Tokyo Shinbun: Worker Who Tweeted from #Fukushima I Nuke Plant, and His Two Years of Being Jerked Around by TEPCO and Government

The worker who tweeted for two years from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is no longer there, but he was recently interviewed by Tokyo Shinbun. He shared his first-hand knowledge of how it was like to work at a nuclear plant that went spectacularly bust, under the conflicting and useless direction from both TEPCO Headquarters in Tokyo and the national government under then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

People on Japanese Twitter, blogs, and message boards have been accusing the worker whose Twitter name is "Happy" as TEPCO agent of disinformation. I've been following him and reading his tweets, but I don't get that feeling. As far as I know, he is a worker at either one of the first-tier subcontractors or one of the major local subcontractors of a first-tier subcontractor.

In the interview with Tokyo Shinbun, "Happy" describes what was effectively "TEPCO that couldn't say no".

"Prime Minister says 'Work 24 hours a day', so do something!"

Instead of shielding the workers at the plant from the ignorant politicians and bureaucrats so that they could do the job, TEPCO headquarters was nothing more than a messenger boy.

Then the national government under the Democratic Party of Japan interfered with the work for their convenience, and it was not just Naoto Kan. "Happy" says the probe of Reactor 2's Containment Vessel was originally scheduled in December 2011, but since then-Prime Minister Noda needed to declare "cold shutdown state" (to the snicker and ridicule around the world except at IAEA and NRC) and he didn't want to have a potentially dangerous work during that month, the DPJ government told TEPCO to delay the work until after the New Year.

From Tokyo Shinbun, as archived at Asyura (5/5/2013; as article links don't last long at Tokyo Shinbun):

つぶやく福島作業員　政府・東電に振り回された２年間 （東京新聞）

Worker Who Tweeted from Fukushima I Nuke Plant, and His Two Years of Being Jerked Around by TEPCO and Government

東京電力福島第一原発事故の発生当初から収束作業に従事し、現場の様子をツイッターでつぶやき続け、その内容を七万超の人が注目している「ハッピー」さん。福島第一の近くに家があり、作業員としてここで長年働いてきた。このほど本紙の取材に応じ、二年間を超える収束作業で感じた疑問などを語った。　（片山夏子）

He worked at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant since the beginning of the nuclear accident and tweeted the situation. His tweets as "Happy" are followed by more than 70,000 people. His home is near the plant, and has worked at the plant for many years. We interviewed him recently, and he told us what he thought during the past two years of his effort to control the situation.

◆まるで戦場

It's like a war zone.

　二〇一一年三月十四日昼、３号機原子炉建屋で水素爆発が起きた時、ハッピーさんは近くで作業をしていた。突き上げる衝撃、すさまじい爆音に襲われ、がれきがバラバラ降ってきた。

When the hydrogen explosion happened in the Reactor 3 building on March 14, 2011, "Happy" was working nearby. The ground shook with deafening explosion, and debris rained on him.

　「ここで死ぬかもしれない」

"I may die here."

　まるで戦場だった。建屋から煙が上がり、すすで全身が真っ黒になった人、防護服が血に染まった人もいた。怒号が飛び交う様子はとても現実とは思えなかった。

It was like a war zone. Smoke rose from the reactor building, and there were people who were coated with black soot, and whose protection gear was bloody. People were shouting. It didn't seem real.

　ハッピーさんがツイッターを始めたのは水素爆発から六日後の二十日のこと。

"Happy" started to tweet on March 20, six days after that hydrogen explosion.

　理由は二つあった。一つは情報が錯綜（さくそう）し、不安をあおる報道もあったこと。もう一つは、福島県南相馬市に小さな子どもと住む知人に、現場で起きていることを冷静に伝え「必要以上に心配することはないよ」と伝えるためだったという。

There were two reasons. First, communication was garbled and confused [in the early days of the accident] and there were media reports that fanned fear. Second, he wanted to tell his acquaintance who lived in Minamisoma City in Fukushima with small child[ren] that "there is no need to worry too much", by calmly describing what was happening at the plant.

　つぶやきの中で自分のことを「オイラ」と書き、「です」ではなく「でし」で結ぶことが多い独特のメッセージ。初めのころ、読み手は子どもがいるお母さんが多かった。「助けられました」「救われました」というお礼や温かい言葉が寄せられた。

His tweets are unique. He calls himself "oira", writes "deshi" instead of "desu" [in closing a sentence]. In the beginning, many of his readers were mothers with children, who replied to him saying "You helped me", "You saved me".

◆命は二の次

Life is on the back burner

　ハッピーさんのつぶやきには現場で感じる政府や東電への率直な疑問が多い。

Many of "Happy"'s tweets include frank doubts he felt as he worked at the plant, toward the government and TEPCO.

　政府や東電が、根拠のない楽観的な見通しを示したり、きちんと説明しない発表をするたびにいらついた。事実をありのまま伝えないことで、かえって不安をあおっていると感じたという。

He was irritated each time the national government and TEPCO showed optimistic prospect without basis, or made presentations without full explanation. He says he felt not telling the facts was fanning the fear.

　事故発生当初、作業工程の調整がなされないまま、現場に指示が飛んだことにも閉口させられた。電気系と配管系の作業が同じ場所で同じ時間にぶつかり、片方の作業ができなくなるなどの混乱が起きた。

He was also annoyed at the instructions without coordinating the work processes, which caused confusion in the early days of the accident. [At one time] electrical work and pipe work were scheduled on the same location at the same time, and one of the work couldn't be done.

　混乱の跡は、二年たった今も福島第一の各所に残る。ほぼ同じ場所に汚染水の移送ホース、電源ケーブルや機器を制御するケーブルが乱雑に設置されている点などがそうだ。緊急作業だったとはいえ、誤作動や漏電の恐れがあり、今後の不安要因になっている。

The result of the confusion is still visible in many places at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant even after two years. Hoses to transfer contaminated water, power cable and control cables for equipments are installed in a messy way in the same location, for example. Even if it was an emergency, there is a possibility of malfunctioning and short circuit.

　「総理が二十四時間作業しろと言っているから何とかしろ」。こんな指示が現場に飛んだこともあった。無理やり二十四時間体制のシフトを組んだが、作業効率が落ちた。

"Prime Minister says 'Work 24 hours a day', so do something!" was one of the instructions to the plant. So they set up 24-hour shifts, but work efficiency suffered.

　現場の状況も考えず毎月発表された工程表にも悩まされた。「政府がやるって発表しちゃったから作業を急いでくれ」と言われ、準備もできていないのに夜中に駆り出されたこともあったという。

He was bothered by the time schedule of work published every month without considering the situation at the plant. At one time, he was told to hurry up the work because the national government had already publicly announced it, and he was called to the site in the middle of the night even though no preparation had been made.

　特に、防護服を着ての夏の作業では何度も倒れそうになった。「休め」とは言われるが、工程表はそのまま。作業員の命や安全は、二の次になっていると感じた。

He almost fainted a number of times during the summer with full protective gear. He was told to "rest", but the time schedule for work remained the same. He felt that life and safety of the workers were put on the back burner.

◆コスト優先

Cost comes first

　一一年九月、ハッピーさんの耳に、政府と東電が「冷温停止」に「状態」をくっつけて新語をつくり、年内にも福島第一が「冷温停止状態」になったと宣言する、との情報が入ってきた。

In September 2011, a piece of information reached "Happy" that the national government and TEPCO [HQ] were going to create a new word by combining "cold shutdown" and "state" and declare within the year that Fukushima I Nuke Plant achieved "cold shutdown state".

　だが、溶け落ちた核燃料の状態もわからない。原子炉の冷却にしても、ポンプ故障だけでなく、配管の詰まりや破損などで止まる可能性がある。原子炉の温度計が不安定な動きをし始める中で、炉内が一〇〇度以下と言えるのかどうか…。「冷温停止なんてあり得ない」と思った。

But they didn't know the condition of the melted fuel. Reactor cooling could stop, not just because of the pump failures but also because of clogged or broken pipes. Thermometers attached to the reactors had started to behave erratically. How could anyone say the temperature inside the reactors is below 100 degrees Celsius? "Happy" thought, "Cold shutdown cannot be happening."

　さらに十一月ごろには、「事故収束」まで宣言するらしい、との情報が入ってきた。

Then in November, he heard that they were going to declare, in addition, "end of the accident" [restoration of the plant to the normal state].

　「まさか」と思ったが、十二月に実施する予定だった２号機の格納容器の穴開け作業が年明けに延びるなど、宣言の妨げになるかもしれない危険な作業は延期され始めた。

"That cannot be", he thought, but the work to drill a hole in the Reactor 2 Containment Vessel, which had been scheduled in December, was delayed until after the New Year. Other dangerous works that could mar the declaration started to get postponed.

　これまでも「選挙があるから、それまで危険な作業はするな」「担当大臣が明後日、海外に行くから今日中にやれ」と現場で指示されるなど、政治の動きに振り回されてきたが、まただった。

The work at the plant had been at the mercy of the politicians before. "There is an election coming, so don't do dangerous work until after the election." "Minister in charge will go on an overseas trip the day after tomorrow, so finish the work within today."

　収束宣言後、事故現場では、コスト優先の契約が目立つようになり、危険手当や給与の削減など作業員の雇用条件が悪化した。事故後に福島第一に導入された設備類は、保守管理のことを十分考慮していない仮設のものが多い。耐久性のあるものに交換すべきだと東電に提案しても、「予算がない」と却下されることも増えた。

After the declaration of end of the accident, there were more work contracts whose priority was to cut costs, and employment condition for the workers deteriorated with the cut in hazard bonus and pay. Many of the pieces of equipment that were installed at Fukushima I Nuke Plant after the accident were temporary, without ample consideration for maintenance. When he [his company] suggested to TEPCO that they should be replaced with durable [permanent] ones, the suggestion was often turned down by TEPCO, who said "There is no budget".

　ハッピーさんは、東電が会社再建を急ぎながら、事故収束も進めることに大きな疑問を感じている。コスト優先では、経験豊かな作業員も雇用が安定しないため集まらず、廃炉作業も進まない、と危機感を抱いている。

"Happy" doubts if TEPCO could rebuild itself and end the accident at the same time. With cost cutting as a priority, experienced workers won't come to work at the plant because their employment is not stable, and the decommissioning work won't make progress, he fears.

　「国がいくら税金を投入しても、東電の借金になるだけ。東電が民間企業である以上、コストを優先するのは当然。これでは廃炉は遅々として進まない。世界を揺るがした原発事故なのだから、国と東電は収束作業を専門に担う組織をつくって強力に進めるべきだ」

"No matter how much taxpayers' money the national government pours in, it simply becomes TEPCO's debt. Since TEPCO remains as a private company, it naturally puts cost-cutting as priority. As such, decommissioning won't make much progress. It is the nuclear accident that has shaken the entire world, and the government and TEPCO should create a new organization that focus only on ending the accident and move aggressively."

(First-pass quick translation, subject to change later.)

The nuclear accident that has shaken the world seems to have been forgotten by most people in the world, particularly those in emerging nations like Vietnam and Turkey, who want Japanese-made nuclear reactors and plants in their respective country, probably because of Fukushima. They think Japan has learned a lot from the accident (which in their mind is probably long over) and the knowledge and the expertise from the accident will be highly beneficial for their countries' push for nuclear energy.

And so it goes, until next time.

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(UPDATED) UK's The Independent Reporter David McNeill Meets Atsufumi Yoshizawa: "I Am One of the Fukushima 50"

This is one of the very few times I've ever heard of the name of a worker who has worked at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant since the start of the accident on March 11, 2011.

Hardly anyone in Japan wants to know about them, for one reason ("We hate them because they work for TEPCO" kind of reason) or another ("I'm sure they want to be left alone" kind of PC reason). But that doesn't stop foreign journalists, and as has been the case since the start of the nuclear accident, they are good at bringing the personal stories out of the huge, inhuman mess of an accident.

I believe Mr. McNeill is based in Tokyo.

I'd love to read the article, but for some reason the Independent site seems to believe I have used up the free 5 page allowance for the month even though I never visited their site in a month until today and won't let me read.

You can try if you have better luck, here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/i-am-one-of-the-fukushima-fifty-one-of-the-men-who-risked-their-lives-to-prevent-a-catastrophe-shares-his-story-8517394.html

(H/T blog reader wren for the link)

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(UPDATE: The actual article)

'I am one of the Fukushima fifty': One of the men who risked their lives to prevent a catastrophe shares his story

They displayed a bravery few can comprehend, yet very little is known about the men who stayed behind to save Japan’s stricken nuclear plant. In a rare interview, David McNeill meets Atsufumi Yoshizawa, who was at work on 11 March 2011 when disaster struck

David McNeill, Saturday 02 March 2013

It was, recalls Atsufumi Yoshizawa, a suicide mission: volunteering to return to a dangerously radioactive nuclear power plant on the verge of tipping out of control.

As he said goodbye to his colleagues they saluted him, like soldiers in battle. The wartime analogies were hard to avoid: in the international media he was a kamikaze, a samurai or simply one of the heroic Fukushima 50. The descriptions still embarrass him. “I’m not a hero,” he says. “I was just trying to do my job.”

A stoic, soft-spoken man dressed in the blue utility suit of his embattled employer Tokyo Electric Power Co., (Tepco) Mr Yoshizawa still finds it hard to dredge up memories of fighting to stop catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Two years later, debate still rages about responsibility for the planet’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and its impact. Fish caught near the plant this month contained over 5,000 times safe radiation limits, according to state broadcaster NHK.

A report this week by the World Health Organisation says female infants affected by the worst of the fallout have a 70 per cent higher risk of developing thyroid cancer over their lifetimes, but concluded that overall risks for the rest of the population are “low”. Over 160,000 people have been displaced from their homes near the plant, perhaps permanently, and are fighting for proper compensation. Stress, divorce and suicides and plague the evacuees.

Mr Yoshizawa says he feels “deep responsibility” for the crisis his company triggered. His eyes brim with tears at points in his story, which begins with the magnitude-9 quake less than 100 miles away from the plant under the sea on 11 March 2011. “It was so strong I fell on my hands and knees,” says the 54-year-old engineer. “There was no place to hide.”

The quake’s shockwaves ripped pipes from walls, bounced parked cars like toys and buckled roads at the 864-acre plant. Initially, Mr Yoshizawa believed the Daiichi’s defensive engineering had worked. The instant the tremors struck, control rods were automatically inserted into the plant’s three working reactors to shut down nuclear fission, a process known as “scram.” But the shaking had cut power from the main electricity grid, probably damaged the cooling system to reactor one, and a destructive tsunami over twice as high as the plant’s defences was just 49 minutes away.

Mr Yoshizawa was in charge of reactors five and six, which at the time were shut down for maintenance. He ran to the plant’s seismic isolation building and took his post beside manager Masao Yoshida, who was trying to assess the damage. In the windowless bunker they couldn’t see the tsunami that hit the complex. Waves of 13 to 15 metres high washed over the 5.7m sea wall. Water flooded the basements of the turbine buildings, on the ocean side of the reactors, shorting out electric switching units and disabling 12 of the 13 emergency generators and then backup batteries, the last line of defence. There was no power to pump water to the nuclear core and carry off the heat, or even measure the radiation. The engineers had lost control over the complex. Meltdown had begun.

Mr Yoshiizawa recalls hearing the first reports inside the bunker of oil tanks and cars floating in water outside. “I just couldn’t imagine a tsunami that big,” he says. The crisis quickly deepened. Just over 15 hours after the power loss, uranium fuel melted through the pressure vessel of reactor number one. Units two and three were not far behind. Thousands fled from nearby towns and villages. There was no plan for what to do next because Tepco had never predicted total loss of power at a plant.

Most of Daiichi’s employees had gone home to check on their families. Mr Yoshizawa says he thought of two things: “The safety of my workers, and the complete shutdown of the power plant.” His own wife and two daughters were safe in Yokohama, hundreds of miles south. There was no question of panic, or running back to see them, he insists. “It might seem strange to others, but it’s natural for us to put our company first. It’s part of the mind and spirit of Tepco workers to deal with emergencies.”

The engineer says he moved offsite for a few days to a disaster-response building in the town of Okuma, 5 km away. But on 15 and 16 March 2011 the situation at Daiichi reached its most critical phase. A series of hydrogen explosions had left much of the complex a tangled mess of radioactive concrete and steel. Unit three had exploded, three reactors were in meltdown and over 1000 fuel rods in the reactor four building, normally covered under 16 feet of water, had boiled dry, raising the spectre of a nuclear fission chain reaction. In his darkest moments, Mr Yoshizawa admits he shared the same fear as other experts – that the crisis could also trigger the evacuation of the Fukushima Daini plant 10 km away.

About 250 km south in Tokyo, the government feared a nightmare scenario: a vast toxic cloud heading toward the world’s most populated metropolis. Rumours swirled that Tepco was preparing to completely pull out its staff from the Daiichi plant, leaving it to spin out of control. Mr Yoshizawa denies this. “We never intended to abandon our jobs,” he insists. “At the time that rumour was circulating I was volunteering to go back.” He recalls despairing at the situation. “Most people thought we would not be coming back from the plant,” he says, on the verge of tears. In the media the Fukushima 50 was born, although Mr Yoshizawa says that in reality there were 70 of them, mostly in their middle age. “We had all resolved to stay till the end.”

Throughout the following weeks on the frontline of the crisis, the men endured brutal conditions. Deliveries stalled, food almost ran out and water was restricted to a single 500ml bottle every two days. Working in shifts, surviving on biscuits and sleeping when he could inside the radiation-proofed bunker, Mr Yoshizawa lost weight and grew a beard. As elite firefighters succeeded in getting water to the overheating reactors, the collective psyche inside the bunker lightened and the dreaded words “oshimai da” (it’s the end), were no longer heard. Exhausted and dishevelled on his first trip back to a sunny Tokyo a month after the quake, he was startled to find life going on as normal.

Public recognition or even gratitude for the ordeal endured by Mr Yoshizawa and his colleagues is scarce. Most are still employed by a company disgraced by revelations that it had repeatedly ignored pre-March 11 warnings about the risks of natural disaster. Taxpayers will have to bear the cost of cleaning up from the accident after Tepco was nationalised last year. Not a single manager has been held accountable for happened. The utility’s rehabilitation has been hampered by fresh stories that it had misled investigators before an on-site check of reactor one, lying that the reactor building was “too dark” for inspection. Some critics suspect the company was trying to conceal evidence of damage from the earthquake, an issue with potentially profound implications for restarting Japan’s 50 commercial reactors, most of which are shut down.

It took the government 18 months to publicly acknowledge Mr Yoshizawa and his comrades, when then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda officially thanked them last October. Most were not identified or even named, testimony both to the trauma Fukushima has inflicted on Japan’s collective psyche, and a deep-seated cultural reluctance to grandstand while others suffer. Some of the men fear reprisals or bullying of their children in school. A police van is permanently parked out the company’s headquarters in Tokyo. Tepco itself is reluctant to wheel the Fukushima 50 out in front of the media, for fear of what they might reveal about what happened – Mr Yoshizawa is shadowed throughout his interviews by a PR minder.

But if he nurses any bitterness toward his employer, he never reveals it. He praises the company for providing counseling to the ex-Daiichi workers and regular health checks – a select list of employees who absorbed potentially harmful amounts of radiation are qualified for unlimited aftercare. His own final tally of internal exposure was 50 millisieverts – the upper annual limit in the US for nuclear plant workers.

Now dealing with waste and fuel management, and back at Tepco headquarters, he says the work at the plant has far from ended. “Nobody has any experience of trying to safely extract nuclear fuel after such an accident,” he says. British and US engineers are helping in a collective effort that will take many years. He gets uncomfortable when he returns to Fukushima and has to remember the crisis. His family never discusses what happened. “My wife and children have already seen so much on TV and they don’t want to see or hear anything more about it. Occasionally they will ask me if I’m OK and I tell them what I tell you: I don’t have any problems.”

Living in limbo: refugees’ grievances

Two years on, thousands of people forced to leave their homes in the wake of the Fukushima disaster are living in limbo, yet to receive compensation and unable to move back owing to dangerous radiation.

More than 160,000 people were forcibly evacuated from the area when an earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on 11 March 2011, and tens of thousands left voluntarily.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company that owns the plant, has paid compensation to some nuclear refugees, including what it calls “temporary” compensation for living costs, but it has paid no money for assets damaged by the meltdown.

A recent report by Greenpeace documented a litany of complaints about complicated forms, insufficient living costs and low valuations on property. Greenpeace said the plan was drawn up by Tepco in July last year and is based on a “complex and disputed” government system.

(H/T blog readers NYUltraBuddha, prestant)

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(UPDATE 3/4/2013) There is absolutely no coverage in Japan that Mr. Yoshizawa, TEPCO's senior manager, was interviewed by foreign press (The Independent, The Guardian).

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#Fukushima City Housewife: "Fukushima 50" No Hero, Because They Work for TEPCO

Ms. Seiko Takahashi responds to BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes (1/3/2013) when he asks about "Fukushima 50", workers who remained at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant after Reactor 3 building exploded and kept on doing whatever they could to contain the situation:

Before the meltdowns, Seiko Takahashi never thought of activism. Now the middle-aged mother from Fukushima City is a passionate anti-nuclear campaigner. And she admits there is little sympathy for the Fukushima workers.

"They are not heroes for us," she says. "I feel sorry for them, but I don't see them as heroes. We see them as one block, they work for Tepco, they earned high salaries. The company made a lot of money from nuclear power, and that's what paid for their nice lives."

She is essentially saying they get what they deserve, for having worked for TEPCO.

Her city, Fukushima City, is in the highly contaminated middle-third of Fukushima Prefecture. While most Japanese (and foreigners) may sympathize with her and her city's plight, many of them are also angry that the city, along with almost all municipalities in that prefecture, continues to grow crops and sell them outside, claiming they are "safe" (i.e. less than 100 Bq/kg of radioactive cesium), and claims it suffers tremendously from "baseless rumors".

For how some of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant workers have been treated by their fellow Fukushima residents, see my post from February 2012. That post was about an article that appeared in Germany's Der Spiegel. I have seen hardly any coverage on the issue in the Japanese media.

As BBC's Wingfield-Hayes says at the end of his report,

There is wide sympathy here for victims like him, [Mr. Yoshizawa the cattle farmer in Namie-machi] but the Japanese public appears to have little sympathy or concern for the suffering of Fukushima workers.

That's Japan for you.

(H/T anon reader)

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The Economist: Japan's nuclear disaster - Meet the Fukushima 50? No, you can’t

The Economist writer, writing from Iwaki City in southern Fukushima, sounds rather exasperated or sarcastic (or both) in the opening sentence of his article:

IT HAS taken the Japanese government more than 18 months to pay tribute to a group of brave men, once known as the “Fukushima 50”, who risked their lives to prevent meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant from spiralling out of control.

The article ends with:

The media attention is always focused on those in power, who typically do nothing to merit the recognition. The multitudes on the frontline, who put their heads down and do all the hard work are treated as faceless, nameless and ultimately forgotten.

with the writer calling it "one of the tragic flaws of modern Japan".

I seem to be already hearing an "It is the same everywhere in the world, not just Japan" chorus, but as the writer points out in the article, it may be only in Japan where these workers themselves and their families are bullied by people around them for having tried their best to contain the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. For the case of TEPCO workers at the plant, see my post from February this year. The article in that post was written by a reporter from Germany's Spiegel.

I think hardly anyone in Japan paid any attention to the Spiegel article. It will be the same with The Economist's article. It doesn't occur to many that the workers have been treated poorly, not only by TEPCO and by the government but also by ordinary people like them. See no evil, hear no evil.

From The Economist (10/8/2012; emphasis is mine):

Japan's nuclear disaster
Meet the Fukushima 50? No, you can’t

Oct 8th 2012, 4:28 by H.T. | IWAKI

IT HAS taken the Japanese government more than 18 months to pay tribute to a group of brave men, once known as the “Fukushima 50”, who risked their lives to prevent meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant from spiralling out of control. But when the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, belatedly offered official thanks to them on October 7th something strange was afoot: six of the eight men he addressed had their backs to the television cameras, refused to be photographed and did not introduce themselves by name, not even to Mr Noda (see the image below).

The reason: officials from the government and from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) quietly admitted that the men wanted to keep their identities secret because they were scared of stigmatisation for being involved in the disaster, such as might lead to the bullying of their children and grandchildren. But Tepco is also muzzling them, presumably for fear that what they say will further discredit the now nationalised company. When I asked if I could at least hand my business card to them to see if they wanted to tell their side of the story, an irate Tepco spokesman answered bluntly: “Impossible.”

There are numerous ways that this incident reflects badly on both Tepco’s and the government’s handling of the situation. Firstly, there is the contrast between the frontline worker’s behaviour and the brazen hypocrisy of Tepco’s management after the accident. I remember Tepco’s then-chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata (now thankfully retired), nonchalantly blaming everyone but himself when giving testimony to a Diet commission earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the men who worked loyally for him, risking their lives on behalf of his company, still hide their heads in shame.

The government, for its part, has done these men a huge disservice by not acting more quickly to differentiate their heroism from the craven self-interest of the company’s bosses. In the eyes of the public there ought to be no confusion between the two. In Chile, it was easy to see how the country made heroes of the 33 trapped mine workers in 2010, while making villains of their bosses. Nothing like that has happened in Japan. As one government official noted, if this were America, the “Fukushima 50” would have been invited to the Rose Garden for presidential recognition.

Yet even after Mr Noda’s visit, the men do not get the recognition they deserve. Kyodo, a news agency, relegates any mention of them to the bottom of a boring story about decontamination.

An English-language paper, the Japan Times, today at least tells part of their harrowing story, though it doesn’t mention the refusal of all but two of them to be identified. They did not depict themselves as heroes, as they recounted their experiences to Mr Noda. They mostly sounded plain scared. One said he thought “it was all over” after the tsunami of March 11th, 2011 knocked out all the power. Another told of how he sent his staff out into the dark, where they faced the danger of electrocution, to restore the power to a nuclear reactor on the verge of melting down. He was asked by his men whether he thought they would come back alive. They went on regardless.

But the headlines, ultimately, refer back to Mr Noda, not to the Fukushima 50. He gets more of the credit than they do, despite his wooden acknowledgement to the men, that “Thanks to your dedication, we have managed to preserve Japan.” This is one of the tragic flaws of modern Japan. The media attention is always focused on those in power, who typically do nothing to merit the recognition. The multitudes on the frontline, who put their heads down and do all the hard work are treated as faceless, nameless and ultimately forgotten.

(Picture credit: The Economist)

The Economist writer is highly critical of the TEPCO top management, rightly so. But even there, having watched TEPCO's press conference in March last year almost every night and having watched some of the teleconference video TEPCO finally released, I cannot make a sweeping criticism.

(H/T reader 'female faust' for the link)

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Prime Minister Noda to Visit #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Next Month

A publicity stunt to appeal his commitment to the resolution of the nuclear accident.

(Oh wait. Isn't he the one who declared the "cold shutdown state" at Fuku-I and the nuclear accident over, to the ridicule from all over the world? Even the newly installed chief of Nuclear Regulatory Agency said the term is not used right.)

From Jiji Tsushin (9/29/2012):

来月７日、福島原発を視察＝野田首相、作業員らと面会へ
Prime Minister Noda to visit Fukushima I Nuke Plant on October 7, meet workers

　野田佳彦首相は２９日、東京電力福島第１原発を来月７日に視察する方向で調整に入った。首相は同１日に内閣改造を行う方針。同原発を改造後の最初の視察先とすることで、原発事故問題に引き続き最優先で当たる姿勢をアピールする狙いがある。首相の同原発訪問は、昨年９月８日以来となる。

It was revealed on September 29 that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will schedule a visit to Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on October 7. He will reshuffle his cabinet on October 1, and by going to the plant as the first visit after the reshuffle he hopes to emphasize his commitment to have the Fukushima nuclear accident as his first priority. It will be his first visit to the plant since September 8 last year.

　首相は原発事故発生後も現場に残り、収束作業に当たった作業員らと面会し、労をねぎらいたい考え。危険な状態の中で、被害拡大の防止に取り組んだ作業員らは、国内外から「フクシマ５０」と呼ばれ、その活動がたたえられている。

The prime minister wants to meet and thank the workers who remained at the plant after the nuclear accident started and tried to contain the damage. The workers, who did their best to prevent the damage from spreading in a dangerous situation, have been praised as "Fukushima 50".

So... It takes the prime minister of the country one and a half year to thank the workers who stayed at the plant to try to contain the accident.

If I remember right, from last year, "Fukushima 50" workers were not praised in Japan first. I don't think many Japanese were even aware of them. Foreign media, mostly in the US and UK, reported the desperate work going on at Fukushima I Nuke Plant in March last year, calling the workers who remained at the plant "Fukushima 50" and praised them as heroes. The news was imported to Japan, and the Japanese media started to report about the workers and their work at the plant (here's Asahi, on April 10, 2011, my translation).

Yakuza or not, these workers worked in the middle of the worst nuclear disaster in Japan.

So far, the only recognition these workers got is foreign - Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for Concord in September 2011.

In case you missed, here's what ex-Plant Manager Masao Yoshida said about those early days, when he saw divine figures sprung out of the ground and became the workers (here and here).

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(Part 2 of 2) Video Interview Transcript of Former Plant Manager of #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Masao Yoshida: "We Put the Names of Workers on the Whiteboard, As a Grave Marker"

Following the part 1 , here's the part 2 of the video transcript of Mr. Masao Yoshida, former plant manager of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

Again, the occasion was a small symposium in Fukushima on August 11, 2012, and Mr. Yoshida's video interview was done in July, before he had cerebral hemorrhage.

The transcript is from Mainichi Shinbun article (8/11/2012), not from the video which only 140 or so people who attended the seminar got to watch.

−−吉田さんは所員の精神の支柱だった。
Workers relied on you as their mental [emotional] support.

◆私は何もしていない。私のとりえは福島第１原発に４回、赴任したことだ。第１原発のメンバーの名前もほとんどわかっているし、協力企業さんも結構つきあいがあり、名前で呼べるんですね。「○○さん、○○くん、大丈夫か」とか。それだけだ。それで声をかけただけだ。私は。何もできていない。みんなやってくれたということだ。いまだにそう思っている。

I didn't do anything. All I can say is that I have worked at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on 4 different appointments. I know almost all [TEPCO] workers at the plant, and I know many in the affiliate companies. I know their names. "Mr. so-and-so, are you alright?" That was it. I asked them. That's all I did. I couldn't do anything. Everyone else did it. That's how I still feel.

−−事細かなコミュニケーションをとったということか？
You mean you took time to communicate with them?

◆そうだ。やはり知らない間じゃないということだ。昔から一緒に仕事をした仲間だ。そういう仲間が大変な現場に行って帰ってき、出て行くというのを見ているので、頭を下げるしかない。

Yes. We know each other. We've been working together for a long time, we're colleagues [we've been in this together]. I watched these colleagues of mine go to the horrendous scene of the accident at the plant, come back, and go back out again. All I could do was to bow my head [and thank them].

−−３号機が爆発した段階では死ぬかと思ったか？
Did you think you would die when Reactor 3 blew up?

◆今回一番インパクトがあったのは１号機もそうだが、３号機の爆発というのがあった。これは今まで経験した中で非常に、あとから考えれば水素爆発だったが、その時点では何が起こったかわからないという状態なので、これから、もう破滅的に何か起こってるんじゃないかと思った。爆発について。一つは自分が死ぬということ、メンバーも含めて、免震重要棟の人間は死んでたっておかしくない状態だった。３号機なんかは特にそうだった。あれだけのがれきが飛んできて。私は、最初は行方不明者が何人ということを聞いた時に、確か数十人レベルでまだ安否が確認できていないというのが最初の状況だった。ああこれは１０人ぐらい死んだかもしれないというふうに思った。そこから時々刻々、だれだれがという話が入ってきて、軽傷の人間は何人かいたが。それから自衛隊の方には本当に申し訳なかった。水を補給しにきてくれた自衛隊の部隊がけがをされて、本当に申し訳ないと思っている。不幸中の幸いで人命にかかわるものではなく、これはある意味、仏様のあれかなという感じが私はしている。

In addition to Reactor 1 ['s explosion], Reactor 3's explosion made the strongest impact [on me]. In retrospect it was a hydrogen explosion, but at that time we didn't know what was happening. I thought something catastrophic had happened. About the explosions. I could die, and all people in the Anti-Seismic Building could die, at any moment. It was particularly so after the explosion at Reactor 3. That much debris flying all over. When I first heard that several people were missing, safety of tens of people was not confirmed yet. I thought, maybe more than 10 people just died. Then, more information started to come in, confirming the safety of people, though there were some with minor injuries. And I feel very sorry for the Self Defense Force. The SDF troop came to supply water and they were caught in the explosion and were injured. I am very sorry. One consolation is that injuries were not life-threatening, and I feel as if it was some kind of divine providence.

−−原発に残ったメンバーの名前をホワイトボードに書くように指示したとのことだが、どのような思いだったか？
You instructed your people to write down the names of the members who remained in the plant on the whiteboard. What were you thinking?

◆ほとんどその時のことを思い出せないが、たぶん、要するに最後まで残って戦ったのはこんな人間だぞということを残しておこうということだ。今から思えば。わかんないですよ。私自身。本当に。

I hardly remember how it was, but probably I just wanted to show what kind of people remained and fought till the bitter end. In retrospect. I don't know myself, really.

−−墓標になると思って書いたということか。

You thought it would serve as a grave marker.

◆はい。そうだ。

Yes.

−−最後に何かお話はあるか？

Any last thoughts, comments?

◆いずれにしても今回の事象は、いろいろ国会とか政府事故調、民間事故調などで書かれているが、我々は特に政府事故調にはすべてを話をさせていただいた。マスコミの方からいろいろ問い合わせがあるが、お話は全部すべてそちらでさせていただいているので、そこをベースに考えていただければいいと思っている。ただやっぱりなかなか我々の肉声というのは通じない。調査委員会を通すと肉声がなかなか届かない。その部分はいろいろな形でちゃんとメッセージを発信していかないといけないと思っている。私一人ではなくてあそこで一緒にやったいろいろな仲間の経験をちゃんと伝えたい。

This event [Mr. Yoshida uses an industry term for this accident] has been discussed and written up by the investigation commissions by the Diet, Cabinet Office, and the private foundation. We [at TEPCO] have thoroughly discussed with the Cabinet Office investigation commission in particular. There are many inquiries from the mass media, but we have said all to these commissions [TEPCO wasn't interviewed by the private commission] so I think it is enough for the media to go from there. But it is hard to have our true voice heard. Our true voice does not come across through the [reports of the] investigation commissions. For that part, I think we should spread the message in various ways. Not just my experience, but the experience of my colleagues who worked at the plant together, I would like to tell properly.

−−これから第１原発や福島県はどうあるべきか？

How should Fukushima I Nuke Plant and Fukushima Prefecture be, from now on?

◆そういう次元の高い話になると今すぐに答えがないが、やっぱり発電所をどうきちっと安定化させるかがベースだ。そこができていない中で、地元にお帰りいただくわけにはいかないので、そこが最大の（課題だ）。これは事故当時も言っていたが、日本国中だけでなく世界の知恵を集めて、より発電所、第１原発をより安定化させることが一番求められている。いろいろなだれの責任うんぬんということもきちっとやるべきだが、やはり発電所を少しでも安定させる。それには人も必要だし、技術もいろいろな知恵が必要だ。そこに傾注するということが重要なことだと思う。そのうえで、地元の方々に（通常の）生活に戻っていただけるか考えることができる。いずれにしても現場を落ち着かせる、安定化させることが一番重要な責務だ。私はちょっとまだ十分な体力がないが、戻ったらそういう形で現場のために力を届けたい。

That's a high-level question, and I don't have a ready answer for that. But it comes down to how to make the plant stabilized in a proper way. We cannot have the residents [in the surrounding areas] come back home while this is not accomplished, so it is the largest (task). What's needed most, as I was also saying during the accident, is to make Fukushima I Nuke Plant more stabilized, using the knowledge and expertise not just in Japan but in the world. We should properly assign responsibility [for the accident] on people, but what's most important is to make the plant as stable as possible. We need people for that, we need technologies and new ideas. I think it is important to focus [on the stabilization of the plant]. Only then we can decide whether the local residents can return to their normal lives. In any way, the most important task is to calm down, stabilize the situation at the plant. I still don't have enough strength, but when I come back [from illness] I want to do all I can for the plant that way [i.e. making the plant more stable].

It seems it was this last paragraph that went on a "telephone game" in some foreign media:

1. Yoshida says they need to stabilize the plant.

2. That means the plant is not stable, as of now.

3. Therefore, the plant is unstable, in danger.

4. Run! It's dangerous.

All Mr. Yoshida said was the plant needs to be made more stable, in a proper way - replacing Kanaflex hoses would be one, removing the debris and clutter would be another - so that the plant's various operations can run in a smooth, predictable manner, with no accidents like small fires and water leaks, not to mention major accidents.

By the way, this "Yoshida said the plant is not stable" duly came back to Japan as a credible piece of news in English, but it quickly disappeared among more sensational headlines (like butterfly mutation due to Fukushima radiation, for one).

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Video Interview of Former Plant Manager of #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Masao Yoshida: "I Saw Divine Beings in Workers in Hellish Situation" (Part 1 of 2)

(UPDATE: Part 2 of the video interview transcript is here.)

Mainichi Shinbun has the slightly-paraphrased but full transcript of the video interview with Masao Yoshida, former Plant Manager of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Since late July he has been hospitalized for cerebral hemorrhage, but the video interview, which was conducted on July 10, was shown at a small symposium in Fukushima on August 11, 2012.

I hope for the full recovery for Mr. Yoshida, so that he can continue to speak for the workers who have worked and who still work at the plant, trying to make the plant as stable as possible.

Mainichi's article reporting on the symposium has a screen capture of the video, which seems to be subtitled in English by the symposium organizer (a bookstore). But I don't have access to the video, so the following is my translation from the Mainichi transcript. It is most likely different from the official translation by the symposium organizer, and the mistakes contained in the translation below would be my mistakes, not the organizer's.

Here's Part 1 of the translation. The sentences are broken into paragraphs for easier reading. There are no paragraphs in the original Japanese text.

From Mainichi Shinbun (8/11/2012):

−−第１原発の現場の声を伝えてほしい。
Tell us about what it was like at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

◆昨年の大震災、それから私たちの発電所の事故で福島県の地元の方々に本当にご迷惑をおかけしている。この場で深くおわび申し上げる。まだしばらくこういう状況が続くが、我々も全力を挙げて復旧しており、ご理解をお願いする。

本来ならこの講演会に自分で出てきたいと思っていたが、昨年末から病気でずっと入院していてまだ体力が回復していない。そういう中でこういうビデオレターということで失礼する。政府などの事故調査委員会が開催されている中で、なかなか一般のマスコミの方に我々の生の声を届けるわけにはいかないと思っていた。事故調査委員会が一段落するまでは変な形でお話しをすることはルール違反になると私は思っていた。そういう中で（今回）話を聞いていただけるということは大変ありがたいと思っている。

The last year's earthquake and tsunami, and the accident of our nuclear power plant, have caused a great deal of hardship to the local residents in Fukushima Prefecture. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize deeply. The situation is likely to continue for a while, but we are doing our best to restore the plant. Please understand.

I wanted to come to this symposium in person, but I've been hospitalized since the end of last year and my strength hasn't been restored. So please excuse me for talking to you through video like this. As long as the accident investigation commissions were conducting their investigations, I didn't think I should speak to the mass media about the real situation at the plant. I thought it would be a violation of the rules to speak out, until the accident investigation commissions concluded their investigation. So, I welcome (this opportunity) in which you kindly allow me to speak.

−−発電所からの全面撤退がささやかれている。事実は？
Some say you [or TEPCO] contemplated full withdrawal from the plant. Is that true?

◆しゃべりだすととまらないが、基本的に私が考えていたのは第１原発をどうやって安定化させるかということに尽きる。そういう時に我々が現場を離れるということは絶対にあってはならない。かといって人命は非常に尊いので、関係のない人といったらおかしいが、事故の収拾に直接関与していない人には避難していただく。ただやはり現場で原子炉を冷やしたり、そういう作業をしている人間は撤退できないと思っていたし、本店にも撤退ということは一言も言っていないし、私は思ってもいなかった。本店には一言も撤退と言っていないということは間違いない。事故調にもそう話をしている。あとでいぶかしく思ったが結局、本店と官邸の間でそういう撤退騒ぎが起こっているが現場では一言も絶対そういうことは言っていない。これは間違っていない。

I could go on forever on the topic, but basically all I was thinking at that time was how to stabilize the plant. In such a situation, leaving the scene of the accident should never happen. However, the life is extremely precious, and people who were not involved, people who were not directly involved in the accident needed to be evacuated. Those people who were engaged in cooling the reactors, I didn't think they could evacuate. I have never said a word about withdrawal to the TEPCO headquarters, and it didn't enter my mind at all. I am 100 percent sure that I never said a word about withdrawal, and that's what I told the accident investigation commission [of the Cabinet Office] so. I was puzzled later [about the issue], but the fuss over "withdrawal" happened between the TEPCO Headquarters and the Prime Minister's Office, but we at the plant never said a word about that [withdrawal]. I'm quite positive on that.

−−自らの命を亡くす覚悟はあったか？
Were you prepared to die?

◆覚悟というほどの覚悟があったかはよくわからないが、結局、我々が離れてしまって注水ができなくなってしまうということは、もっとひどく放射能漏れになる。そうすると５、６号機はプラントはなんとか安定しているが、人もいなくなると結局あそこもメルト（ダウン）するというか、燃料が溶けることになる。そのまま放っておくと、もっと放射能も出る。福島第２原発も一生懸命、プラントを安定化させたが、あそこにも人が近づけなくなるかもしれない。そうなると非常に大惨事になる。そこまで考えれば、当然のことながら逃げられない。

そんな中で大変な放射能、放射線がある中で、現場に何回も行ってくれた同僚たちがいるが、私が何をしたというよりも彼らが一生懸命やってくれて、私はただ見てただけの話だ。私は何もしていない。実際ああやって現場に行ってくれた同僚一人一人は、本当にありがたい。私自身が免震重要棟にずっと座っているのが仕事で、現場に行けていない。いろいろな指示の中で本当にあとから現場に話を聞くと大変だったなと思うが、（部下は）そこに飛び込んでいってくれた。本当に飛び込んでいってくれた連中がたくさんいる。

私が昔から読んでいる法華経の中に地面から菩薩（ぼさつ）がわいてくるというところがあるが、そんなイメージがすさまじい地獄のような状態で感じた。現場に行って、（免震重要棟に）上がってきてヘロヘロになって寝ていない、食事も十分ではない、体力的に限界という中で、現場に行って上がってまた現場に行こうとしている連中がたくさんいた。それを見た時にこの人たちのために何かできることを私はしなければならないと思った。そういう人たちがいたから、（第１原発の収束について）このレベルまでもっていけたと私は思っている。

I don't know if I was prepared, but in the end, if we were to leave and water injection stopped, more radiation would leak. Then, Reactors 5 and 6, which were somehow stable, would melt, I mean the fuel would melt, once there was no one at the plant. If the plant was left all by itself, more radiation would leak. We managed to stabilize Fukushima II (Daini) Power plant, but we might not be able to be there [if Fukushima I was abandoned and more radiation leaked]. That would be a catastrophe. If you think that way, there is no way we could just run away.

In that situation, in the tremendous amount of radioactivity, my colleagues went to the scenes of the accident a number of times. It was them who did all they could, and all I did was to watch them do it. I didn't do anything. I really appreciate and thank every single one of my colleagues who went to the scenes of the accident. My job was to stay put in the Anti-Seismic Building, and I couldn't go to the accident scenes. I gave orders, and when I heard from the workers later, I knew it was a serious [terrible] situation. But [people who worked under me] went there without hesitation. There were many of them, who literally jumped into the scenes of the accident, trying to contain it.

In a Buddhism text that I've been reading for a long time, there is a mention of divine figures issuing from the ground. That was what I felt was happening in the hellish situation at the plant. Workers would go to the scenes of the accident, then come back upstairs (at the Anti-Seismic Building), they were dead tired, without sleep, with not enough food, reaching the limit of their physical strength. Then they would go out again, and come back, and go out again. There were many workers like them. When I saw these workers, I knew I had to do whatever I could for them. It's my belief that we have been able to restore the plant to the current level [of relative stability], because of these workers.

The precise word Mr. Yoshida uses for "divine figure" is "Bodhisattva" - one who vows to save all beings before becoming a buddha.

It was probably the first time that anyone from TEPCO spoke words of praise and appreciation for the workers at the plant in a personal way like Mr. Yoshida did. According to the local Fukushima newspapers, Yoshida's words were much appreciated by the families whose members worked or still works at the plant.

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National Diet's Independent Commission on #Fukushima Accident Agrees with TEPCO's Shimizu that TEPCO Had No Intention of "Withdrawing Completely" from the Plant

The independent investigation commission of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident set up by the National Diet called TEPCO's ex-president Masataka Shimizu as witness on June 8 in an open hearing, and on June 9 held a commission meeting (also open to public) to summarize the main findings so far.

Unlike the private independent investigation commission whose report was released in March this year, the Diet's commission concluded that TEPCO did NOT intend to "withdraw completely" from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant when President Shimizu was trying frantically to reach the top officials from late March 14 till early hours of March 15 last year.

From Jiji Tsushin (6/9/2012):

「全員撤退」意図せずと認定＝官邸の過剰介入批判－福島原発事故・国会事故調

National Diet's Independent Investigation Commission of Fukushima Nuclear Accident acknowledges that TEPCO didn't intend to "withdraw completely", criticizes the excessive intervention by the Prime Minister's Office

東京電力福島第１原発事故を検証する国会の事故調査委員会（黒川清委員長）は９日、公開で委員会を開き、今月末の報告書作成に向け論点整理を行った。この中で、東電の清水正孝前社長による「撤退」申し入れについて、「東電が全員撤退を決めたとは認められず、官邸が東電の撤退を阻止した事実はない」と認定した。

The National Diet's Independent Investigation Commission of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident (Chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa) held a public commission meeting on June 9 to organize the issues to be presented in the final report due at the end of June. In the meeting, regarding the proposal from then-President of TEPCO Masataka Shimizu to "withdraw", the Commission acknowledged that "it doesn't consider that TEPCO decided a complete withdrawal [from the plant] and that it is not a fact that the Prime Minister's Office interrupted the TEPCO's withdrawal".

昨年３月１４日夜から翌１５日未明にかけての撤退申し入れをめぐっては、第１原発からの「全員撤退」と解釈した菅直人前首相ら官邸側と、「一部要員を残すつもりだった」とする東電側の主張が対立していた。

Over the proposal to withdraw from March 14 night till early morning of March 15 last year, the officials at the Prime Minister's Official Residence including then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan have been at odds with TEPCO's management. The former understood the proposal as "complete withdrawal", while the latter insisted "they were going to keep the core members at the plant".

事故調は菅氏や清水氏らの証言などを基に、「全員撤退の意思はなかった」とした上で、その後の対応について「原子炉の状況を最も把握していた現場の使命感がポイントだった」と指摘。「官邸が現場と直接やりとりする想定していない方法で介入し、頻繁に電話が入るような事態が起きた」と官邸を批判した。

Based on the testimonies from Mr. Kan, Mr. Shimizu and others, the Commission determined that "there was no intention to withdraw completely". As to the response afterwards, the Commission pointed out that "the key was the sense of mission held by the people at the plant who understood the condition of the reactors best". It criticized the Prime Minister's Official Residence by saying "it intervened in a way that was never intended such as communicating directly with the plant [management], and [the plant management] had to answer the frequent calls."

What is not mentioned in the above Jiji article is exactly what word Mr. Shimizu used when he tried to reach Mr. Kaieda (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry overseeing the nuclear safety agency).

In his testimony on June 8, Mr. Shimizu said he consistently used the word "退避 (tai-hi)" when speaking with the government officials and never　the word "撤退 (tettai)" as apparently understood by the officials in the Kan administration and by PM Kan himself. OK, what's the difference? Some would ask "What difference does that make?"

Having followed TEPCO's announcements and press conferences since March last year, I've come to notice that the company sometimes use peculiar language that differs significantly from the common-sense understanding of the general public. One such example is the "water puddle" TEPCO said existed in the basements of reactor buildings and turbine buildings early on in the accident. At TEPCO, standing water more than 30 centimeter deep flooding the entire basement is called "water puddle" (水たまり）. Then I noticed the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency officials used the same word to describe the flooded basement. More recently, independent journalist Ryuichi Kino noticed TEPCO's new president used exactly the same language as the top bureaucrats at the top ministries.

Maybe it does matter, at least to TEPCO and the government officials, what exact language to use in a certain occasion, in order to be precisely understood by the other party.

Since I like the saying "The Devil is in the details", I looked up the words in the Japanese language dictionary.

Mr. Shimizu's word of choice was "退避 (tai-hi)". According to one of the most authoritative Japanese language dictionaries (三省堂 大辞林), it means:

その場所から離れて危険をさけること。
To leave the place and avoid danger.

What PM Kan and Mr. Kaieda said they understood as Shimizu meant was "撤退 (tettai)", which means:

軍隊などが陣地などを取り払って退くこと。
To remove a position/base as in the military and withdraw

The former does have a connotation that the move is temporary, whereas the latter, by removing a position/base, is a permanent withdrawal, in defeat.

Both Mr. Kan and Mr. Kaieda also said they thought it was an "all-out" withdrawal, because Mr. Shimizu didn't use the word "partial". Shimizu said he was surprised that the administration understood his carefully chosen word "temporary shelter" - "taihi" as "all-out withdrawal" - "tettai".

The Diet commission's conclusion was that it was a case of miscommunication. TEPCO's Shimizu thought he was telling these officials that he wanted his workers to temporarily take shelter in a less irradiated location while keeping the core people at the plant. Messrs Kan and Kaieda thought "taihi" and "tettai" were the same thing and decided Shimizu was announcing an all-out withdrawal from the plant. It seems Mr. Shimizu's mistake was he thought he was talking to high-ranking bureaucrats with whom he had dealt before the accident. Unlike many politicians neither Mr. Kan nor Mr. Kaieda had been trained in law (Kan was an applied physics major, Kaieda political science) or through elite bureaucracy. (Mr. Edano would have understood Mr. Shimizu perfectly, but Mr. Edano says he never spoke with Mr. Shimizu.)

TEPCO workers and workers from affiliate companies (Hitachi, Toshiba, Kandenko, etc. and their subcontractors) remained at the plant as the radiation levels were several hundred millisieverts/hour and at one point exceeding 1 sievert/hour (see the AP article from 3/16/2011 at the link), with only 2 meals per day and sleeping on the floor as the government refused to provide workers with better food and other provisions. And the world hailed them as heroes as "Fukushima 50".

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The Atlantic Wire: The Yakuza and the Nuclear Mafia

The article is written by Jake Adelstein, who has written about the yakuza (Japanese 'mafia') extensively in the past. I believe he was also the one who reported on one of the earliest and the most substantial disaster relief effort which was carried out by the yakuzas, who sent truckload after truckload of goods to the disaster-affected areas in Tohoku right after the earthquake/tsunami on March 11, 2011.

I have the second half of Tomohiko Suzuki's press conference report to post, but while you wait for that, here's Jake Adelstein's article.

From The Atlantic Wire (12/30/2011), emphasis is mine:

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the monolithic corporation that controls all electric power in Greater Tokyo, and runs the Fukushima Daichii nuclear plant that experienced a triple meltdown following the March 11 earthquake, is on the brink of nationalization according to Japanese government sources. The official reason is that the firm may not be able to handle the massive compensation payments it owes to victims of the meltdown without going bankrupt. Unofficially, the firm has such long-standing ties to anti-social forces, including the yakuza—that some members of the Diet, Japan’s national legislature, feel the firm is beyond salvation and needs to be taken over and cleaned up. A Japanese Senator with the Liberal Democratic Party stated on background, "TEPCO's involvement with anti-social forces and their inability to filter them out of the work-place is a national security issue. It is one reason that increasingly in the Diet we are talking de facto nationalization of the company. Nuclear energy shouldn't be in the hands of the yakuza. They're gamblers and an intelligent person doesn't want them to have atomic dice to play with."

In June we reported that yakuza were working at the Fukushima nuclear power plant as cleanup crews and manual labor, but the post-meltdown yakuza ties were only the tip of the iceberg. This month, a new book was published, Yakuza and The Nuclear Industry: Diary of An Undercover Reporter Working at the Fukushima Plant (ヤクザと原発-福島第一潜入記-鈴木-智彦) in which a former yakuza fan magazine editor Tomohiko Suzuki reports on the nuclear business-industrial-political and media complex in Japan known as the “nuclear mafia” and Japan’s actual mafia: the yakuza. The book is already generating controversy and renewed examination of Japan’s “dark empire” and its ties to the underworld. It presents more solid pieces of evidence that Japan’s nuclear industry is a black hole of criminal malfeasance, incompetence, and corruption.

It is not that the industry ties to anti-social forces were previously unknown. Engineers who worked for the firm noted the practice dated of employing yakuza members at nuclear plants dates back to the 1990s. Police sources also recognize that yakuza having been supplying labor to the area for decades. In the Japanese underworld, the nuclear industry is the last refuge for those who have nowhere to go. One yakuza explains it as folk wisdom, “Otoko wa Genpatsu, Onna was Seifuzoku･男は原発、女は性風俗”--, in other words, “When a man is has to survive doing something, it’s the nuclear industry; for a woman, it’s the sex industry.”

The Fukushima plant is located in the turf of the Sumiyoshi-kai, which is the second largest yakuza group in Japan with roughly 12,000 members; it has a well-known office in Tokyo’s Ginza District and operates under the banner Hama Enterprise. One mid-level executive in the organization even defends the role of his members in the Fukushima disaster. “The accident isn’t our fault,” he said. “It’s TEPCO’s fault. We’ve always been a necessary evil in the work process. In fact, if some of our men hadn’t stayed to fight the meltdown, the situation would have been much worse. TEPCO employees and the Nuclear Industry Safety Agency inspectors mostly fled; we stood our ground.”

However, while the symbiotic relationship between TEPCO and the yakuza has existed for decades, the relationship is officially “unacceptable.” The controversy became so great after the accident that TEPCO pledged on July 19 to try to keep yakuza members from participating in the reconstruction of the power plant and related projects. They have been working with the Japanese National Police Agency (JNPA) to accomplish this but sources inside that agency are dubious as to whether there have been any real results. TEPCO officials met with the National Police Agency and 23 subcontractors in July and created a conference group on organized crimes issues according to government sources and they have met several times since. TEPCO explained at the time, “we want to people to widely know our exclusionary stance towards organized crime.”

According to TEPCO and police sources, since the reconstruction project has picked up speed, the number of workers has dramatically increased to several thousand. The JNPA has directed TEPCO from as early as June, to keep the yakuza out—although many of the subcontractors of the subcontractors are known yakuza front companies. Over 140 workers have been found to have used fake names when getting jobs doing reconstruction work and are presently unaccounted for. In reporting for Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry Tomohiko Suzuki was able to get into the reactor as a cleanup worker under false pretenses partly by using organized crime connections. According to Suzuki, three of the fabled “Fukushima Fifty” who stayed behind during the most dangerous days of high-level radiation leaks were local yakuza bosses and soldiers. He does not specify which groups they belonged to.

......

When asked what were the major differences between the yakuza and TEPCO the same Senator paused for a minute. “The primary difference between TEPCO and the yakuza is they have different corporate logos.” He explained, “They both are essentially criminal organizations that place profits above the safety and welfare of the residents where they operate; they both exploit their workers. On the other hand, the yakuza may care more about what happens where they operate because many of them live there. For Tokyo Electric Power Company, Fukushima is just the equivalent of a parking lot.”

(The full article at the link.)

"[T]he yakuza may care more about what happens" - well, I'm not so sure. Maybe in an idealized version often depicted in the films and books, and in the minds of the yakuza themselves as their self-portrait. But what do I know. The writer probably know more about the Japanese underground than me.

I do think the Senator he quotes in the article is too harsh on TEPCO. Many in Japan know that the Police is in a close symbiotic relationship with them, and many thinks the politicians are worse than the yakuza when it comes to treating people. They are also well-known for ties with the yakuza themselves. For a LDP politician to criticize TEPCO's yakuza ties is preposterous, and to say nuclear power is safer in the hands of politicians like himself than in the hands of TEPCO and the yakuza is a sheer nonsense. Instead of TEPCO, the national government would indirectly hire the yakuza and that somehow would be OK by him.

I think Tomohiko Suzuki mentioned the faction of the yakuza that dominates supplying the workers, but it was not Sumiyoshi-kai. (I'll have to finish the post.)

Regarding the yakuza's involvement in procuring (often "kidnapping" would be a better word) workers for the Fukushima I Nuke Plant "recovery", NHK made an excellent documentary back in October (I think) that was aired at midnight. For every worker he sent to Fukushima, a pudgy yakuza guy with a fat gold chain was getting 1 million yen from a subcontractor 6th or 7th degrees removed from the original subcontractor to TEPCO. He said "life is good".

As Adelstein points out as does Suzuki, it's always been like this in the nuclear power industry in Japan. I wonder how it is in the other countries. How are the nuclear power plants maintained? By whom? Who recruits them?

(H/T John Noah)

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TEPCO's #Fuku I Sub-Drain Density Measurement Shows Increase in Late July and Mid August

According to TEPCO's press release on September 17, there were increases in radioactive cesium in the sub-drain of Reactor 1 in late July, then mid August, and in early September. From mid August to early September, iodine-131 was also detected.

This happened most noticeably in Reactor1's sub-drain, but small increases are discernible in Reactor 2's sub-drain, too. (For the sub-drains for other Reactors, see TEPCO's PDF.)

By the way, in a separate presentation, TEPCO says it doesn't quite know exactly what the pressure or the water level is inside the Containment Vessel or the Reactor Pressure Vessel. In the press conference, they didn't quite seem to know what temperature they were measuring. The presentation is in Japanese only. I'll link if they post the English version.

TEPCO and the government are talking about what to do when the "cold shutdown" is finally achieved. How they determine the "cold shutdown" without knowing the pressure or the temperature remains mystery. They are in no hurry to find out where the corium may be, either.

(H/T viola)

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Fukushima I Nuke Plant Workers to Be Awarded Prince of Asturias Award for Concord

The Prince of Asturias Foundation in Spain has decided to give "Fukushima heroes" - workers at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, firefighters and Self Defense Force soldiers who risked (and are still risking) radiation to contain the nuclear disaster - the 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord (peace prize).

Prince of Asturias is the designation given to the crown prince of Spain, or the heir apparent.

Thank you, your Royal Highness.

From the Foundation's press release on September 7:

The 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord has been bestowed on the “heroes of Fukushima”. The Jury for the Award announced its decision today in Oviedo.

This group of people represent the highest values of the human condition by trying to prevent, through their sacrifice, the nuclear disaster caused by the tsunami that struck Japan from multiplying its devastating effects, disregarding the grave consequences that this decision would have on their lives. Their courageous and exemplary behaviour has earned them the international epithet “heroes of Fukushima”.

This candidature was put forward by Josep Piqué i Camps, president of the Spain-Japan Council Foundation (Madrid) and seconded, among others, by Miguel Angel Navarro, Spain’s ambassador to Japan; Fernando Salazar, vice-president of the Spanish Institute of Foreign Trade; Juan José Herrera, director general of Casa Asia; Daniel Hernandez, rector of the University of Salamanca; and Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Mayor of Madrid.

Following the massive earthquake and tsunami that occurred in north-eastern Japan on March 11, 2011 and which caused around 28,000 deaths and displaced some 350,000 people, Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered significant damage resulting in hydrogen explosions and fusion of nuclear fuel as well as causing several deaths and serious injuries due to radiation among workers at the plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Japanese government initially placed the alert levels between 5 and 6 on a scale of 7, and finally at 7, as after the Chernobyl accident.

Despite major uncertainty regarding the development of the nuclear emergency, the different groups that worked for weeks in Fukushima did so under extreme conditions (high radiation, continuously rotating shifts and only a few hours of rest, and limited supplies of food and drinking water). As a result, many workers developed chronic pathologies such as arrhythmia and hyperventilation. Despite these grave consequences, they continued to participate in the efforts to regain control of the nuclear plant, aware of how essential their work was to prevent a catastrophe of even greater magnitude.

The work was carried out by three groups of people: employees of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator; of its 130 workers, 50 volunteered, as did some workers who had already retired or were nearing retirement, and, after increasing the number of rotating shifts and the needs for personnel, additional staff was hired (by May 3, 1,312 workers had intervened in Fukushima); fire fighters from various prefectures, especially from Tokyo, who participated in the work of cooling the reactors, a key task to restore control of the plant; and the Japanese Armed Forces, whose work cooling the reactors by launching water from helicopters, inspecting the damage from the air, cordoning off the exclusion area and evacuating people when the reactors emitted very high doses of radiation was very important.

The behaviour of these people has also embodied the values most deeply rooted in Japanese society, such as the sense of duty, personal and family sacrifice for the greater good and dignity in the face of adversity, humility, generosity and courage.

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Wanted: 20 Healthy Males Who Want over $600 for 4-Hour Work a Day for One Month to Help Disaster-Affected Tohoku

It's probably a job in the disaster-affected area called Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant...

Anyone care to join "Fukushima 50"? It's not too late. They need fresh workers in the "new normal" at the plant where 10 sieverts/hour radiation is considered no big deal. (TEPCO says it doesn't matter because no work is planned in the area of 10-plus sieverts/hr radiation.)

Someone in Japan (t2aki) posted the photo of an ad on a utility pole, which reads:

Urgently Wanted
50,000 yen [US$648] per day
4 hours a day work

(and in handwriting)
Only for one month (20 working days)
2 days of training given

Work to assist recovery in the disaster affected area in Tohoku

No age limit
Healthy males
20 workers wanted

Probably an ad by a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor .... many degrees removed from TEPCO.

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UK Independent: A young man sacrificing his future to shut down Fukushima

The article by David McNeill of UK's The Independent about a young Fukushima I Nuke Plant worker "who sees it as his duty to save the stricken plant – even if it means an early grave", with what seems like a meager pay considering what he has to do.

The "pen" and the "towel" that the worker, Atsushi Watanabe, mentions at the end of the article are two of the typical items that are given in Japan as a token reward or souvenir to people who participate in an event.

The Independent (7/26/2011):

Atsushi Watanabe (not his real name) is an ordinary Japanese man in his 20s, about average height and solidly built, with the slightly bemused expression of the natural sceptic. Among the crowds in Tokyo, in his casual all-black clothes, he could be an off-duty postman or a construction worker. But he does one of the more extraordinary jobs on the planet: helping to shut down the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

That job, in a complex that experienced the first triple-reactor meltdown after Japan's 11 March earthquake and tsunami, means he will never marry or raise a family for fear of health problems down the line, and may not even live to see old age. But he accepts that price. "There are only some of us who can do this job," he says. "I'm single and young and I feel it's my duty to help settle this problem."

Mr Watanabe has been employed as a maintenance worker at Daiichi since he left school more than a decade ago. By the time he was growing up in the 1990s, the intense discussions and protests sparked by the decision to build the plant in 1971 had faded. When he graduated high school, there was little debate in his family about where he would work. "It was seen as a perfectly natural choice," recalls Mr Watanabe, who is using a pseudonym because his employer does not permit its staff to give media interviews. "The plant was like the local air. I wasn't afraid of it at all."

His job was to check the pressure inside pipes, opening and closing the valves. He liked the work, which he felt was important. "I thought we were on a mission to provide safe power for Japan, for Tokyo. I was proud of that."

It paid 180,000 yen (£1,400) a month. Since April, when he agreed to go back inside the Daiichi plant's gates, he has been paid the same amount – plus Y1,000 a day that he calls "lunch money".

On 11 March, when the quake disabled the plant, he watched in terror as pipes hissed and buckled around him. He spent a week in a refugee centre, waiting for the inevitable call from his boss to come back to work. When the call came, he said yes immediately. Everyone was given a choice, although there was, inevitably, unspoken sympathy for the married men with children.

As subcontractors to the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), he and his colleagues are well down the plant's employment food chain. Full-time Tepco employees are at the top, mostly white-collar university graduates with better pay and conditions. Tepco managers, including its president, Masataka Shimizu, who disappeared and became a national laughing stock during the nuclear crisis, are considered desk-bound eggheads; too much head and no heart, unlike the blue-collar workers who kept the plant running.

"[Mr Shimizu] had never worked onsite before or experienced any problems, so when trouble hit his instinct was to run away," Mr Watanabe says. He says he feels no contempt for the disgraced company boss, only sympathy. "If you pushed a guy like that too hard, he might commit suicide."

Initially, he says, some day labourers got big money for braving the lethally poisoned air at the plant. "At 100 millisieverts a day you could only work for a few days, so if you didn't get a month's pay a day, it wasn't worth your while. The companies paid enough to shut them up, in case they got leukaemia or other cancers later down the line. But I have health insurance because I'm not a contract worker, I'm an employee."

Mr Watanabe says it is too early yet to draw a line under the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The government last week announced that its January timetable for bringing the Fukushima plant back under control is on target, but the plant is still leaking one billion becquerels of radiation an hour, according to Tepco, and the state of the uranium fuel inside its three crippled reactors remains a mystery.

"The fuel has melted, but melted through or not – we don't know," Mr Watanabe says. "It's at the bottom of the reactor. If it melts out, and meets water, it would be a major crisis. The engineers are working very hard to get it under control."

Researchers have already started arriving in Fukushima Prefecture, home to two million people, to measure the impact of this radiation on local life. Tim Mousseau, a University of South Carolina biological scientist who spent more than a decade researching inside the irradiated zone around the ruined Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, was there last week. "What we can say is that there are very likely to be very significant long-term health impacts from prolonged exposure," he says.

Whatever happens, Mr Watanabe has abandoned any hope of getting married. "I could never ask a woman to spend her life with me," he says. "If I told her about my work, of course she will worry about my future health or what might happen to our children. And I couldn't hide what I do."

Why do people do dangerous, potentially fatal jobs? Some, as Mr Watanabe does, might consider it a duty to "nation" or "society". No doubt there is an element of bravado too – he compares himself to the young wartime kamikaze pilots who saw themselves as the last line of defence against invasion and disaster.

Whatever his reasons, Mr Watanabe displays infinitely more humility, concern for humanity and humour than the men who run his industry. For roughly the same take-home pay as a young office clerk, he and his workmates have sacrificed any hope of normal lives. He has never met the Prime Minister, the local prefecture Governor or even the boss of Tepco. He will never have children and may die young. In another world, he might be paid as much as a Wall Street trader, an idea that makes him laugh.

"I'll probably get a pen and a towel when I retire," he says. "That's the price of my job."

(h/t sailzazen)

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Wife of a Worker Who Died of Heart Attack at Fukushima I Nuke Plant Wants His Death Recognized as Industrial Accident

Remember the worker at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant who collapsed on the second day on the job and died on May 14, without any treatment for nearly 3 hours because 1) there was no doctor at Fukushima I Nuke Plant; 2) no ambulance would come to the plant so TEPCO drove him to J-Village which is 20 kilometers away; 3) there was nothing they could do at J-Village so finally they put him on an ambulance to a hospital in Iwaki City, 48 kilometers from the plant and 28 kilometers from J-Village?

And his death was due to a heart attack, we were later told.

The following is my liberal redaction mixed with my observation of the Mainichi Shinbun Japanese article (7/12/2011). If you read Japanese, go read it. I just cannot do the literal translation, as it is too painful.

Well, the worker was Mr. Nobukatsu Osumi, 60 years old at the time of his death, of Omaezaki City in Shizuoka Prefecture. He had worked in various nuclear power plants as a plumber. He was hired by a subcontractor 4th-degree removed from the original contractor to work at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant as a temporary worker.

He was one of those nameless workers who support the operation of nuclear plants in Japan, moving from plant to plant and doing necessary maintenance and repair work. They used to be called "Genpatsu (nuke plant) Gypsy" in Japan. More recently, they were called "Fukushima 50".

On the first day of his work on May 13, his shift was from 6AM to 9AM. His job was to work on the pipe installation in the Central Waste Processing Facility (where the contaminated water treatment system was being set up). On the second day on May 14, he collapsed as he was carrying a special cutting tool with a colleague, and never regained consciousness.

As I said, there was no doctor on site, and there was no ambulance that would come. The hospitals in the area nearby had been evacuated or abandoned.

Since he died of an illness, not an injury, neither TEPCO nor Toshiba, the original contractor whose 4th-degree subcontractor hired Mr. Osumi, has paid any compensation to his widow, 53-year-old wife from Thailand.

And it is the wife, with the help of an attorney, who has filed for the worker's compensation claiming her husband's death was due to the excessively heavy workload in a very short time period and should be recognized as "industrial accident".

She says her husband did not have any particular health problem. When she saw her husband's body at the morgue at the Fukushima police station, both his ears were in deep purple color, and there were cuts on the face and the chin. But it was determined that the cause of death was illness, and there was no compensation. TEPCO says there's not much connection between the nature of the work and his death. Toshiba says there's not enough information to link the work condition with his death.

TEPCO says his radiation exposure was low, at 0.68 millisievert. 0.68 millisievert in less than 3 days is LOW? Since he had worked at other nuclear power plants over the years, his accumulated radiation exposure may have been significant.

The last conversation they had was on the night Mr. Osumi arrived at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. Mr. Osumi told his wife that he would work for 2 more years, then they would go to Thailand and become farmers, as his wife does not read or write Japanese well.

The wife feels tormented for having sent her husband off to a place she didn't know was dangerous. She still works as a part-time worker at a bento (lunch box) factory from 5AM to 7PM, sometimes to 10PM, and earns 130,000 yen (about US$1,600) per month. She says she doesn't even know how to go to places without her husband. She still lives in an apartment she shared with her husband, but now when she comes home there is no one who would cheerfully greet her.

Not a cent for a lowly worker who worked and died at Fukushima I, but the ex-president of TEPCO can get $6 million upon retirement, or so it is rumored.

Not a very proud moment to be a Japanese.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: They Will Start Charging Workers for Food at J-Village

(UPDATE: Someone on Twitter says they are going to charge for a shower, too.)

Starting July 13, the workers at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant will have to pay for food at the J-Village, a staging area for the work at the plant.

For the umpteenth time since the triple disasters of earthquake/tsunami/nuke struck, I am rather ashamed and disappointed to be Japanese. The first time was when the Japanese government had TEPCO dump the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean, and the government made a middle manager at TEPCO announce, who was in tears, while PM Kan hid and said nothing.

I was disappointed with the cowardice and pettiness of TPTB in Japan.

And now, more pettiness. I don't know whether it's the sole decision of TEPCO (highly possible, with the chairman still at the helm who is known for his relentless cost-cutting) or with NISA.

The information is from a tweet of a worker at the plant. He could be wrong, and it could be just a "baseless rumor" floating at the plant (I hope so).

But he says:

Looks like we'll have to pay for food at J-Village from July 13. It's been free. I hope water will still be free. My group has been paying for Bento [lunch box] to eat, but there are many workers who get their food for free there.

People reading his tweets are shocked that he's been paying for his own food.

He is worried that some workers may skip breakfast as the result before coming to the plant for the work. He also speculates on the cost aspect, as "manufacturers have been raising unit costs".

With a cost-conscious company like TEPCO, cutting cost by cutting the free food may not be so surprising. What's truly disappointing is the government that continues to look the other way, as if this nuclear disaster is nothing but an extensive repair job on a nuclear power plant owned by TEPCO.

Instead, they are busy concocting the laughable "stress test" for the nuclear plants in Japan so that they can restart the plants ASAP. Just a bunch of petty, coward, myopic people.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Asahi's Report on "Fukushima 50"

Asahi Shinbun (9:00AM JST 4/10/2011) has a special report on the "Fukushima 50".

An interesting segment in the report written by Asahi's reporters Hiroaki Kojima, and Ryujiro Komatsu about non-TEPCO workers at the plant (my quick translation, not Asahi's; they don't have it in English yet):

"How many are you going to send? Show us your resolve."

Right after the earthquake, in the conference room of a group company of Hitachi, nuclear reactor manufacturer. A manager in charge of the division that does the work at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant demanded from the employee in the technical management division. Instead of issuing orders and direction from a distance, they [technical management division] should be joining him and his people at the plant and face the challenge together. After a heated exchange, many employees with technical background went to the plant.

The middle managers of the company reflected on this decision as "a grave decision", as the work would put the employees life on the line.

A 40-year-old man who went to work at the plant from one of TEPCO's affiliate company confided, "I didn't want to go but if I declined [the company] wouldn't get future jobs [from TEPCO]." His daily wage was ten thousand yen plus a few thousand yen [more than 10,000, probably less than 15,000]. "I heard that there were workers who were hired for several tens of thousands of yen per hour for construction work [or from the construction industry, not clear]. But since my company is TEPCO's regular affiliate, we only receive our normal daily wage."

On the other hand, many of his colleagues volunteered, thinking they would be the only ones [who could solve the problems at the plant]. "There was a strong sense of solidarity," the man said.

At one company who is a subcontractor [doesn't say at which level], older managing directors and the president of the company volunteered, saying "We can do the simple tasks like laying cables." It was their decision to shield their younger workers [from potential harm from radiation]. In Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant, which has been relatively stable compared to Fukushima I, we hear that even a young woman who was hired right after graduating from high school works the night shift [or works and sleeps at the plant].


「そっちは何人出すんだ。覚悟を見せろ」

　地震発生直後、原子炉メーカー「日立製作所」のグループ企業の会議室。福島第一原発で作業にあたる部門の担当者が、技術管理をする社員に詰め寄った。離 れた場所から指示を出すのではなく、現場で危機感を共有し、難局を乗り越えようと訴えた。激しい応酬の末、多くの技術系社員が現場に入った。

　社員の生命に関わる任務だけに、同社の中堅幹部は「重い決断だった」と振り返る。

　東電の協力会社から作業に参加した４０代の男性は、「行きたくなかったが、断れば今後の仕事がなくなる」と打ち明ける。日当は１万数千円。「時給数万円で雇われた建設関係の作業員もいるらしいが、日頃から東電と協力関係にある我々は通常の日当で働いている」

　一方で、「自分たちしかいない」と責任感を持って志願した同僚も多く、「現場には団結感があった」と話す。

　ある下請けの工事会社では、高齢の専務や社長たちが作業に名乗り出た。「俺たちだって簡単なケーブルの敷設作業ぐらいはできる」。若い作業員の将来を思 い、盾になると決意した。比較的安定している第二原発では、地元の高校を出て採用された若い女性も泊まり込みで勤務しているという。（小島寛明、小松隆次 郎）

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#Fukushima Fifty: Myth and Reality

For myths of so-called "Fukushima 50", you can read a whole bunch of UK and US sites, the latest being UK's Telegraph piece here. Or NY Times article from March 15, here.

"Fukushima 50", nameless, dedicated soldiers with the burning sense of mission to save the plant.

And here's part of the reality:

Here's an ad (in Japanese) for 1 temporary worker to work at Fukushima I and II Nuclear Power Plant. It was placed by a small construction company with 10 employees in Minami-Soma City, about 15 miles north of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, on February 3 this year. The ad will be effective until April 30. The ad has been circulating via the net in Japan since the Reactor 1 blew up.

Job description and compensation information from the ad:

• 1 temporary worker wanted for Fukushima I and II Nuclear Power Plant

• Job description: to carry out regular maintenance, machinery, electrical, welding and blacksmithing and scaffolding at the nuclear plants
  

• Daily pay: 9,000 yen to 11,000 yen (US$110 to $135)

• Monthly average pay: 189,000 yen to 231,000 yen (US$2,317 to $2,831) [21 to 25 days per month]

• Set benefits: None

• Bonus: 8,000 yen (US$98) for not missing a work in a month.

• Age: any age

• Education level: any
  

• Qualification: none

• Skills, experience: none needed

• Duration: more than 4 months, or 12-month contract

• Work hours: 8AM to 5PM

• Day off: Sat, Sun, holidays; 1 day every week; total days off per year 113 days

• Employer name: Takayama Sogyo

• Employer's business: facility construction and maintenance at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants, and general construction and maintenance, contract farming

Would you like to risk your life with radiation for $110 a day? Well there are people who would be desperate for a job, any job, even a dangerous one like cleaning and inspecting the reactor core during the regular maintenance.

My guess is that this subcontractor gets money from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), keep a good chunk of it as the "management" fee.

Takayama Sogyo is also hiring three welders/blacksmiths as regular employees with some benefits and higher daily wages (14,000 yen to 15,000 yen per day), because the company does require "experience" in working in a nuclear power plant, but also says "applicants with no prior experience in nuclear power plants are also considered, case by case".

In case no one with an experience applies for the job, I suppose.

It's no secret in Japan that TEPCO uses, just like any other power companies, numerous subcontractors who in turn use even greater number of subcontractors for dangerous works at nuclear power plants. There has been a quiet whispers from the beginning of this crisis that the workers that TEPCO uses at the plant are from the subcontractors near the bottom of the pyramid who really have no choice but send in workers, whether their own or temps in order to secure future business.

Read my previous post on "Genpatsu (Nuclear Power Plant) Gypsy" - the article that was yanked from Chunichi Shinbun.

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