Just as Japanese officials declared the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant in “cold shutdown” an undercover reporter who had snuck into the plant as a temporary worker revealed the actual inner workings and FUBAR situation of the plant to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.
Tomohiku Suzuki, in the guise of a temp worker, was at the Fukushima plant from July 13 through August 22, when he was fired after the management got suspicious of his copious note-taking during meetings. Here are the most damning revelations from the press conference at the FCCJ:
On the government’s decision to declare just a 20-km evacuation zone:
The US military initially set the evacuation zone at 80 kilometer radius, and I think that was the right decision. When you measure the radiation levels, Nakadori of Fukushima Prefecture [middle third] has high radiation and bad contamination, totally the level of a radiation control zone where the entry of the general public should be banned. But I believe the Japanese evacuation zone was set at 20 kilometer radius, in order not to evacuate [people living in] big cities like Iwaki City, Fukushima City and Koriyama City. All the nuclear engineers that I have interviewed say “People are living in the areas that they shouldn’t be living in”, and “It is the same as living inside a nuclear power plant.”
On the haphazard nature of repairing the reactors:
The government did the makeshift construction trying to hasten a cold shutdown. For example, many of the pipes for the contaminated water are plastic, with temporary connections.
(…)
There are 6 reactors and 4 reactor buildings [that are damaged?] at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, and they don’t have accurate data on any of them. I hear that IHI will finally enter the Reactor 2 building, but there is no knowing of what has happened to the fuel pellets inside the reactor. The reality is, all they could do is to repair the roads and cool the reactors. I am very fearful of what may happen, when I think about the future maintenance work.
On workers faking radiation doses to continue working in contaminated areas:
This may be an extreme argument, but the Japanese nuclear industry is built on injustice [or illegality]. It is built on workers forced to get exposed to radiation. Officially they are not exposed to radiation, but for example, workers put on dosimeters on their breasts when the enter high radiation areas.
There is a front side and back side to a dosimeter. Just by flipping the dosimeter inside the breast pocket, a worker can work 10 more minutes. When the high radiation area is above him, a worker puts his dosimeter in one of his socks. Then he can work 30 more minutes. If the work is on the reactor and the high radiation area is below him, a worker wears his dosimeter on the shoulder.
TEPCO doesn’t specifically order the workers to do this, but to complete the work within the manpower, budget and the work specification given by TEPCO there is no other choice. So the workers are supposed to be doing this voluntarily, and when a problem arises they can say the workers did it on their own.
More here, including links to a video of the presser (in Japanese).
Suzuki has written a book about the Fukushima plant and its use of yakuza subcontractors Nuke Plant and Yakuza – Infiltrating Fukushima I Nuke Plant. There have been previous reports of the nuclear industry using mafia-related subcontractors who hire homeless men or burakumin to work in the reactors, offering high salaries in exchange for seriously dangerous work.
