Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Keeping the meltdown-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in a stable condition requires a cast of thousands. Increasingly, Tokyo Electric Power Co. is struggling to find enough workers, a trend that many expect to worsen and hamper progress in the decades-long effort to safely decommission the facility.
Tepco is finding that it can barely meet the head count of workers required to keep the facility’s three wrecked reactors cool while fighting power outages and leaks of tons of radioactive water, according to current and former nuclear plant workers and others familiar with the situation at Fukushima.
Construction jobs are already plentiful in the area due to rebuilding from the March 2011 quake and tsunami that ravaged towns and cities, and sparked the nuclear crisis.
Other public works spending planned by the government under the “Abenomics” stimulus programs of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to make well-paying construction jobs more abundant. And less risky, better-paying radiation decontamination projects in the region are another draw.
Some Fukushima veterans are quitting as their cumulative radiation exposure approaches levels risky to health, said two long-time Fukushima nuclear workers who spoke to AP. They requested anonymity because speaking to the media is a breach of their employers’ policy and they say being publicly identified will get them fired.
Tepco spokesman Ryo Shimizu denied any shortage of workers, and said the decommissioning is progressing fine.
“We have been able to acquire workers, and there is no shortage. We plan to add workers as needed,” he said.
The discrepancy may stem from the system of contracting prevalent in the nuclear industry.
Plant operators farm out the running of their facilities to contractors, which in turn find the workers, and also rely on lower-level contractors to do some of their work, resulting in as many as five layers of contractors. Utilities such as Tepco know the final head count – which currently stands at around 3,000 workers at the No. 1 plant – but not the difficulties in meeting it.
Tepco does not release a pay scale at Fukushima No. 1 or give numbers of workers forced to leave because of radiation exposure. It does not keep close tabs on contracting arrangements for its workers.
A survey last December of workers that the utility released found 48 percent were from companies not signed as contractors with Tepco and the workers were falsely registered under companies that weren’t employing them. It is not clear if any laws were broken, but the government and Tepco issued warnings to contractors to correct the situation.
Hiroyuki Watanabe, a municipal assemblyman for the city of Iwaki in Fukushima who talks often to workers at the No. 1 complex, believes the labor shortage is only likely to worsen.
“They are scrounging around, barely able to clear the numbers,” he said. “Why would anyone want to work at a nuclear plant, of all places, when other work is available?”
According to Watanabe, a nuclear worker generally earns about \10,000 a day. In contrast, decontamination work outside the plant, generally involving less exposure to radiation, is paid for by the Environment Ministry, and with bonuses for working a job officially categorized as dangerous, totals about \16,000 a day, he said.
Experts, including even the most optimistic government officials, say decommissioning the Fukushima No. 1 plant will take nearly a half-century. Tepco acknowledges the exact path to decommissioning remains unclear because an assessment of the state of the melted reactor cores has not yet been carried out.
Since being brought under control following the triple meltdowns, the plant has suffered one setback after another. A dead rat caused a power blackout, including temporarily shutting down reactor cooling systems, and leaks required tons of water to be piped into hundreds of tanks and leaky storage reservoirs.
The process of permanently shutting down the plant hasn’t gotten started yet and the work up to now has been one makeshift measure after another to keep the reactors from deteriorating.
Thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods that are outside the reactors also have to be removed and safely stored. Taking them out is complex because the hydrogen explosions at the plant in 2011 destroyed parts of the structures used to move the rods under normal conditions. The process of taking out the rods, one by one, hasn’t even begun yet. The spent rods have been used as fuel for the reactors but remain highly radioactive.
One Fukushima No. 1 worker, who has gained a big following on Twitter because of his updates about the state of the plant since the meltdowns, said veteran workers are quitting or forced to cut back on working in highly radioactive areas as their cumulative exposure rises.
“I feel a sense of responsibility to stick with this job,” he said in an interview. “But so many people have quit. Their families wanted them to quit. Or they were worried about their children. Or their parents told him to go find another job.”
Known as “Happy-san” to his 71,500 Twitter followers, he has worked in the nuclear industry for 20 years, about half of that at Fukushima. He has worked at bigger contractors before, but is now at a midlevel contractor with about 20 employees, and has an executive-level position.
“If things continue the way they are going, I fear decommissioning in 40 years is impossible. If nuclear plants are built abroad, then Japanese engineers and workers will go abroad. If plants in Japan are restarted, engineers and workers will go to those plants,” he tweeted.
Most of Japan’s reactors were idled for inspections and safety upgrades in view of the Fukushima disaster.
The tweeting worker’s cumulative radiation exposure is more than 300 millisieverts.
Medical experts say a rise in cancer and other illnesses is statistically detected at exposure of more than 100 millisieverts, but health damage varies by individuals. He was exposed to 60 millisieverts of radiation the first year after the disaster and gets a health checkup every six months.
Nuclear workers generally are limited to 100 millisieverts over five years, and 50 millisieverts per year, except for the first year after the disaster, when the threshold was raised to an emergency 100 millisieverts.
The workers handle the day-to-day work of lugging around hoses, checking valves and temperatures, fixing leaks, moving away debris and working on the construction for the equipment to remove the spent-fuel rods.
Other jobs are already so plentiful that securing enough workers for even the more lucrative work decontaminating the towns around the plant is impossible, according to Fukushima Labor Bureau data.
During the first quarter of this year, only 321 jobs got filled from 2,124 openings in decontamination, which involves scraping soil, gathering foliage and scrubbing walls to bring down radiation levels.
“There are lots of jobs because of the reconstruction here,” said bureau official Kosei Kanno.
A former Fukushima No. 1 worker, who switched to a decontamination job in December, said he became fed up with the pay, treatment and radiation risks at the plant. He has 10 years of experience as a nuclear worker, and grew up in the prefecture.
He warned it would be harder to find experienced people like him, raising the risk of accidents caused by human error.
He accused Tepco of being more preoccupied with cost cuts than with worker safety or fair treatment.
The utility went bankrupt after the disaster and was nationalized by a government bailout. Even if Tepco somehow obtains workers in quantity in the coming months, their quality would be lacking, he said.
“We’re headed toward a real crisis,” said Ryuichi Kino, a free-lance writer and photographer who has authored books about the nuclear disaster and has reported on Tepco intensively since March 2011.
Under the worst scenario, experienced workers capable of supervising the work will be gone as they reach their radiation exposure limits, said Kino.
He believes an independent company separate from Tepco needs to be set up to deal with the decommissioning, to make sure safety is not being compromised and taxpayer money is spent wisely.
Watanabe, the assemblyman, said the bigger nuclear contractors may go out of business because they are being underbid by lower-tier companies with less experienced, cheaper workers. That is likely to worsen the worker shortages at the skilled level, he said.
Happy-san has the same fear. Some of the recent workers, rounded up by the lesser contractors, appear uneducated and can’t read well, he said.
Although life at the plant has calmed compared with right after the disaster started, he still remembers the huge blast that went off when one of the reactors exploded, and rubble was showering from the sky for what felt like an eternity.
“We had opened the Pandora’s box. After all the evil comes out, then hope might be sitting there, at the bottom of the box, and someday we can be happy, even though that may not come during my lifetime,” he said.
Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press, June 14, 2013
Nagasaki firms warned for sending workers to stricken nuke plant
NAGASAKI — The Nagasaki Labor Bureau has recently warned three local staff agencies for illegally dispatching more than 500 plumbing workers to the crisis-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant last year, it was learned Saturday.
Labor laws ban Ågmultiple dispatches,Åh in which hired people end up working at places never mentioned in their initial contracts.
The three firms, Daiwa Engineering Service, Sowa Kogyo and Aguresu, all based in Nagasaki Prefecture, were involved in the illegal practice from July to August, the labor office said, adding that some workers also were paid less than they were promised.
The labor office has ordered the three firms to improve their business practices.
The case surfaced after a whistle-blower tipped off the labor office to the illegal dispatches.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken plant, is struggling to secure the number of recruits needed to contain the crisis. The cumulative amount of radiation per employee is regulated by the government, and Tepco has been running out of workers.
Kyodo News, May 12, 2013
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/12/national/nagasaki-firms-warned-for-sending-workers-to-stricken-nuke-plant/#.UZH51EpOj1U
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