In an effort to avoid meltdown, they are now flooding the reactor at Fukushima with sea water. Although officials are downplaying the seriousness of the recent events at Fukushima, they have ordered an evacuation of all people within a 12 mile radius.

In addition to sea water, the people at Tokyo Electron are adding boric acid to the concoction, in order to disrupt the nuclear chain reaction.

NOTE: Over 200,000 people have been ordered to evacuate. Despite the plethora of reports that predict some sort of an apocalypse, Japanese officials insist they have things under control.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said they were venting out air, which contained radiation, but very low levels.
UPDATE: Japanese officials are streaming a conference right now.

Via the IAEI, the cooling systems at a second nuke plant, Fukushima unit #3, are not working. Thus far, over 140,000 people have been or ordered to have been evacuated.

It’s also being reported that at least 9 people at Fukushima have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

Residents near plant advised to avoid tap water and to cover faces with wet towels. Evacuations are underway for a 20 kilometer radius near Fukushima.

Related: death toll in quake/tsunami aftermath reportedly at 1,600.

This is getting real grim too fast.

The Kyodo newswire is very slow to respond, due to the overwhelming amount of traffic they are receiving. However, from what I can gather, it looks like the situation at Fukushima Daiichi power plant’s Unit 1 is deteriorating. It’s being reported that part of the core may be “melting down.” I loathe people who ring alarms for the sake of garnering attention. However, logic dictates the Japanese officials would not be making statements like this, unless they felt a melt-down was a real possibility.

In the event of a meltdown, the affected area would be at least 5 kilometers.

Here is a helpful twitter feed to keep up to date with developments as they progress.

Due to the quake, the power outage caused a domino effect that disabled the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. As a result, it’s being reported that radiation levels around the plant are 8x normal, suggesting some sort of dangerous leak has occurred. Evacuations are underway.

Update: Front page of Drudge reporting radiation levels at 1000x now.

Tokyo Electric Power Co operates said plant.

Six of Japan’s refineries, representing 31% of output, have ceased operations, due to the quake. Fires have been raging in the Cosmo Oil and JX Nippon Oil & Energy refineries. Japan has a total of 28 refineries and is the third largest consumer of crude in the world.

As of now, the following refineries have been shut down:

JX Nippon Oil & Energy
Sendai
Negishi
Kashima Oil
Kawasaki
Chiba

As a result, refinery stocks in the U.S. surged ahead today, led by gains in CVI, ALJ, TSO, WNR and FTO

Data provided by The PPT

(stock, percentage of float sold short, daily % gain)

1 SHZ 54 18.98
2 ANN 23.8 11.54
3 JAZZ 21 5.61
4 AUXL 30.9 4.23
5 OREX 47.9 4.04
6 MMYT39.7 4.03
7 OSG 20.1 3.72
8 CIEN 32.8 3.68
9 BPI 49 3.6
10 TZOO 31.1 3.57

Hurry up, run out and get one. If you do not have money to buy one, no problemo: just put that fucker on your credit card. It’s worth noting, “The Fly” will be buying another one today, as Mrs. Fly thinks the white version looks “awesome and amazing.”

Apple is up less than 1% aka a non-event.

On the news that Japan was forced to shut down oil refineries, due to the earthquake/tsunami disaster, shares of U.S. based refiners are surging, led by gains in ALJ (9%), WNR (5.5), VLO (5%) and TSO (5%). Speculation suggests that Japan will need to fulfill demand somehow and may need to import vast amounts of refined crude, until their refiners are back online.

Partly attributed to the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, European market gains for the year have been eliminated, led by losses in insurers. Swiss Re, Munich Re are down 5% intra-day, due to exposure to Japan. However, it’s worth noting, more often than not natural disasters have a way of benefiting insurers in the long term, due to increased premiums.

As of this morning, the recent correction in Europe is about 5% deep.

UPDATE: Jefferies is out with a note suggesting a $10 billion hit to insurers.