Hitachi Suspends Operations at 12 Sites Near Radiation Leak; Shares Drop
By Peter Poole-Wilson and Yoshifumi Takemoto with reporting from Satoko Adachi
Tokyo, Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Hitachi Ltd., Japan's largest
electronics maker, said it suspended operations at 12 of its
factories and premises near the site of a leak of radiation at a
uranium-processing plant northeast of Tokyo.
Hitachi suspended indefinitely operations at 12 sites about
70 miles from Tokyo, including a thermoelectric power generation
plant, a microchip factory, an auto parts factory, a consumer
electronics plant and two research laboratories, said company
spokesman Keisaku Shibatani.
About 13,500 Hitachi workers at the sites concerned, in
Ibaraki prefecture, are advised to stay indoors in the interim,
the company said in a statement. Two Hitachi factories in the
vicinity, employing about 5,000 workers, have been operating as
normal since 11 a.m. local time. Workers there who would have to
travel within a 6 mile radius of the accident site are also under
instructions not to do so.
Analysts said it's too early to gauge the size of any impact
on Hitachi's business.
''We can't estimate at this stage the effects on Hitachi's
business,'' said Takatoshi Yamamoto, an analyst at Morgan Stanley
Japan Ltd. That view was reiterated by Mami Indo, an analyst at
the Daiwa Institute of Research.
The leak, Japan's worst nuclear accident, has been brought
under control, the government said.
The president of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., at whose
facilities the accident occurred, apologized for the leak and
suggested human error might have been the cause.
'' We are terribly sorry for the radiation accident at our
wholly owned subsidiary,'' said Sumitomo Metal President Moriki
Aoyagi at a Tokyo press conference. ''I suspect human error may
have been the cause, but we have to wait until the investigation
is completed.''
Shares in Tokyo-based Hitachi, whose sales amount to almost
2 percent of Japan's gross domestic product, slipped as much as
60 yen, or 5.1 percent to 1,120. |
