How will a looming nuclear disaster as well as the earthquake (which pales in comparison), effect the rest of the world?

Financially only about 10 to 20% of Japan's losses are covered by insurance.

Insurance does not cover natural disasters of nuclear accidents. Even your home owners policy will say this.
The special insurance for natural and atomic accidents is sold in large part by AIG. 70% of AIG is in receivership to the taxpayers of the US. AIG would need a bail out to cover the pay outs.

Toyota and Nissan are shut down with no reopendate in mind.

Imagine buying a product from Japan you might suspect of being radiocative. Not good for nusiness.

Hyundai will take over the Toyota market share of Toyota and Nissan for a year or more.

Japan has a current debt margin of 200% compared to the United States debt margin of 25%

After WW2 the US had a margin of 100.



The US will have to provide money and rescources equivenant to what we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan every week which is about 2.5 billion.
If we are serious about saving Japan, we should consider declaring victory in Afghanistan this coming Monday and shift to help Japan. As Bush senior said "Na-gonna-doit"



Again if the N plants (one or more) melt down there will be more death than there was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but in slow motion voer decades.

There is no such thing as one possible outcome.

The outcome of a meltdown ranges from an enormous bomb event to a persistant radiation event that is difficult to ever clean up as water explodes from a deep radioactive hole in the ground. If the Zircon shield at the bottom of the ractor holds the way the 3 MIle Island Plant did, we all all be very luckey indeed. Since the N plants are next to the sea. I'm sure you can see the difficulty containing the problem if it goes catasatrophic.