[SEL] OT: Update on Japan Situation from NEI and Tepco

[Rob Skinner]

Certainly, Arnie, you can't expect us to read on that on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

But let me ask you this. It wasn't quite a year ago, back in April 2010, when there was something going on with a thing they called "Deepwater Horizon." Remember it?

As I recall, there were arm-wavers running around wailing at the tops of their lungs. It was going to turn the entire Gulf of Mexico into a barren sludge pit. Projections indicated there was enough oil to keep spewing for 125 years. The oil could coat the surface of the oceans across the globe, bringing on the extinction of mankind.

Here we are, almost a year later, and the mention of Deepwater Horizon elicits a bored yawn, at best. The biggest repercussion of the disaster has been the Obama administration effectively canceling offshore drilling, forcing us to buy even more crude from our adversaries.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that there are experts working on the problem. If that's the case, the problem will eventually be solved. If it isn't, they'll just get some new experts who are better. That's the way things are done worldwide.

On Deepwater Horizon, how many people were killed? Wasn't it eleven? How many people have been killed as a result of the failure of the Japanese nuclear power plants? Zero? Using that data and a quick session with the slide rule, we find that the Japanese nuclear plant failures are infinitely less significant than Deepwater Horizon. 

Here's a little bonus tip for you. Right after the Deepwater Horizon incident, BP stock took a nose dive. There were some sweet buying opportunities during that time period, and the price of BP has recovered to where it was one year before the incident. The Tokyo Stock Exchange plans to open as normal tomorrow, and surely you'll see TEPCO tank. Watch it over the next few weeks. There will be some buying opportunities, but the window will be small. Soon the hysteria will wane when it becomes evident that commercial nuke plants don't go up in a brilliant flash, a la Nagasaki.