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Nuclear woes hurts shares
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September 30, 1999: 10:39 p.m. ET
Sumitomo Metal and Hitachi damaged in wake of disaster
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Shares in several stocks were suffering in the wake of a nuclear accident in Japan.
Sumitomo Metal Mining was ask-only at 482, against its Thursday close of 527, as hectic sales emerged after Thursday's nuclear accident at a uranium processing plant owned by a subsidiary in Ibaraki prefecture.
Shares in Hitachi Ltd. were down 48 yen or 4.07 percent at 1,132, after it closed down one of its facilities located near the site of the Tokaimura nuclear accident.
An Hitachi spokesman declined to comment on production volumes at the Hitachi-Naka plant, its major semiconductor plant in Japan, located within a radius of 10 km (6 miles) from the uranium processing plant where Thursday's accident took place.
"We don't know at this stage how long the operations should be suspended, and thus it's hard to comment on the impact of the accident on our business," the spokesman said.
Hitachi has told its employees in the area not to come to work.
It had shifted most of its dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) production to its Singapore plant, with the aim of making the Hitachi-Naka plant its major system LSI production site.
Radiation levels had dropped back to normal by mid-morning in Japan as engineers stopped a chain reaction inside a uranium processing plant on Friday, raising hope that Japan's worst-ever nuclear disaster could be on the verge of ending.
Before dawn, workers drained coolant water from a highly-radioactive tank at the JCO Co. plant in Tokaimura, about 120 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Tokyo. They hoped that by removing the water -- which magnifies a nuclear reaction when it comes in contact with uranium -- they could hamper or even stop the reaction..
-- from staff and wires
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