8/23/2011 Moody's downgrades Japan's debt rating to Aa3 from Aa2

Source: NHK World
Date: 8/23/2011 (Wednesday, August 24, 2011 10:22 +0900 (JST))

US credit agency Moody's Investors Service has downgraded Japan's debt by one notch, on concerns over the country's worsening fiscal situation.

Moody's cut Japan's government bond rating on Wednesday to "Double A 3" from "Double A 2".
The new rating ranks Japanese debt at the same level as that of countries like China and Chile.

The agency says it made the downgrade because the effects of the March disaster and resulting power shortages are slowing Japan's economic growth.

It added that the country has failed to hammer out viable plans for reforming its social security and tax system.

Without a clear direction, Moody's says, Japan's economy will deteriorate further.

But the agency notes that Japan has the largest external assets among advanced economies. It says the country will continue to win the trust of the market as long as it manages to improve its fiscal condition.

On the downgrade, Japan's Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said he will not comment on a private-sector agency's assessment. But he said that going by recent bond auctions, the market's trust in Japanese government bonds remains firm.

8/23/2011 Virginia nuclear plant shut down by quake

Source: CNN
Date: 8/23/2011


(CNN) -- Tuesday's Virginia earthquake triggered the shutdown of a nearby nuclear power plant and spurred declarations of "unusual events" at plants as far away as Michigan, U.S. authorities reported.

Dominion Virginia Power said both reactors at its North Anna plant, less than 20 miles from the epicenter of the magnitude-5.8 quake, shut down after the first tremors. Amanda Reidelbach, an emergency management spokeswoman for Louisa County, said the plant vented steam, but there was no release of radioactive material.

David Heacock, the utility's chief nuclear officer, said the plant was operating on emergency power and the units were safely deactivated.

"The plants are designed for this kind of a seismic event," Heacock said. "There is no apparent damage to anything at the plant right now."

Heacock said the plant had four diesel generators supplying backup power and that those generators had three days of fuel. However, off-site electric power was expected to be restored later Tuesday, he said.

Dominion Virginia said reactors at its other nuclear station, the Surry plant near Newport News, were still running.

The North Anna plant is about 50 miles northwest of Richmond and about 90 miles southwest of Washington. Operators declared an alert -- the second-lowest level of emergency reporting under U.S. nuclear regulations -- after the quake struck shortly before 2 p.m., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

Twelve other plants in six states issued an "unusual event" declaration, the lowest level of emergency notice, according to the NRC. They included the Shearon Harris plant in North Carolina; the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland; Pennsylvania's Susquehanna, Three Mile Island, Limerick and Peach Bottom plants; the Oyster Creek, Hope Creek and Salem plants in New Jersey; and the D.C. Cook and Palisades plants in Michigan.

"All these plants continue to operate while plant personnel examine their sites," the NRC said.

CNN's Emily Smith, Jeanne Meserve, Scott Bronstein and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.

8/23/2011 M5.9 earthquake causes North Anna Nuclear Generating Station shutdown

CNBC (host Bill Griffith) reports that the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station has shutdown automatically due to the magnitude 5.9 earthquake with its epicenter at Mineral, Virginia. The nuclear power plant is located about 10 miles Northeast of the epicenter of the quake and is running on backup diesel generators (presumably after losing external power!) per CNBC host Mandy Drury. Dominion Resources stock took a hit after the quake, which CNBC host Brian Sullivan mulls over. Was it a pre-packaged black box algorithm? I have parsed together some video clips of the CNBC coverage with the relevant sound bytes related to the nuclear plant.


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