TEPCO stock suffers as a result of Japanese nuclear disaster

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has announced a plan to deter the nuclear crisis at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant within the next six months. The disaster caused TEPCO stocks to drop to a 60-year low and the company still has enormous compensation claim payments in the future.

The plan TEPCO has put forward is to have the radiation levels drop in as soon as three months. After that initial reduction in radiation, TEPCO plans a "cold shutdown," where the core reactor temperatures plummet below 100 degrees, according to a statement released by the company earlier this month in Tokyo.

Radioactive water has continued to accumulate in ditches near the No. 2 and 3 reactors said Tetsuya Terasawa, a spokesman at TEPCO. Radiation levels in the sea near the plant have also increased, according to Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

"They [TEPCO] needs to stabilize the plant by establishing permanent and sustained cooling to the reactor vessels and determine the source of any radioactive leak to the ocean and environment. They need to strategize an approach to remove the fuel from the core. More importantly they must be transparent and open in informing the pubic of the their progress and competence," said Professor Mohamad Al-Sheikhly, a nuclear engineering professor at UMD.

In an attempt to block this increased radiation, Tepco has placed bags of sand and zeolite, a radiation absorbing material, in the sea, Nishiyama said in an interview. The atomic safety agency reported that one hour inside the No. 3 reactor building would expose workers to one-fifth of the radiation a human  can endure in a year.

"I have friends in Japan who have been lucky enough to not be affected by the disaster, but from what I've heard from them, their morale is really hurt. No one knows exactly how long it'll take for the environment to be restored, if ever," said Phil Tran, a 22-year-old student at Tulane University in Mississippi.

TEPCO Shareholders fear that the firm will not be able to afford to compensate the victims of the disaster and uncertainty over the Japanese governments intentions for the company, according to Reuters

TEPCO shares dropped to 362 yen, down 18.1 percent. Its previous lifetime low was 393 yen in December 1951, according to Thomson Reuters data. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch estimated that TEPCO could possibly be bearing down compensation claims of more than $130 billion.