May 22, 2019
Workers check the advanced liquid processing system used to treat contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in December. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced May 22 it was backtracking on plans to use foreign workers at its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the health ministry urged extreme caution.
The utility said it will not hire foreign workers at the plant “in the immediate future” as it will need “much more time to put a system in place to ensure their safety.”
The company noted that hiring foreign workers at the nuclear plant under a new specified skills visa category that took effect in April could result in work-related accidents and long-term health problems due to their lack of Japanese language skills and understanding of Japanese labor practices.
The announcement followed a health ministry caution May 21 for TEPCO to carefully reconsider its policy of using foreign workers at the complex.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare noted that TEPCO was keen to take advantage of a new specified skills visa category and hire foreign workers, but urged the company to exercise “extreme caution.”
The ministry was concerned about foreign nationals with a limited command of Japanese being in an environment contaminated with radioactive substances.
The ministry had said that if TEPCO went ahead with hiring foreign workers, the company and its contractors involved in decommissioning had to take at least the same level of protective measures that apply to Japanese workers to ensure that they fully understand safety sanitation and avoid the health risk of excessive radiation exposure.
Even though eight years have passed since the triple meltdown, radiation levels remain high in many areas of the Fukushima plant, especially around the reactor buildings.
The decommissioning process that is expected to take years will involve a range of gargantuan tasks, one being the removal of melted nuclear fuel debris from the reactors.
Under the recently revised immigration control law, foreign workers with specified skills are permitted to work at nuclear power plants.
The ministry acknowledges that it is ultimately up to individual employers to decide whether or not to accept foreign workers on their payrolls.
But experts in Japan and overseas who are keen for the new visa program to be a success have also voiced concerns about foreign workers at the Fukushima plant developing radiation-related health issues and being able to manage them after they return to their home countries.
Foreign workers arriving in Japan in one of the two categories of specified skills can stay in the country for up to five years.
“Since there are no legal constraints, the ministry moved one step ahead of TEPCO,” said a senior ministry official, referring to the request for a rethink of the policy.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga referred to the ministry’s caution at a May 21 news conference, saying that TEPCO should be prepared to fully address a range of health-related problems that may arise in the future.
The utility notified dozens of its contractors at a meeting in late March that it will accept foreign workers at the Fukushima plant.
Currently, about 4,000 people toil at the plant each day. Most areas of the complex are categorized as controlled areas to guard against radiation exposure.
Under the law, workers at a nuclear facility must not be exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation over five years and 50 millisieverts a year.
Fukushima 311 Watchdogs 
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RADIATION DEATH CULT
People decry The Tokyo 2002 Olympic Games Events by Fukushima, after the 311 nuclear catastrophe. It is of little difference from what nuclear countries, have done for years, to hide their nuclear messes.
The American Nuclear-Propaganda Machine is aces, at coverups and putting lipstick on a pig. America, Britain, France, and Russia goverhnment Propaganda machines, are where Abe, Lady Judge, Shellenberger, Trump Thomas Hypermetropia take their cues, for their lies and propaganda about nuclear dangers .
Hanford Plutonium Reservation is one of the most radioactive places on earth. Full of plutonium, Hilevel waste, discarded nuclear submarines. There is even a vintage fukushima-style nuclear reactor close to there, in the bleak TriCities desert. A veritable cornucopia of Nuclear Criminality and crimes against humanity. Especially the Citizens of Washington state.
The huge Hanford reservation sits on the edge of one of the largest and, most beautiful rivers in the world. The Columbia River.
There are warnings to river rafters, on the Beautiful Columbia River, that they are entering the Hanford Plutonium Reservation and will be close to Hanford, for the next 10 mile. No warnings about the radiation or radionuclides, pouring into the the river, from The Huge Hanford Plutonium
Reservation.
People in Washington State and Oregon, have been Fed-up with this 300 square mile radiation generating atrocity, for years. The federal governments answer to that, is to turn it into a National Park, dedicated to the theme of the production of the first atomic bombs that killed, maimed, and mutated millions in Japan. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were later shown to be unecessary sadistic-genocides, of the worst kind.
https://www.nps.gov/mapr/hanford.htm
Manhatten Atomic Bomb National Park
Hanford Washington.
There are many places american and international tourists, visit in america that are radioactive . Places that have the potential to be as radioactive as Fukushima.
Big Bend National Park in Texas is close to 20000 tons of Outdoor-High Level Nuclear waste. There are 50 thousand tons buried at Marfa, down the road, WIPP in New Mexico had a plutonium fire a few years ago. WIPP, Alamagordo and whitesands in new mexico, are where they detonated a bomb and did nuclear experiments.
They have been parading dangerous nuclear Tourism at Pripyat for years, in the Ukraine.
Millions of tourists visit The Grand Canyon yearly. They are not told of the history.
Many visit the Tennesse Valley Authority Complexes in the SE US, where there are several old reactors and uranium processing facilities.
How about goin swimming at the beach of LaHague France, where raw plutonium drools out of the Plutonium Reprocessing plant, into the sea?
There are 10s of millions of tourists In Southern Utah and Nevada, and Colorado. Places where Nuclear Bombs were exploded . Places where there are Uranium piles. Tourists visit these places yearly . They are not notified of the dangers.
Driving through Fallon Nevada, where nuclear waste was fracked into the ground in the sixties, you would not know of the bad water or cancer clusters there.
Lucky Las Vegas, Nevada, where many bombs have been detonated. Close to where there have been purposeful nuclear reactor meltdowns at jackass flats, to see what the radiation would do to people downwind…
People are not notified of risks, when they visit close to any of the Nuclear Reactors in America, Europe, Korea, France or anywhere else.
Take a country drive though Paducah Kentucky by the uranium purification plant, anyone?
How about a cross country visit to the Hundred Nuclear of waste sites in France. You are not likely to know where they are.
Let’s go swimming by San Onofre in the Pacific, By San Diego , where there are 20 thousand tons of highlevel nuclear waste. If a person came within 30 feet, of 40 pounds of that high level radionuclide poison, it would kill them in 20 minutes.
The Rocky Flats Plutonium Prduction facility outside of Denver, is being turned into a Historical Park and wildlife area.
Millions of tourists visit these places yearly and, are not notified of the dangers of plutonium still present.
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/09/12/rocky-flats-wildlife-refuge-opens-saturday
The Los Alamos Bradbury Atomic Heritage Museum, on top of the Los Alamos mountain, is where americas nuclear weapons are made. It is where there are measurable amounts of americium in hotspings, in the surrounding areas . It is where background radiation is double of what it is in other areas, in america and other countries.
The life expectancy of dogs around los alamos is 5 to 8 years.
How about a nice mountain bike ride, along smoldering West Lake Land-Fill, by St Louis, where radioactive waste is mixed in a landfill with peoples garbage. It is on fire too.
There are the many places in America, where there are major nuclear waste dumps and background radiation, is higher than most places like australia, because those places are chocked-full of radionuclide poison.
https://jamesherringresearch.wordpress.com/history-and-background-of-nuclear-waste/
Let’s go see Mayak in Russia.
How about By Sellefield in Britain . Would’nt that be a lovely radioactive-Tourism, adventure?
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