This photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter shows a trailer (bottom center) thought to be carrying nuclear fuel from one of the reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
May 21, 2019
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Japanese government on Tuesday urged the operator of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to carefully examine its plan to have foreigners work at the complex under a new visa program, citing difficulties in managing the long-term health risk.
“It is necessary to give very deliberate consideration” to whether foreigners who come to Japan under the new visa program should engage in decommissioning work at the plant, labor minister Takumi Nemoto told reporters.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said last month it plans to accept foreign workers at the facility hit by the 2011 megaquake and tsunami.
The minister expressed concern about the ability to conduct long-term health management for foreign workers after they return to their home countries upon expiration of their visas.
“It is necessary to establish a safety and health management procedure that is equivalent or more advanced than that for Japanese workers,” Nemoto said.
The new visa program launched this April is intended to bring in mainly blue-collar foreign workers to 14 labor-hungry sectors including construction, farming and nursing care in aging Japan. TEPCO has confirmed with the Justice Ministry that holders of visas under the scheme are eligible to work at the Fukushima plant.
The government also urged TEPCO to consider implementing measures to manage the amount of radiation exposure for workers engaged in decommissioning tasks.
It also requested the utility to study whether it can use native languages for safety training and when issuing safety warnings at workplaces for workers who lack general proficiency in the Japanese language and familiarity with the country’s customs.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare demanded TEPCO report back to the ministry on the outcome of its deliberations without setting a deadline.
TEPCO said it has told dozens of its subcontractors that foreigners coming to Japan under the new visa program can not only engage in decommissioning work at the plant, but also take up building cleaning roles and work in the provision of food service.
To prevent unsafe levels of radiation exposure, TEPCO has said foreign workers must have Japanese language abilities that enable them to accurately understand the risks and to follow procedures and orders communicated to them in Japanese.
In radiation-controlled areas, workers need to carry dosimeters. On average, approximately 4,000 people work for TEPCO subcontractors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant each day.
To address exploitation fears under the new visa system, the Justice Ministry has issued an ordinance requiring employers to pay wages equivalent to or higher than those of Japanese nationals.
Fukushima 311 Watchdogs 
this comment maybe censored because there is too much truth to it
The Nuclear empire propaganda media, is saying “At least there has never been a Chernobyl in America” after the HBO Chernobyl series is done.
Jesus christ what a shallow statement. America never had a chernobyl!
America detonated hundreds of open air nuclear bombs on its own citizens, in the heart of the western United sates from 1952 to 1963.
The fallout went to los angeles AND all the way to the east coast.
The military and nuclear industrial complex, also hoisted up nuclear reactors in the air at jackrabbit flats nevada . They purposely melted them down, to see the weather patterns the fallout would follow.
The military and nuclear industrial complex, at hanford caused a puposeful partial meltdown of a reactor called the green run in 1949, to study the patterns of the flow of the radioactive iodine, in the wind patterns of the surrounding areas. There is a whole graveyard of dead women and babies in walla walla washington, from that crime.
There were two complete meltdowns of research reactors in Idaho.
The awful molten salt nuclear reactor at Santa Susana by los angeles melted down 3 times in ten years!
We will never know the true extent of three mile island because it is the most covered up accident in nuclear history.
The oil companies and military detonated over 20 nuclear bombs across the united states under major rivers, and over major aquifers in tennessee, georgia, new mexico, and colorado as a form of nuclear fracking to release oil and gas from oil shale, in the 60s and 70s. The results of these crimes are more insidious than chernobyl. Many kept secret. Not as publicized or easily documented, but they are worse, because they were deliberate.
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