimating what can go wrong. Storage of used fuel rods in those water pools is a sign of underestimating what can go wrong.

  In order for nuclear to be safe, worst case scenario natural disasters have to be included in the planning. It may be comforting to think that events like the 9.0 magnitude quake in Japan are rare.

  But, we've had four earthquakes of 9 magnitude or higher, in 51 years. Alaska 1964, the Indonesian quake and tsunami that killed a quarter million people, the great Chilean earthquake in 1960 at 9.5 magnitude, and now Japan. And earthquakes of 8-8.9 magnitude occur once a year on average.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

  If this can happen in one of the world's most technologically advanced and richest countries and one of the most politically stable countries, what will happen when less reliable regimes all over the world have embraced the 'brave new world' of a nuclear renaissance?

  If new nuclear reactors are built, more care has to go into planning.

  What happened in Japan is called Station Black Out - the loss of AC electrical power from the grid; power needed to run the cooling pumps. The tsunami knocked out diesel backup pumps, leaving the batteries as the only backup.

  The Fukishima nuclear plant had 8 hours of battery backup for the cooling pumps.

  We are now a week into the disaster in Japan.

  In the U.S., there are 93 nuclear power plants with only 4 hours battery backup. The NRC only requires nuclear plants to have enough battery backup for a 4-8 hour situation.

  Station blackout is one of the most likely causes of a nuclear accidents, according to the NRC

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