#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: TEPCO Cannot Confirm Identities of 37 Workers

TEPCO was so desperate to recruit workers for Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant that it hired people who didn't even "exist". Or rather, workers used pseudonyms at Fukushima I so that they could keep working at other nuke plants later without the radiation limit restricting them from working elsewhere.

Mainichi Shinbun Japanese (6/24/2011) reports that 37 of 69 workers whom TEPCO cannot trace after they stopped working at the plant used bogus names.

東京電力は２４日、福島第１原発で３月に作業に従事し、内部被ばく線量が未測定のまま連絡の取れない６９人のうち、実在するかどうかが確認できない作業員が３７人に上ると発表した。

TEPCO haven't been able to contact 69 workers who worked at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in March and whose internal radiation levels haven't been measured. On June 24, the company announced that 37 workers out of 69 cannot be confirmed even to exist.

　東電の松本純一原子力・立地本部長代理は「（被ばく線量が増え、作業に従事できなくなるのを防ぐため）別の名前を使った可能性が否定できない」としている。

TEPCO's Junichi Matsumoto said, "We can't rule out the possibility that those workers used pseudonyms to hide the level of radiation exposure so that they could work at other nuclear power plants [after their work at Fukushima I]."

　３７人はいずれも協力企業の社員などとして登録していたが、東電が各社に照会しても存在が確認できなかった。

All 37 workers were registered as employees of TEPCO affiliate companies. But TEPCO couldn't confirm that the workers existed when the company contacted its affiliate companies.

TEPCO's affiliate companies include large manufacturers like Toshiba, Hitachi and Kandenko. They each hire subcontractors, who then hire their own subcontractors, all the way down to at least 5, 6 layers. At the bottom of the subcontracting pyramid, they are often one-man operations that find willing workers, even from far-away places like Okinawa (video is in Japanese), where there is no nuke plant.

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