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Japan urged a power company Friday to suspend all three reactors at a coastal nuclear plant while a seawall and other structures are built to ensure a major earthquake or tsunami does not cause a second radiation crisis.

The move came as the government is conducting a safety review of all Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 25,000 people dead and missing on the northeast coast.

The Hamaoka nuclear plant just 110 yards (100 meters) off the Pacific coast in central Japan is the only one so far where the government has asked that operations be halted until the utility can implement safety measures.

Chubu Electric Power Co. did not immediately say if it would halt operations there, but Kyodo News Agency cited company sources as saying it would. Government officials estimate the work could last two years.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference Friday evening he requested the shutdown for safety reasons, citing experts’ forecast of a 90 percent probability of a quake with magnitude of 8.0 or higher striking central Japan within 30 years.

“It was a decision made after thoroughly considering people’s safety,” Kan told a news conference.

The government asked Chubu Electric to suspend two running reactors and a third already shut for a regular inspection at the plant in Shizuoka, 155 miles (250 kilometers) west of Tokyo.

“If an accident occurs at Hamaoka, it could create serious consequences,” Kan said.

Since the March 11 disasters, Chubu Electric has drawn up safety measures that include building a seawall nearly a mile (1.5 kilometers) long over the next two to three years.

“The height of the seawall is at least 12 meters. We have come up with this safety measure after the March quake and tsunami,” said Takanobu Yamada, an official at Chubu Electric.

The company also plans to erect concrete walls along 18 water pumps at the plant. Yamada said the walls aim to protect the pumps from damage from an earthquake and tsunami, and it will take a year or one and a half years to complete the construction.

The plant does not have a concrete sea barrier now, but sandhills between the ocean and the plant are about 32 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) high, according to the company. The seawall of at least 40 feet (12 meters) would be built between the sandhills and nuclear plant.

Trade Minister Banri Kaieda said the utility company should halt operating its nuclear reactors while implementing such safety measures.

“Until the company completes safety steps, it is inevitable that it should stop operating nuclear reactors,” Kaieda said.

Shizuoka governor Heita Kawakatsu called the government’s move “a wise decision.”

“I pay my respect for the decision. We must do our utmost to secure alternative sources of energy,” the governor said in a statement.

The plant serves around 16 million people in central Japan. Faced with a possible power crunch due to the shutdown, the prime minister sought public understanding.

“We will experience some power crunch for sure. But we can overcome this with public support and understanding,” Kan said.

The region powered by the plant includes Aichi, where Toyota Motor Corp.’s headquarters and an auto plant are located. Automakers and other industries have had troubles with supply lines, parts shortages and damage to plants in the region since the March 11 disaster.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant lost its power and cooling systems in the earthquake and tsunami, triggering fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the world’s second-worst nuclear accident.

Radiation leaks have forced 80,000 people living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the plant to leave their homes. Many are staying in gymnasiums and community centers.

Residents in Shizuoka have long demanded suspension of the Hamaoka reactors.

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Conference call, anyone?

Several times a year, the lords of the global economy descend on the city of the moment. Their massive entourages fly business class, zoom around in motorcades and sleep at 5-star hotels. What do taxpayers funding all this summitry get in return? Ambiguous communiqués, hollow pledges and a nagging sense that world leaders should discover videoconferencing.

The latest summit of emerging-market stars is a case in point. As if the alphabet soup of G-7, G-8, G-20, APEC and OPEC weren’t enough, we now must follow BRICS events. In 2009 and 2010, they were just BRIC affairs: Brazil, Russia, India and China. This year, an “S” was awkwardly added for South Africa. Even Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who 10 years ago coined the acronym BRIC, doesn’t get why it’s there.

Far more deserving additions exist in Asia — South Korea and Indonesia. Yet the more I see what the BRICS are becoming, the more I think Seoul and Jakarta should decline any invite. BRICS confabs reinforce how artificial the whole enterprise is.

Take the bluster about a new world order. No one in their right mind would argue we don’t need one, yet the Group of 20 nations is a far more productive framework for any redesign of global markets and institutions. And each of the BRICS has a seat at the G-20 table.

Staging Sideshows

The trick is for emerging economies to demand a bigger voice there — not stage sideshows. That’s not to say economic groupings are pointless. In Asia, for example, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations is the only forum where the world can engage Myanmar’s repressive regime. Still, Asean is more about photo opportunities than substance.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group is a circus. The only real thing its 21 members have in common is beachfront property. An APEC-wide free-trade zone would be a wonderful thing. On its watch, bilateral agreements, not sweeping international ones, became the norm. APEC gatherings are now Davos-like affairs. Like the World Economic Forum, they’re an excuse for corporate bigwigs to jet in and do deals. Rather than meeting in Hawaii in November, APEC leaders should call it in and reduce their carbon footprint.

Important topics were broached at the April 14 BRICS summit at the Chinese city of Sanya, including regulating derivatives and volatility in commodity prices. What it really highlighted is what really matters: the “C” in BRICS.

The group hasn’t moved beyond being about China’s voracious appetite for the commodities of the other four members, with a bit of America-bashing tossed in.

China’s Money

Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa are key economies in their own right, yet BRICS gatherings have evolved into the geopolitical equivalent of investment roadshows. China has piles of money, and the real action is on the sidelines of formal discussions. There, officials angle for more Chinese investment and access to the nation’s 1.3 billion consumers.

This dynamic offers some useful reality checks. For India, it’s realizing a trade deficit with China exceeding $20 billion annually will grow no matter how close Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sits to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the BRICS table. For Russia, it’s a one-time superpower being part of an emerging-nation group it doesn’t even lead. For Brazil, it’s how Latin America’s biggest economy weakened its trade defenses for a Chinese government unwilling to do the same. For South Africa, it’s that more will be expected of it on the progress front.

BRICS Brotherhood

As much as these economies must harness China’s 9.7 percent growth, they also need to protect domestic economies. Their currencies are rising while China works 24/7 to maintain an undervalued yuan. The trouble is, membership in the BRICS brotherhood makes it hard politically for officials in Brasilia, Moscow, New Delhi or Pretoria to criticize Beijing.

That’s why anger is being projected elsewhere. The U.S. deserves some for its hypocritical policies since the 2008 crisis. Back in 1997, when Asia blew up, America told the region to raise interest rates to support currencies, reduce debt, avoid blaming speculators for market swings and follow free- market policies. Today, the U.S. is doing exactly the opposite.

Yet big changes like replacing the dollar are better handled by the broader G-20. With over $4 trillion of combined currency reserves, any BRICS move to dump the dollar will shake markets. If you think the real, ruble, rupee, yuan or rand will replace the dollar anytime soon you’re dreaming. Even if the yuan emerged as a viable reserve currency, it first must be fully convertible. That’s a ways off.

Eclipsing U.S.

BRICS don’t want to live in a world run by Washington –not when their combined gross domestic product could eclipse the U.S. by the end of 2014. And it’s ridiculous that the governance of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank still rotates between the U.S. and Europe to the exclusion of the rest of the world.

The future clearly belongs to emerging nations. It’s just not clear that the BRICS as a political entity is evolving into something that can play a credible role in creating it.

(William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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A pair of thin robots on treads sent to explore buildings inside Japan’s crippled nuclear reactor came back Monday with disheartening news: Radiation levels are far too high for repair crews to go inside.

Nevertheless, officials remained hopeful they can stick to their freshly minted “roadmap” for cleaning up the radiation leak and stabilizing the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant by year’s end so they can begin returning tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes.

“Even I had expected high radioactivity in those areas. I’m sure (plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.) and other experts have factored in those figures when they compiled the roadmap,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Officials said Monday that radiation had spiked in a water tank in Unit 2 and contaminated water was discovered in other areas of the plant, underscoring the growing list of challenges facing TEPCO in cleaning up and containing the radiation. They also described in more detail the damage to fuel in three troubled reactors, saying pellets had melted.

Angry at the slow response to the nuclear crisis and to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that caused it, lawmakers tore into Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

“You should be bowing your head in apology. You clearly have no leadership at all,” Masashi Waki, a lawmaker from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, shouted at Kan.

“I am sincerely apologizing for what has happened,” Kan said, stressing the government was doing all it could to handle the unprecedented disasters.

TEPCO’s president, Masataka Shimizu, appeared ill at ease as lawmakers heckled and taunted him.

Workers have not been able to enter the reactor buildings at the stricken plant since the first days after the cooling systems were wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 27,000 people dead or missing. Hydrogen explosions in both buildings in the first few days destroyed their roofs and scattered radioactive debris.

On Sunday, a plant worker opened an outer door to one of the buildings and two Packbots, which resemble drafting lamps on tank-like treads, entered. After the worker closed the door, one robot opened an inner door and both rolled inside to take readings for temperature, pressure and radioactivity. They later entered a second building.

The robots reported radioactivity readings of up to 49 millisieverts per hour inside Unit 1 and up to 57 inside Unit 3, levels too high for workers to realistically enter.

“It’s a harsh environment for humans to work inside,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Japanese authorities more than doubled the legal limit for nuclear workers since the crisis began to 250 millisieverts a year. Workers in the U.S. nuclear industry are allowed an upper limit of 50 millisieverts per year. Doctors say radiation sickness sets in at 1,000 millisieverts and includes nausea and vomiting cash till payday advance.

The robots, made by Bedford, Massachusetts, company iRobot, which also makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner, explored Unit 2 on Monday, but TEPCO officials had yet to analyze that data.

The radioactivity must be reduced, possibly with the removal of contaminated debris and stagnant water, before repair crews would be allowed inside, said NISA official Masataka Yoshizawa.

Sturdier robots can remove some of the debris, but workers are needed to test the integrity of the equipment and carry out electrical repairs needed to restore the cooling systems as called for in the road map, Yoshizawa said.

“What robots can do is limited, so eventually, people must enter the buildings,” TEPCO official Takeshi Makigami said.

The robots, along with remote-controlled miniature drones, have enabled TEPCO to photograph and take measurements of conditions in and around the plant while minimizing workers’ exposure to radiation and other hazards.

Separately, readings from a water tank attached to the spent fuel pool in Unit 2 showed a severe spike in radiation that NISA officials said might have been caused by the escape of radioactive vapor from a nearby containment vessel. They said, however, the possibility of damage to spent fuel rods could not be ruled out.

NISA also sent a report to the government watchdog Nuclear Safety Commission, saying that some fuel pellets and rods in the reactors in Units 1, 2 and 3 had become overheated and melted, the first time it had provided details of the damage to the fuel. Nishiyama, said the agency can only say “more than 3 percent” of the fuel rods have melted.

A pool of stagnant radioactive water was also discovered in the basement of Unit 4.

With evacuees’ ordeal stretching into the long-term, some began moving out of school gymnasiums into temporary housing. Hundreds who have not found apartments or relatives to take them in began filling up inns at hot springs.

“The government has asked us to be ready to take in as many as 200 evacuees for the next four months at least,” said Masaki Hata, whose family has run the Yoshikawaya Hot Springs Inn on the outskirts of Fukushima for seven generations.

Michiaki Niitsuma, a 27-year-old office worker, said he was glad to have a comfortable place to stay while he waited to go home.

“My kids got sick in the shelter. It was cold. It’s much better here. It’s a relief,” he said.

____

Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge in Fukushima and Noriko Kitano in Tokyo contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS in paragraphs 4 and 19 that officials believe rise in radiation is from release of vapor.)

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Malaysia’s biggest automaker Perodua says its production of cars is being disrupted by a shortage of parts from Japan following last month’s earthquake and tsunami.

Perodua, which is partly owned by Japan’s Daihatsu Motor Corp., says “adjustments” have been made to ensure inventories last until May. It wouldn’t elaborate.

In a statement Thursday, the compact car maker said it was in talks with Daihatsu and other vendors to resolve the problem, which it described as a “temporary setback fast payday loan no faxing.”

The disruption has already led Perodua to delay the launch of a new car to the second half of the year.

It faces pressure to introduce new models to bolster sales and maintain leadership in Southeast Asia’s largest passenger car market amid competition from domestic rival Proton.

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Bank of England policy makers voted 6-3 to keep interest rates on hold this month and saw “merit in waiting” to assess the impact of rising oil prices on inflation, which they forecast may exceed 5 percent.

Andrew Sentance maintained his call for an increase in the benchmark interest rate to 1 percent from a record low of 0.5 percent, while Martin Weale and Spencer Dale wanted a move to 0.75 percent. The remaining six members, including Governor Mervyn King, voted to maintain the current level. Adam Posen kept up his push to expand stimulus with further bond purchases.

“It was not yet clear that the weakness in output growth seen in the latter part of 2010 would prove temporary,” according to the minutes of the March 10 decision published today in London. “The uncertainty created by both developments in the oil market and the recent indicators of household spending and confidence meant there remained merit in waiting to see how those factors evolved before altering the stance of monetary policy.”

Among the majority of members who voted to hold the rate, there were “differences of view” on the “risks associated with an increase in inflation expectations materializing.”

“Some thought that this risk remained limited given that the near term outlook for inflation could be explained by reference to changes in energy and other commodity prices, VAT and the sterling exchange rate,” the minutes said. “Others thought that this risk had risen, given further upward revisions to the near term outlook for inflation, and that the case for an increase in bank rate had strengthened in recent months.”

Significant Risk

The pound fell almost 0.4 percent today, and traded at $1.6302 as of 9.54 a.m. in London. Bonds rose, with the yield on the 10-year gilt slipping 3 basis points to 3.57 percent.

“If they really want to look through all the volatility they may decide to wait for more activity in the second quarter before moving, and that makes August more likely,” said David Tinsley, an economist at National Australia Bank in London and a former central bank official. “We do rule out, more or less, an April move but a May movement is still on the cards.”

Britain’s inflation rate rose to 4.4 percent in February, more than twice the central bank’s target, and the Monetary Policy Committee sees a “significant risk” it may increase to above 5 percent in the near term. As policy makers try to balance price risks against the threat to the recovery from the government’s budget squeeze, they also have to weigh the potential impact of the March 11 earthquake in Japan and the Middle East turmoil on the global economy and commodity prices.

Oil Prices

Crude oil prices have risen almost 40 percent in the last six months on concern that turmoil in Libya and other nations may curtail shipments from the Middle East. Corn has gained 30 percent in that period.

For the three members voting for an interest-rate increase, the “near term outlook for inflation had deteriorated further,” adding to “the risk of the perception arising that the committee was more prepared to tolerate persistent deviations of inflation from the target than in the past.”

On the bond plan, the MPC voted 8-1 to keep it at 200 billion pounds ($326 billion). Adam Posen kept up his vote to expand it to 250 billion pounds. Still, he noted risks to inflation, according to the minutes.

He “recognized the risk that a sustained upward trend in medium term inflation expectations or global price pressures could outweigh the forces pushing down on inflation, but did not see this risk as material,” the minutes said.

BOE Debate

Sentance said in a speech yesterday that U.K. policy makers are facing decisions that are “much less straightforward than they appeared to be before the financial crisis.”

King said on March 1 that increasing the key rate to make a gesture in the fight against inflation would be “self- defeating.”

“I don’t believe we’ve yet seen significant evidence of a pickup in medium-term inflation expectations,” he said. Still, it’s “reasonable to believe that if we continue to experience above-target inflation for long enough there could be an upside risk to inflation expectations.”

The economy shrank 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter and the recovery is at risk as Chancellor of the Exchequer implements a spending squeeze to reduce the record budget deficit. Osborne will announce his budget for the fiscal year through March 2012 at 12:30 p.m. today.

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Kingdom Holding Co., the investment company headed by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and Bahrain’s Batelco Group launched a joint bid Sunday for telecom Zain’s Saudi operations.

The two suitors didn’t say how much they were offering for the 25 percent stake, which they previously had pursued separately. Those earlier offers were unsuccessful.

Kuwait-based Zain has been seeking a buyer for its Saudi division as part of a $12 billion deal for the parent company from Etisalat, a state-run telecom headquartered in Abu Dhabi that has expanded rapidly beyond its home market in the United Arab Emirates.

Zain owns a quarter of the Saudi division that bears its name. Another 45 percent is publicly traded, with the rest held by private shareholders.

Batelco CEO Peter Kaliaropoulos said he is confident a successful joint KHC-Batelco bid will create additional value for his company’s shareholders. He described Batelco’s role as a “technical partner” to KHC in pursuing the deal.

“We value (KHC’s) leadership and we look forward to supporting them through an effective technical and business partnership,” he said no fax payday loan.

Bahrain’s government, which is facing stiff and prolonged opposition from anti-goverenment protesters, owns more than half of Batelco. The company provides telecom services under its name in the island kingdom and Egypt, and owns stakes in five other telecom firms in the Mideast and India.

KHC’s investments include stakes in a number of blue-chip Western companies, including Citigroup Inc. and News Corp.

A Zain spokesman said the company would comment only after its board had met and made a decision on the offer. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with company policy.

The offer is good until Monday morning.

Etisalat launched its bid for Zain in September, but the takeover effort has dragged on longer than it expected.

Zain must dispose of its Saudi stake to satisfy regulators because Etisalat already has a stake in mobile operations in the kingdom.

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DETROIT — A federal judge said Thursday he will approve a plan to liquidate old General Motors Co. assets that the company shed in bankruptcy.

GM was split into two companies - General Motors Co. and Motors Liquidation Co. - when it emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2009. The new plan sells off and cleans up old assets, including 89 industrial sites in 14 states.

Judge Robert Gerber verbally approved the plan Thursday and said he will issue a written decision soon, according to Motors Liquidation. The hearing took place at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

The plan creates four trusts to handle the work. An environmental trust will provide $536 million to clean up old sites. The money will come from the sale of property and equipment at those sites. In some cases, environmental remediation will continue for as long as 100 years, the company said.

A separate trust will distribute GM stock to some creditors. More than $275 billion in claims have been filed against GM since its bankruptcy, but the majority have been resolved. Motors Liquidation owns 10 percent of GM’s common stock, or 150 million shares, plus warrants that can be exercised for 15 percent more. GM shares rose 15 cents to close at $33.03 Thursday.

Other trusts will handle asbestos claims and litigation-related claims.

Motors Liquidation said it has sold or secured sale agreements for 14 properties, including a Wilmington, Del., assembly plant that was sold to Fisker Automotive Inc. to produce hybrid vehicles, a Pontiac, Mich., plant that will become a movie studio, and a Strasbourg, France, plant that was sold back to GM.

GM spent six weeks in bankruptcy protection in the summer of 2009. When it emerged, it was 61-percent-owned by the government in exchange for $50 billion in government aid. The government’s share was reduced to 33 percent after an initial public offering in November.

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Free checking is alive and well

Borders is planning liquidation sales in the 200 stores it is shutting down as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

"There will be opportunities for liquidation-type sales," said Borders spokesman Donald Cutler on Thursday. "Specifications about them will be revealed in the coming days and weeks."

Borders, the second-largest book retailer behind Barnes & Noble (BKS, Fortune 500), announced on Wednesday that it had filed for bankruptcy and was closing down nearly one-third of its 659 stores. The closures are expected to be completed in April.

"It’s quite possible that some, if not all of the stores on the list of 200, might have a sale this weekend," said Michael Norris, senior analyst with Simba Information, a provider of research and advice to publishers.

Norris has seen this type of thing before. In Stanford, Conn., a Borders-owned Waldenbooks held a fire sale before closing its doors. So he plans to visit his local Borders in Milford, Conn., this weekend and see if there are sales.

Borders does have other options for dealing with its inventory, including returning books to their publishers. "Depending on the arrangements with the publisher, they might be able to put the books back to the publishers, said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners. "Or the publishers might say they don’t want these books."

Johnson said this is the type of arrangement that gets hashed out in bankruptcy court.

The Chapter 11 filing lists 30 publishers as creditors to Borders. Penguin Putnam holds the largest claim, at $41 million, followed by Hachette Book Group, at $37 million, and Simon & Schuster, with $34 million.

"Penguin hopes that Borders will emerge from this process as a smaller but strong book retailer, and will work closely with Borders management to support this transition," said Penguin spokesman David Zimmer.

But the publishers and Borders would not discuss their business relationship with CNNMoney.

Bestsellers and other books that are too valuable to be discounted might be moved to other stores.

"They could go on fire sale, but more realistically they will go to the other 400 stores that will still be running," said Johnson.

Borders might even choose to unload heavily discounted books by moving them from successful stores and dumping them in stores that are going to be shuttered.

"One of the great ways to get rid of obsolete inventory is to move it into one of the stores that’s slated for closure," said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with NPD Group. "The book business is very good at moving inventory."

Book retailers have tried to evolve by incorporating e-books, with mixed success.

But Greg Segall, managing partner with Versa Capital Management, which invests in bankruptcies including retailers, said that the real threat to brick-and-mortar book retailers is the rising prevalence of online retailers such as Amazon.

"I suspect there are people who have preference for and enjoy shopping in the stores, but obviously there are more people who do not, or Borders wouldn’t be going out of business," he said.

Borders said that its gift cards will be unaffected by the bankruptcy process, as they will still be usable in the remaining stores and at Borders.com. 

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The Obama administration’s rulings on executive pay at companies that received taxpayer-funded bailouts lacked transparency and may have been too similar across different firms, a congressional watchdog said.

Pay packages approved by the Treasury Department “have generally been quite uniform despite wide variations” in the companies reviewed, the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said in a report today. “It is unclear whether one size truly fits all.”

The report focuses on the administration’s efforts to rein in executive pay amid a public outcry in 2009 over compensation at Wall Street banks and American International Group Inc.

Feinberg reduced pay at companies including AIG, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. He left in September to become administrator of BP Plc’s fund to pay claims stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Patricia Geoghegan, a Treasury Department lawyer, was named acting special master.

In July, Feinberg said about $1.6 billion that 17 bailed- out companies including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. paid executives during the financial crisis was “ill-advised” and showed “bad judgment.” He stopped short of asking the firms to return money and declined to say the payments were “contrary to the public interest.”

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