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Toxic assets: Nuclear reactors in the 21st century: Financing reactors and the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Auteur	Greenpeace, BankTrack
	6-01-0-10-94.pdf
Datum	april 2012
Classificatie	6.01.0.10/94 (KOSTEN)
Voorkant

Toxic assets:
nuclear reactors in the 21st century
Financing reactors and the Fukushima nuclear disaster
April 2012


Authors: Gyorgy Dallos, Lauri Myllyvirta
Contributors: Jan Beránek, Jan Haverkamp, Nina Schulz, Rianne Teule, Brian Blomme
Greenpeace worked on this report with BankTrack, who organised the background research paper that looked at
who financed TEPCO before the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster either through shares, bonds or loans.
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Executive Summary
This report looks at the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster from an investorsʼ point of view. It identifies the
long-known technological, management, governance and other institutional deficiencies that were instrumental in
turning a predicted natural misfortune into a nuclear nightmare. The owner of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Tokyo
Electric Power Company (TEPCO), lost 90% of its market capitalisation, had its bonds rated as junk and is
currently in the process of being at least partly nationalised. Investors and financiers of nuclear utilities all over the
world saw their investments eroded.
Had analysts and credit-rating agencies looked beyond short-term cash flows and paid attention to the many early
warnings, they would have been able to save investors from major losses. These red flags included warnings
about:
• Crucial vulnerabilities in the Fukushima reactor design;
• Substantial governance issues and weak management characterised by major frauds and
  cover-ups;
• Collusion and loose regulatory supervision; and
• Well-understood and ignored earthquake and tsunami warnings.
All of these warnings had been publically highlighted years, often decades, before the nuclear disaster, and should
have been taken seriously not only by nuclear authorities but by analysts and investors as well. Still, TEPCO
continued to benefit from high credit ratings, supportive analyst recommendations and cheap financing right until
the Fukushima nuc