http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/ME05Dh01.html
Front line at Fukushima
Anne Roy interviews Paul Jobin
This interview concludes a two-part account of the use of contract workers in the Japanese nuclear power industry and particularly at the Fukushima power plant largely destroyed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (Part 1: Dying for TEPCO, Asia Times Online, May 04, 2011.)
A specialist on Japan, sociologist Paul Jobin offers us his analysis at a moment when workers are attempting to get a hold on the situation at Fukushima.
We read that they are sleeping on the hard soil, that they have only two meals per day, and are rationed in drinking water. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and its subcontractors allow little information to filter out concerning workers fighting on the front lines at the Fukushima power plant. Jobin knows these
places well. In 2002, while doing research on sub-contractors in the
nuclear industry, he interviewed managers and temporary workers in that plant. He analyzes the current situation in the light of this experience.
Anne Roy: What is known about the workers who currently work at the plant in Fukushima?
Paul Jobin: It's a paradoxical situation. There has never been so much said about nuclear issues in Japan, but information remains scarce about those who are at the heart of the volcano, in central Fukushima. [For a fortnight], we saw no people except the helicopter pilots who dropped the seawater, and now the soldiers of the national defense forces and firefighters, using firemen's lamps. We had to wait until Friday, March 25 to see the first photos of workers in full protective suits, these being worn inside the plant, where you could see the general state of disrepair, even in computer and control rooms, barely lit ... That day, three sub-contractors were taken to the hospital because they were seriously irradiated. That was the first time we heard officially about subcontractors. But when you know how a plant like that functions under normal circumstances, one can only assume that they comprised 90% of workers on site. They are the ones who do the maintenance work, and who receive the collective dose of radiation - these are the official figures.
But then there are different types of sub-contractors: at the very bottom of the pyramid there are, for example, temporary workers who use mops to clean the reactors, or who deal with used protective clothing. They receive the strongest doses. Then come the technicians (plumbers, electricians) who inspect facilities, piping and pumps, and at the very top, there are the technicians, managers and engineers of TEPCO, who enjoy higher wages and better protection. A number of temporary workers must be on-site, but for now, we do not really know who does what. What is certain is that all those who have worked so far have had to take large doses of radioactivity.
AR: Today, how many employees are there on the site?
PJ: [Going in to the last week of March], there were four teams of 50, or 200 workers. According to the most recent information [as of the first week of April], there would be six hundred. This figure might include fire fighters and soldiers, but this remains unclear. In a week, how many will there be? TEPCO had to mobilize its network of subcontractors for emergency recruiting in the region or even beyond.
According to the ads that circulate on SMS, and which are relayed on Twitter, wages offered are around 10,000 yen per day (US$122), which is about double the average salary for a young temporary employee but does not represent an exceptional offer either. This would mean that, despite the sacrifice of those who agree to go there, TEPCO continues to skimp on wages ... the Tokyo Shimbun published testimonies of people who refused to come to work at the plant.
A man of 27 had received an SMS offering a good salary, but since he has a little boy of three and a wife of 26, he did not want to leave them, imagining that he would face a high risk of premature death. Also a man 48 years of age testified. He lived 40 kilometers from the plant, and had been called by someone saying: "We are looking for people over 50 who could intervene in the reactor; the pay is much higher than usual."
You won't come? The wording "over 50" suggests that in order to come work on the site, you must be ready to die ... Elsewhere, I read that there are locals who are willing to do the maximum because they do not want to see everything lost for 30 years, or for 1,000 years, to come. Finally, on Saturday, April 2, the Mainichi newspaper published an interview with an employee of TEPCO who describes the extreme difficulty of the conditions for intervention and the patched-together systems they are compelled to use to protect themselves, like wrapping themselves in plastic bags, for lack of appropriate protective suits.
Only the bosses are furnished with dosimeters. According to another worker present on that day [of the tsunami], Friday 11, many simply went home carrying their dosimeter. TEPCO confirms that, due to the tsunami, a large number of dosimeters were damaged. Out of 5,000, there remain no more than 320. The manufacturer has virtually no more stock, and Toshiba has sent them only 50.
AR: They speak about a worker who was irradiated when he was working on the site while wearing small rubber boots. How do the employees protect themselves on the site?
PJ: This is true. It sounds totally inadequate, but how to do otherwise? Even in normal times, in this part of the reactor, you have to move very quickly to receive the smallest dose possible. That you can't do with lead soles. There exist coveralls with full masks, but these devices seem poorly designed and primitive compared to the challenge of the task.
So, in the absence of effective protection, one uses what is called "radiation protection". In Japanese, one speaks of "management of radioactivity". That's exactly what it is: manage the imposed collective dose administered to workers. The issue of radiation protection enters in direct conflict with that of plant safety because the more a plant ages, the more it "showers", as the Japanese workers say, the more it must be cleaned, and the more you must ask personnel to carry out repairs and maintenance.
Hence the extensive use of subcontractors. What makes the situation in Japan unique is that nuclear power was developed in the 1970s, and the use of subcontracting during periodic shut-downs has been systemic ever since. This organization of work has dramatic consequences for the health of workers and plant safety; hence the repetition of anomalies and other incidents, even before considering the issue of seismic risk.
AR: Why has the Japanese minister of health decided to raise the legal dose to be received by workers?
PJ: Since 2002, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) recommends that an annual dose for nuclear workers not exceed 20 millisieverts (mSv) per year. But even in normal times, workers receive large doses, with consequences that are systematically denied or minimized.
In Japan, legislation has endorsed the standard of 20 mSv per year for workers, stipulating that the dose can be calculated as an average over a five-year period, with a maximum at a given time of 100 mSv during any two years. But as of March 19, TEPCO asked to boost the maximum dose to 150 mSv, and the Ministry of Health went further, raising it to 250 mSv - this perhaps to limit the number of possible applications for recognition of occupational disease.
On Thursday, March 31, the Nuclear Safety Agency (Nisa) announced that 21 workers had received doses above 100 mSv, but that none had exceeded 250, as if this meant they could escape without too much damage, when even the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that the situation remains "very serious" in Fukushima. And in fact, dose rates are now such (up to 1000 mSv per hour on Saturday, April 2) that intervention near the reactor seems impossible.
AR: Have there been victims recognized as having contracted occupational diseases due to their work at the plant?
PJ: In 2002, I counted eight cases recognized since 1991. Since then, there were few others, as far as is known, because there is a certain opacity in the system. I think for example of the case of Mr Nagao. He had worked in Fukushima 1 and 2 between 1977 and 1982 and received a cumulative dose of 70 mSv. Starting in 1986, he began experiencing all sorts of symptoms, lost his teeth, and in 1998, doctors diagnosed multiple myeloma. In 2002, he filed an application for recognition as having an occupational disease, which he obtained, not without difficulty, with the support of an associative network. Then he filed a lawsuit against TEPCO. His complaint was dismissed in 2009 in an all-too expeditious manner: the judge did not even bother to examine the medical opinions presented by the prosecution.
AR: You have conducted a study on the effects of mercury pollution in the sea off the coastal town of Minamata by the Chisso Petrochemical Plant [operating from 1932]. How were the victims treated in this disaster?
PJ: There is an important difference between these two disasters. In Minamata, there was no explosion, residents were not immediately aware of the danger, and fear came later. Yet by the 1920s, there was already an impact on fisheries, and fish numbers decreased (not because of mercury but because of emissions of other pollutants). From the 1940s, they saw dead cats and birds, then the first human victims in the mid-1950s. The creation of awareness of the threat took a long time. The first trial took place between 1969 and 1973 and concluded with a judgment against Chisso for a substantial sum of compensation for the plaintiffs.
Then there were many other trials, and it has been estimated that there was a total of at least 40,000 victims. Finally, in July 2009, a compensation law was passed, which was quite well received by many victims. From the first steps taken by the victims from Chisso in 1956 to 2010, it will have taken over 50 years of battle with the company and the state to see fairly complete compensation. This bodes ill for the current disaster, especially since the history of reparations for victims of Minamata disease occurred at a relatively prosperous time for Japan. Who knows now what will happen to Japan after a disaster like this? It was the third-largest economy in the world, but will it remain so?
As stated by Prime Minister Kan Naoto, this is truly a national disaster on a scale that Japan has not faced since the end of World War II. This is a catastrophe for the whole country. This will make it even harder for people to get redress.
Paul Jobin is Director, French Center for Research on Contemporary China, CEFC, Taipei Office, and Associate Professor, University of Paris Diderot.
Original French article at L'Humanite: "Pour travailler a Fukushima, il faut etre pret a mourir." Interview by Anne Roy. Translated April
