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AP, file
In this photo released by Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a Tokyo Electric Power Co. worker looks at gauges in the control room for Unit 1 and Unit 2 at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on March 23, 2011.
IWAKI, Japan - The operator of a Japanese nuclear plant that went into a tsunami-triggered meltdown knew the risks from highly radioactive water at the site but sent in crews without adequate protection or warnings, a worker alleges in a legal complaint.
The actions by Tokyo Electric Power Co. led to radiation injuries, said the contract worker, who was with a six-member team working at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant's Unit 3 reactor in the early days of last year's crisis.
The worker gave a rare public account of what happened at the plant during the accident. He spoke to The Associated Press on the condition that he was identified only as Shinichi, his given name.
Shinichi, 46, described a harrowing scene of darkness and fear, wading with headlamps into a flooded basement through steaming radioactive water that felt warm even through workers' boots. "It was outrageous. We shouldn't even have been there," he said.
He said his six-member team was sent to lay electric cables in the basement of the Unit 3 turbine on March 24, 10 days after its reactor building exploded, spewing massive amounts of radiation into the environment. Their mission was to restore power to pumps to inject cooling water into its overheating spent fuel pool.
Shinichi said TEPCO and its primary subcontractor never warned them even though water leaks had been found elsewhere at the plant.
AP
A 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggers a tsunami, causing enormous damage and killing thousands.
Asked about Shinichi's allegations, TEPCO spokesman Yoshimi Hitosugi said the plant was aware of water leaks elsewhere but couldn't anticipate the water problem in Unit 3's basement.
Shinichi's radiation exposure that day alone exceeded half the government's annual exposure limit, and he had to stop working on plant jobs soon afterward.
Out of fear of harassment of his family due to the tendency of some Japanese to stigmatize those perceived as different or as troublemakers, Shinichi agreed to speak with the AP and several Japanese reporters on condition his face not be photographed.
On Tuesday, he filed a complaint with a labor standards office in Fukushima, asking authorities to confirm TEPCO's safety violations and issue improvement orders. He also is seeking penalties — up to six months in jail or fines of up to 500,000 yen ($6,250) under the Industrial Safety and Health Act — against the company that supervised him.
'Unjust treatment'
Shinichi's direct employer — the subcontractor for TEPCO — stopped calling him for jobs in March, just telling him to stand by. He now works on radiation decontamination of "hot spots" in Fukushima prefecture.
"So I decided I've had enough of this unjust treatment. That's why I decided to come forward," he said.
Koji Sasahara / AP
Shinichi, a contract worker of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), speaks during a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday.
On the morning of March 24, 2011, Shinichi's team gathered at Fukushima Dai-ichi's emergency command center to be briefed about the day's work. They donned double-layer coveralls underneath waterproof hazmat suits, charcoal-filtered, full-face masks and double-layered rubber gloves.
Decline in white blood cells
Each picked up a pocket dosimeter, with an alarm set to 40 times the dose detected the day before, expecting only a moderate increase of radioactivity. The actual reading was 400 millisieverts that day — high enough to cause a temporary, but not life-threatening, decline in white blood cells.
More Japan coverage from NBC News
The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed power and crucial cooling systems at the plant, sending three reactors into meltdowns and releasing massive amounts of radiation. Tons of cooling water were pumped into the overheated and damaged reactors and leaked right out, pouring into the basements of the buildings housing them and nearby facilities.
Shinichi recalled a simple instruction: Just go in and connect the first floor and basement electrical switchboards. The radioactivity might be a bit high, but shouldn't be a problem.
"There was no mention of the water," Shinichi said.
Three of Japan's top nuclear officials will be fired in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Japan's prime minister has promised a complete overhaul of nuclear safety and a shakeup in the country's energy policy. John Sparks of Channel 4, Europe reports.
So the men wore whatever boots were available — only two wore knee-high rubber boots, and four others, including Shinichi, wore short ones.
With only headlamps on their helmets to light the way, they entered the building from a hole cut into the wall, since the electric door was still inoperable. Three men hired by two other contractors went into the basement, while Shinichi and his two colleagues waited on the first floor. Looking down, he saw water, with steam rising from the surface, and heaps of debris and mangled equipment.
"It was eerie," he said. "If you're a nuclear plant worker, you know that water on the floor is bad news. You just don't touch it."
The dosimeter alarms — set to beep five times before reaching a maximum — sounded several times shortly after they entered the site.
Alarms sound
Seconds after the three workers started going into the basement, the dosimeters began ringing loudly and then went silent, a sign the intended limit was exceeded, though the team's leader said it must be an error. The three workers in the basement waded through the ankle-deep water to check the wall-mounted switchboard and came back up, saying the water felt warm through their rubber boots.
Another team sent in to do other tasks rushed back out without doing any work, ignoring Shinichi's team, after measuring dangerously high radioactivity in the basement.
An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown -- residents of Japan's northeast coast suffered through three intertwined disasters after a massive 9.0 magnitude temblor struck off the coast on March 11, 2011.
But his group stayed, making several more trips into the flooded basement. Two workers wearing short boots got their feet soaked and suffered beta-ray burns which were not life threatening. The three men who stayed there the longest were exposed to about 180 millisieverts — nearly four times the annual safe limit, according to a government report released in July. Shinichi refused to help tie up the dangling cable in the basement because of his short boots, and a colleague wearing long boots volunteered to do it instead, saving Shinichi from injury.
Where to put Fukushima's radioactive water?
TEPCO spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said the team leaders later told officials that they decided to stay because they took their mission very seriously and that they might have been too occupied to think carefully about the water. But TEPCO should have thought more carefully given the unpredictable plant conditions, she said.
Shinichi's radiation exposure from 13 days of working at the plant was just over 20 millisieverts, not considered a serious health risk, though he still worries.
'Lacked consideration' for workers
His lawyers, who are representing several nuclear plant workers in other cases, say TEPCO and its top contractor Kandenko illegally sent him and five other men into areas with radioactivity far exceeding the allowable limit without full protection.
"Just sending the workers into the harsh environment and putting them at risk of exposure to dangerously high radiation is a labor safety violation," said Taku Yamazoe, a lawyer representing Shinichi. "Even if TEPCO didn't anticipate the consequences of all that water it had pumped in, it clearly lacked consideration for the workers' safety."
The area surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi plant is a hotspot of radiation nearly a year after the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) plant suffered a triple meltdown in the wake of the powerful earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan. TEPCO Communications Manager Hiro Hasegawa says the power company has been cleaning up radioactive waste and providing compensation to those who were affected by the disaster. However, lawyer and activist Ito Kazuku says TEPCO's compensation is not enough for the people who have lived in the exclusion zone.
Shinichi's experience was typical of the inadequate protection received by workers laboring in the extremely harsh conditions at the plant, though Yamazoe said the multi-tiered subcontracting system used at nuclear plants can obscure who is directly responsible in case of an accident.
Investigations by the government, parliament and private groups have faulted TEPCO for inept crisis management, inadequate emergency training and miscommunication with authorities.
More international coverage from NBC News
The parliamentary investigation took TEPCO to task for failing to deal with leaking contaminated water until the two workers suffered beta-ray burns in Unit 3, concluding that the operator was fully aware of the consequences of massive spraying and pumping of water into the reactors and spent fuel pools from the very beginning.
Shinichi said that when he finished work at the nuclear plant each day, he would take off his clothes before entering his home to minimize the risk of radiation exposure for his 5-year-old son. He would toss the clothes into the washing machine and immediately rush into a bath.
Officials in Japan use an unmanned helicopter to measure radiation levels near Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was nearly destroyed by a tsunami and earthquake in 2011. NBC's Richard Lui reports.
Many other nuclear workers face the same worries, he said.
"I don't have education, and I'm already over 40. There is little choice," he said. "I was dumped. I worked hard, sacrificed my family and my child and this is how I ended up."
The operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant last week said it could not rule out the possibility that it may still be leaking radiation into the sea.
The comment by TEPCO follows a U.S. academic journal Science article that said high radiation levels in bottom-dwelling fish caught off Fukushima prefecture indicate continued radiation leaking from the plant.
Fishing off Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, is prohibited except for test fishing for a few species such as certain types of octopus and squid, which are shipped only when they are found to be safe.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
Long story shortened: Shinichi and his lawyer are complaining that he was sent into a dangerous situation after a tragedy. Good thing he wasn't a New York cop or firefighter on 9/11.
Cops and firefighters are proud union workers, not contract workers. Union workers were not involved in the article.
You are correct. There are no government employee unions in China. My comment was about bravery, not unions. Belonging to a union does not make a person brave or cowardly.
Wasn't this article about Japan?
Cry me a f... river... if you don't like the job - go home!
Of course it was dangerous. Lots of jobs are dangerous. I would much rather work in a worst nuclear spill zone than fight fires anywhere near an oil refinery.
Oops. Point taken.
First responders on 9/11 have sued several parties. It has been pretty big news.
And many surviving NYFD workers blame Guiliani for the deaths of their colleagues/brothers.
As if this should come as a surprise to anyone. TEPCO is going to be revealed to be literally a murderer of employees, especially contract workers such as this person.
I think if anyone had a real clue about how much radiation was released, and how much more will be, they would be evacuating a good part of Japan and probably worrying a lot about the U.S. west coast.
Agreed, Steve, with one correction: if anyone had a real clue about how much radiation IS BEING released.
The cores of the reactors are somewhere below the containment vessels; the water being pumped in currently therefore has no contaiment either.
And no plans for a Chernobly-like sarcophagus because... why? [hint: $$$]
See also, the Japanese goverments economy building effort called "Eat Fukushima" meant to promote local agriculture there... ri-i-ight. Dish it up!
Wrong.....the damaged fuel has remained inside the pressure vessel. Chernobyl blew their containmentless reactor into the sky.....HUGE difference.
Hello? Nobody even got seriously sick as a result of the radioactive spill. What murder?
Wrong.....the damaged fuel has remained inside the pressure vessel.
Prove it.
You can't, can you.
They don't KNOW where that fuel is right now. They can't find it. They have no idea where it is.
I work at a Nuclear Power Plant and have taken a 40 hour class on the Fukushima accident. All surveys conducted below the reactor pressure vessel indicate the damaged fuel has been contained inside the pressure vessel like it was designed. Saying "they dont know where the fuel is" is incredible wrong.
...At reactors 2 and 3, the simulation found that smaller amounts of fuel melted holes in the pressure vessels and dropped down to the concrete in the primary containment vessel.
It should be noted that this information comes from a computer model of the fuel's behavior, and it may be inaccurate. With the intense levels of radiation around the reactors, there's no way yet to measure the actual location of the fuel.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/fukushimas-reactor-1-meltdown-was-worse-than-we-realized
In the first week of the crisis, Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 1 is considered to
have had the most severe situation of the three reactors which ultimately
suffered meltdowns. To date, none of TEPCO’s simulated analysis of the disaster
sequences have been able to simulate the actual events which lead to the
meltdowns.
http://enformable.com/2012/10/tepco-finds-only-9-feet-of-water-at-bottom-of-containment-vessel/
These details are not only interesting by themselves, but also when
considering the fact that during the investigation yesterday, TEPCO found that
at the surface of the water, the radiation level fell to as low as 0.5 sievert
per hour, which TEPCO experts have not been able to explain. If the fuel which
was melted down to the bottom of the vessel was not fully immersed in the water,
the temperature inside the vessel should have been higher, and the radiation
levels also much higher than were measured this time...
It seems like TEPCO provided them with adequate protection...
If he knew that his suit may not adequately protect in such an environment, yet disregarded and continued to perform his duties, how can he blame anyone else? What I see is a highly trained professional that could not make a proper decision concerning safety and then is blaming someone else.
An individual needs an acute exposure of >1000 milisieverts to see small, temporary changes to blood chemistry.....NOT 400
The operator of a Japanese nuclear plant that went into a tsunami-triggered meltdown knew the risks from highly radioactive water at the site but sent in crews without adequate protection or warnings, a worker alleges in a legal complaint.
Oh my, you mean the workers were lied to?
How is this possible?
The Japs were so straight forward, forth coming and and honest with the rest of the world concerning the extent of the damage and contamination to our planet!
Hey, I thought it was illegal for any government to lie.
What gives?
If one REM equals 10 millisieverts, then
Although a dose of just 25 REMS causes some detectable changes in
blood
25 REMS would equal 250 millisieverts, making your statement false, according to this link.
http://library.thinkquest.org/3471/radiation_effects_body_body.html
And this:
http://safety.lle.rochester.edu/580_radiation/radiation.php
cts of large acute exposures
Dose (rem)
Effect
0 to 50 rem
No obvious effects, some blood chemistry changes
Excuse me, herewegoagain5. My comments were directed at Bonds25 and post #4. Replied to the wrong person.
Im a senior Radiation Protection Technician (Nuclear Health Physics)......who is cuurently working at a Nuclear Power Plant and is NRRPT certified. 400 milliseiverts.....or 40 REM of acute exposure to the whole body will yield no changes in the blood chemistry of the exposed individual. Only a handful of personnel at the Fukushima plant have been exposed to over 20 REM TEDE.....a couple are around 45 REM and this due to the lack of respirators (due to no respirator inserts for glasses) in the Main Control Room. These Operators have shown zero effects from the ionizing radiation.
Nuclear energy is simply not worth the cost due to the very long half life of the radio active fuel.
" If something can go wrong, it will "
What if the half life of the waste products (the fuel gets "burned" so its half life doesn't really matter) was only ~30 years like in the Thorium Fuel cycle (specifically LFTRs)? Rendering the waste about as radioactive as natural uranium deposits in about 300 years.
Would you say it would be worth it then?
Well, this is a tricky one. Everyone is basically in favor of Nuclear energy if it's far enough away (ie The SUN) and if it never has an accident. When there is some incident, we take that as being ''too dangerous'', but one needs to weight that in perspective of the alternatives.
For example - Vehicle traffic accidents kill about 40,000 people a year in the USA. The last couple years have been a bit below that, but the average of the last 10 years is about 41,000 people killed on the roads every year. An average of the 10 worst single plane crashes in history shows that a catastrophic crash of a 747 kills on average 306 people. Of course, every one of is scary, it makes front page news, it's investigated and we find out exactly what caused it, and exactly how to prevent those circumstances from every happening again. Nearly 800 die every week on the roads of the USA alone, and we all think that's kinda the ''cost of doing business''.
For Nuclear incidents, there basically have been two 'Level 7' Nuclear Incidents in history - Chernobyl, and Fukishima. There have also been some level 5 incidents (like Three Mile Island) which were scary, but no loss of life - and exposure levels about the same as a year of normal background radiation.
Chernobyl resulted in 56 direct deaths, and Fukishima resulted in 0 direct deaths. There have also been 13 other Nuclear Power Plant related deaths in history (1961-2012), including both nuclear causes, and 'non-nuclear' causes - like the death of a man at Fukishima who died of a heart attack while carrying equipment, and including 5 workers killed by a steam pipe exploding. Plus, the new Nuclear Thorium technologies are an order of magnitude safer yet - so comparing ''all Nuclear Power'' to the Chernobyl era technology is really apples to oranges, and going forward, there is no reason to fear Nuclear power.
Of course, there are also non-direct health issues. Depending on who's numbers you believe, another 4,000 people may have died from cancers or other auxiliary causes from Chernobyl. And, according to a report on world-nuclear-news,org there are were 34 suspected auxiliary deaths in Japan - not from direct Nuclear exposure necessarily, but from the moving/evacuation/stress/etc. To be fair, there were 1,916 other people who died after the event in other areas of Japan from the evacuation/moving/stress effect of just the Tsunami/Earthquake.
Opponents of Nuclear power will point out that up to 33,000 people globally may have also contracted cancer from Chernobyl over the next years or months or decades, which may be true. However, by comparison, 288,000 people PER YEAR are estimated to die due to pollution from coal fired electrical power generation.
SO, what's my point? Well, my point is that we have to take it into perspective and not just be frightened of Nuclear Power on it's face. Modern nuclear reactors simply CAN'T have a Chernobyl type incident - it's not possible due to their design to have that exact same type of incident. Obviously Fukishima was a very well build facility, and it has taught us that even when we think of EVERYTHING, there still will be the unforeseen things we didn't think about, and incidents WILL still happen - so, in that context, I guess you are correct by saying that "if something can go wrong, it will."
However, in perspective of every power option in the world, Chernobyl was the only ''really bad one'' in over 50 years of Nuclear power generation. Even with Chernobyl (the exact circumstances which can never happen again) if you do the math, Nuclear power is about 400 times safer than coal & natural gas power generation we have now.
Exceptionally well said Todd.
Cherry picking statistics proves nothing.
More energy is wasted than used so conservation is a zero cost, right now solution to energy needs.
My plant has been operating for 25+ years making 1150 megawatts 24 hours a day. All the spent fuel from day 1 is either in a small pool or ~34 shielded canisters that could take a direct hit from a 747 without significant damage. 25 years worth of an incredible amount of electricity taking up less than half a football field of real estate.
Warren,
I assume since you are typing this on a computer, that you enjoy the conveniences of modern society afforded to us by electricity.
Going forward, we can't continue to burn fossil fuels. Climate change is eventually going to kill all of us if we continue down that path.
Wind, Solar, and Geothermal are all good alternatives in certain areas where they make sense but they could never supply all of the US, let alone the rest of the world with power.
Fusion would be nice but it's been "40 years away" for the last 50 years and although some strides are being made, it's far from ready for primetime.
That leaves us with Fission. I understand that Nuclear has a nasty history. I agree with you that LWRs and BWRs (the vast majority of currently operating plants) are somewhat dangerous. They are configured in a way that the reactor wants to melt down and has to be stopped from doing so. However, just because old designs are bad, doesn't mean we should disregard newer designs. The Model T wasn't particularly safe, but I bet you drive a car.
Scubasteve58001 @
Natural uranium deposits are not the hazard that the dense enriched nuclear.
The concentration of the nuclear fuel/waste is the problem. If it could be redistributed around the land and reduce its concentration to that of the natural uranium then there would be no problem. $$$ is what always drives the world not common sense.
Warren,
Nuclear waste created in new reactor design is not the same as the nuclear waste that was created in older designs.
Old designs use enriched Uranium to produce power. This creates a lot of exceptionally long lived (20,000+ year half life) transuranic waste.
New designs, using Thorium as fuel mainly produce fission products as waste. Things like Cesium-137 (which has a half life of 30.17 years) which would be rendered "safe", meaning no more radioactive than natural Uranium, in a reasonable time frame (10 half lives or ~300 years)
Additionally, new reactor designs (including the LFTR, my personal favorite) are able to use existing stockpiles of long lived transuranic "waste" as fuel, transmuting it into those shorter lived, easier to store waste products and creating electricity to boot.
Depending on who's numbers you believe, another 4,000 people may have died from cancers or other auxiliary causes from Chernobyl.
LOL.
Or another 900,000 people may have died (and are still dying) as a result of Chernobyl. Depending on whose numbers you believe.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-book-concludes-chernobyl-death-toll-985-000-mostly-from-cancer/20908
It is authored by three noted scientists:
Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president;
Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and
Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.
The book is solidly based — on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports — some 5,000 in all.
It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.
The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency– still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl...
You say the IAEA report is BS and this book is the real deal. Other people would say the book is BS and the IAEA report is the real deal.
What makes you right and them wrong?
At the “Chernobyl Forum of the United Nations” organised in September 2005 by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation, the presentation ofthe results of work on the effects of Chernobyl showed serious inconsistencies. For example: the press release of the WHO and IAEA stated that in the future, at most, 4000 surplus fatalities due to cancer and leukaemia amongst the most severely affected groups of peoplemight be expected. In the WHO report on which this was based however, the actual number of deaths is given as 8,930. These deaths were not mentioned in any newspaper articles. When one examines the source quoted in the WHO report, one arrives at a number between 10,000 and 25,000 additional fatalities due to cancer and leukaemia.
Given this it can be rationally concluded that the official statements of the IAEA and the WHO have manipulated their own data. Their representation of the effects of Chernobyl has little to do with reality...
http://www.chernobylcongress.org/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/chernob_report_2011_en_web.pdf
In addition,
The book is solidly based — on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports — some 5,000 in all.
In answer to your question, Steve, as to what makes THE AUTHORS (not me) right, and the IAEA wrong.
So how did you get 900,000 from 10,000-25,000?
"I" didn't. The authors of THE BOOK DID. Remember the link?
http://www.ippnw-europe.org/print.html?expand=644&cHash=0eac702f31
The physicians organisation has researched extensively on the health effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe and arrived at very much higher mortality and morbidity statistics than the WHO has published. The IAEA states that no more than 50 deaths directly resulted from the nuclear catastrophe and WHO is of the opinion that 9000 people will die from effects of the release of radiation from Chernobyl. The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) confirmed these statistics again in Februrary 2011. However, Dr. Alexei Yabolokov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has collated data and the findings of numerous inquiries into the health and environmental effects of Chernobyl and comes to a very different conclusion. He believes that the radiation from the accident will have claimed between 900,000 and 1.8 million lives in the period of time it is present in the biosphere. Up until now, between 112,000 and 125,000 of the estimated 830,000 "liquidators" have already died.
Ok. So 900,000 people may have died according to a book. 4,000 people may have died according to a report from the WHO. 8,000 people may have died according to a report by the IAEA. And according to yet another report, 10,000-25,000 people may have died.
I guess the moral of this story is nobody really knows how bad Chernobyl was?
You do a really good job at playing dumb, Steve. Since you misquote every single figure given to you here, I'm gonna assume you're just having a whole lot of fun playing your game.
Enjoy. I'm done with you.
I'm not trying to play dumb. Each source you quote offers different figures on the death toll.
Really? There was radiation leaking from the badly damaged nuclear power plant??? No sch-it Sherlock! Who is this guy, Forrest Gump?
You either refuse to go in due to the obvious risk involved, or you protect yourself as best you can and take the risk in order to attempt to save your community. If you charge into a situation like that just because your boss told you to then you are an idiot.
There were an untold number of heroic acts performed during the emergency by men and women who knowingly sacrificed their lives to save the public. "We" should not diminish the value of their sacrifice by making crass comments about whether or not they knew what was at stake--they all knew and yet they acted anyway.
0 deaths (not counting possible future health concerns) from Fukishima and only a few minor injuries.
Definitely heroic actions on the part of the workers and emergency responders though.
This Shinichi guy is the modern day kamikaze pilot.
Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!
Hypothetical problem. If you dropped a spent fuel rod into a coastal bay. What and how long would the effects last? Hint! There is a process before a fuel rod is disposed of.
The Sun is a natural source of energy. How many millions of people use electric clothes dryers on a sunny day simply because they are too busy playing with their toys to us a clothes line for a couple hours. Not only is it Free and takes very little time, clothes are enriched with vitamin D and sterilized by the Suns rays. The time spent outside doing this little chore will also help your health with minimum needed sun exposure and fresh air.
This is only one waste of energy. Electricity is one of the greatest bargains for the moment but can't remain that if people keep squandering it.