Is any job worth this risk? I speak to Fukushima clear-up workers
Why on earth would anyone choose to work at what’s left of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station? The job description probably goes something like this:
- must spend day in full body suit, gloves, thick rubber boots and full-facial mask
- must endure extremely high temperatures in aforementioned suits
- must work on badly damaged site containing the remains of 4 crippled nuclear reactors
- must brave dangerously high levels of radiation (you may feel like you a suffocating in full-facial mask but no, you cannot take it off).
This blindingly obvious question was firmly in my mind when we travelled to Iwaki City – a mid-sized, non-descript sort of place that now finds itself uncomfortably close to the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Many of its residents have now evacuated, fearing the radioactive leaks that continue to spew from the plant. Many of the 3,000 workers now employed in clean-up operations at the plant have taken their place, cramming the local hotels and renting otherwise deserted family homes.
These employment “opportunities” are an unfortunate by-product of Japan’s great earthquake and tsunami. The folks at the “Tokyo Electric Power Company” (TEPCO), built a 5.7m seawall to protect the complex from natural disasters – but the tsunami wave was 13.1 m high. It knocked out the normal and emergency power systems, leaving the nuclear reactors to overheat. Three of Fukushima’s six reactors went into “full melt-down”. Four suffered hydrogen explosions which blew apart their “containment vessels”. TEPCO and 600-odd sub-contracted companies are now busy trying to stabilize the radioactive, rubble-filled remains.
Employees are under strict instructions not to speak to journalists – and supervisors from their various employers keep an active eye on them when they return to Iwaki in the evening. We were thrown out of one hotel when we had the audacity to approach a group of men employed to clear rubble from the site. Yet there were others who wanted to talk – albeit anonymously. Their working conditions I asked? Terrible, they said: “a burning-hell”, “terrifying” and “very troubling” – phrases I recorded in my notebook. But I wasn’t getting any closer to answering my question – why work there?
Money is certainly the big motivator. Japan has been mired in recession for decades and the country’s 54 nuclear power plants have long provided work to low or non-skilled, itinerant workers. Fukushima is no different – although it is much more dangerous.
A Channel 4 News researcher rang a number on a “jobs-available” poster that we found plastered on a wall in Iwaki. “What sort of experience do you have,” said the man on the phone to our researcher. “Well I’ve done some car maintenance,” said our researcher. “Good enough,” said the man, presumably one of the 600 “subcontractors” engaged by TEPCO. Our researcher asked about the daily rate. “Six-thousand yen (£50),” he said. That quickly went up to 8,500 yen (£67) as our researcher hummed and hawed a bit. But there was something special on offer said the subcontractor. “You can earn 40,000 yen (£315) an hour if you want, but what you have to do is dangerous.” We didn’t find out what that job entailed but it probably involved some sort of increased risk of radiation exposure.
One man told us he had come out of “a sense of duty” and there were others who were simply told by their employers that they had to work at Fukushima. “Could you refuse?” I asked one technician. “Well, that would put you in a very uncomfortable position,” he said before adding, “Japanese workers are very obedient.”
If they don’t challenge their superiors in the workplace, what do these men (and we didn’t meet any women working at the plant) tell their loved ones at home? Well, it turns out some of them don’t actually tell their wives and children what they’re up to. “Wives just get panicked,” said one. “It is better just to say that I’m working on the clean-up (of the coast) in Myagi,” he added. Another employee described how his mother took the news. “She was totally shocked – but she didn’t stop me. (My family) are very worried about me – about the heat and my health and radiation exposure.”
TEPCO says it hopes to have the facility stabilized – with the reactors put into “cold shutdown” – by January. Yet the scale and complexity of the challenge is unprecedented because of the number of reactors involved – nobody we spoke to in Iwaki seemed to think TEPCO would stick to its schedule. If it all goes to plan however, they’ll begin the task of “entombing” the complex next year – a sort of “deep storage” that will provide plenty more “employment opportunities” for years to come.
It’s a long-term form of job security I suppose – the containment and maintenance of highly toxic materials that will take thousands of years to decompose. But is any job worth these sorts of risks? Workers told us they couldn’t afford to be choosey about where they take jobs – but I got the distinct impression the majority wished it was somewhere else.
There are 12 comments on this post
I was just wondering, any idea on the safety procedures for the workers?
Only I wonder that if there is a lack of work, if people really can’t be choosy or at least not choose this, then as long as there are good safety procedures for the workers then beyond it being a terrible and dangerous job, as are some other jobs, then the pay can make it worth while.
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly would not volunteer, but equally I don’t really understand the culture in Japan beyond a Eurocentric perspective.
If part of the motivation is to do it out of duty then I wonder, duty to whom?
The mess has to be dealt with quickly and carefully.
If its duty to the country, or the area and the people located near it, that is a little easier to understand.
But if it is duty to the employer, well I don’t know how much that means in Japan. Certainly in the UK questioning the issue would be the least that would happen.
Though frankly if one is desperate enough, one would do a lot of things dangerous or not to try and get by, especially if others are depending on them.
Can anyone shed any light on what I have said?
fantastic article.. everybody thinks this all has just disapeared! there is very little news since aprill 11th..well done channel 4!
the situation with the children there! 320000 in fukushima alone! nearly half of which may have been contaminated with iodine 131 according to the japanese governments own statistics and tests! and they are only testing for it now! disgraceful…iodine 131 disintegrates after 90 days! but they have still found it!
keep up the good work channel 4!!
I wonder when the media worldwide is going to stop reffering this crisis as the worst since Chernoble it is the worst crisis that ever happend it is many times worst than chernoble this is another case of who controls the media
The future people of Japan and North America are going to die from birth defects and cancers … it is just a question of when – not it.
It seems confusion still reigns over what the various part of the reactor buildings are called (it doesn’t help that the Japanese use slightly different terminology than in the West). It’s important to get this right because confusion has frequently spawned considerable alarm and misunderstandings among lay readers. What blew up wasn’t the containment vessel, but the upper shell of the reactor building. If the containment vessel had blown up then the **** would have really hit the fan.
The reactor core is housed inside a steel pressure vessel, which in turn is housed inside the steel-lined concrete containment vessel. The containment vessel and some features outside it, such as the spent fuel pool, are referred to as the containment building. All of this is housed inside the outer shell of the reactor building. What blew up was the upper part of this shell.
P. B. if there was a catastrophic explosion at a chemical plant in Britain, would you not find it natural for firemen and company employees to brave all the carcinogens to put out the fire? And employees to clean up afterwards? No need to view the bravery at Fukushima as specific to a Japanese cultural mindset.
Firemen and trained company employees I wouldn’t find odd or anything.
What I found different was the duty to the company (if thats what was meant) to do that job, more so if some of those workers were not from the area. Additionally it seems like there is a lot of fear about working there on behalf of the worker/families, but also seemingly by the company due to the large ‘danger money’ willing to be spent.
The other thing I found different was the comment about disagreeing/questioning your superior seemed to be something that was not done, to the point that one would go and work in a potentially very dangerous job. That was the impression that I got and that was mainly the point that seemed like it could be to do somewhat with Japanese culture, which like I said, I don’t really know anything about.
MIKO 47
“I wonder when the media worldwide is going to stop referring this crisis as the worst since Chernobyl it is the worst crisis that ever happened it is many times worst than Chernobyl this is another case of who controls the media.”
I totally agree. It is very sleazy of them to use that phrase. It is an underhanded attempt to cast Chernobyl as the benchmark nuclear disaster by which all others are measured and is a disingenuous try to minimize Fukushima.
IMHO Japan and much of the northern hemisphere are toast. This lady tells the unvarnished truth about this ongoing catastrophe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itr6GDuOOBY
also in relation to Chernobyl, but exposing the truth about the much more serious and dangerous nature of the Japanese nuclear holocaust.
Imagine you have a car and the insides of the engine melt -you got careless no service in months- so now its totally fubar. It’s steaming hot and messy so now you pretend to turn the switch off and expect whatever is left of your engine to stop burning -when in fact its wrecked, all gone, finito-, same idiocy to say “cold shutdown” in Fukushima. Keeping in mind that plutonium burns for thousands of years, these articles are misleading to say the least to the ones that think that the Fukushima affair is a no issue.
Im a Brit living in Eastern Japan about 200 km from Fukushima and dealing with the day to day reality of this mess howcome whenever I see reports from Fukushima the size of the Tsunami gets bigger and bigger the Tsunami that hit the plant on March 11th was actually 3.8 metres high at its highest point the problem was caused by bad management the sea walls at the plant were only 1 meatre high in a major Tsunami zone with the only insufficent back up generators placed strategicaly next to the beach the plant was at sea leval near a major earthquake fault and a lot of management at the plant were not specialists but had strong connnections to major Japanese banks who were the leading shareholders of TEPCO goverment ministries who were responsible for regulating Japanese nuclear industry dont worry about this happening in the UK, UK management is far supperior to Japnese management and would never make basic mistakes like this or even allow a radioactive leak at Windscale go undetected for 8 months sorry forgot new name they gave that plant after the accident there 50 years ago and as nuclear experts say the UK hasnt earthqukes or Tsunamis unlike Japan chernobylorthree mile island
what I dont understand is, with loss of power, reactors scram or automatically reinsert rods that control fission as the CRDMs are spring loaded to close, stopping fission process.So this should not have occured???
Can still be hard. Signs of PTSD begin to discuss it all at
any one time.