Japan Press Weekly

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2013 October 2 - 8 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Ex-Fukushima plant worker talks about TEPCO’s sloppy management of radioactive water

A former subcontract worker at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in an Akahata interview on October 1 testified about Tokyo Electric Power Company’s sloppy management of radioactive water at the plant.

A man in his 40s living in Okinawa Prefecture was engaged in assembling and maintaining radioactive water storage tanks in an area near the four crippled reactors of the Fukushima plant between July 2012 and December the same year. He obtained this job through a construction company in Okinawa which is a TEPCO sub-sub-subcontractor.

One day, the man was instructed by a leader of his group to close a lid of a tank. When he went to the tank according to his leader’s instructions, he found that the tank’s opening, which is some 30 centimeters in diameter, was sealed with gummed tape.

He peeled off the tape with a knife and saw tainted water just 50 centimeters below the opening. “This happened as the plant operator put importance on only building tanks in a makeshift manner. TEPCO put contaminated water in tanks even though the company could not procure iron caps, which were supposed to be put on them, due to shortage of row materials,” the man said.

The former plant worker also reported that he often witnessed sloppiness in assembly work: workers constructed tanks without being informed of technical details; in a job of caulking a tank, fluid and oil were insufficiently removed from connection parts.

He referred to his experience with a caulk job last December. As it started to snow, caulking compound was nearly useless to fill gaps in the bottom plate of a tank. The man, who has a certification in automobile mechanics and skill of caulking, pointed out that this was probably a cause of water leakage.

The man came to the Fukushima plant with other 18 Okinawans. His coworkers left the plant one after another due to fear of exposure to radiation, harsh working conditions, and the reduction in daily pay and hazardous duty allowance. The man was suddenly dismissed in December.

Recalling posters put up by a Japanese Communist Party organization in Iwaki City on the route to his job, he said, “I was encouraged” by the JCP poster stating, “Do you receive hazardous duty allowance?” and “We oppose cost-first policy for handling the nuclear accident.”