Posted on 07/22/2012 12:32:55 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
TEPCO subcontractor used lead to fake dosimeter readings at Fukushima plant
Workers at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant were ordered to cover their dosimeters with lead plates to keep radiation doses low enough to continue working under dangerous conditions, the Asahi Shimbun has learned.
Some refused the orders. Others raised questions about their safety and the legality of the practice. But the man in charge, a senior official of a subcontractor of Tokyo Electric Power Co., warned them that they would lose their jobs--and any chance of employment at other nuclear plants--if they failed to comply.
The pocket-sized dosimeters sound an alarm when they detect high radiation levels. A worker who has been exposed to an accumulated dose of 50 millisieverts within a year must stop working and stay away from the area for a certain period of time.
The 54-year-old senior official at Build-Up, a midsize construction company based in Fukushima Prefecture, worked out a system to ensure the dosimeters would not reach the limit, according to the workers. It included having the workers themselves build the lead cover that would prevent the radiation from reaching the dosimeters.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajw.asahi.com ...
P!
I would have guessed that a country like Japan, that relies so much on nuclear power, would really be pros at handling a nuclear emergency and clean-up.
Hmmm... construction company. It smells. Many construction companies in Japan are owned by mobs, Yakuza.
It seems that Japan is dying a ‘hapless death.’ First their economy(lost two decades) and now this.
We have to keep in context that some 25,000 were killed by tsunami and noone yet is killed by radiation.
Do we know that? Just because we have not read it doesn’t mean there have been no radiation linked deaths.
We have to keep in context that some 25,000 were killed by tsunami and noone yet is killed by radiation.
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What context are you referring to? The tsunami death toll is unrelated to workers being told that they must defeat safety equipment in order to keep their jobs.
btt
It always amazes me how freepers do the “but it must not be too bad, people aren’t dying” and yet can’t seem to grasp that it wasn’t an atomic bomb, it’s a slow cancer death for crying out loud.
Most Freepers in denial about Fukushima also tend to ignore reports like this.
http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-children-have-abnormal-thyroid-growths-2012-7
CONFIRMED: 36 Percent Of Fukushima Kids Have Abnormal Thyroid Growths And Doctors Are In The Dark
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-children-have-abnormal-thyroid-growths-2012-7#ixzz21KyTLHSC
Wow, that’s over 34 thousand children they tested, and 36% of them have abnormal thyroid growths?!
I think it’s an intentional nuke industry tactic to tirelessly insist that no one died, no one died, no one died. The USSR really paved the way for that tactic by refusing to allow doctors to report deaths from radiation (the doctors had to attribute deaths to other causes) for the first 3 years following the explosion of the reactor. Oh the nuke industry knows that deaths and horrible, debilitating illnesses usually take time to develop - but they rely upon the ‘no one died’ meme to lull many sleep and then when deaths are reported, the nuke pimps claim those deaths were unrelated to radiation (hey people get cancer all the time!).
How much worse would it be if there was nobody to work in the plants and towards stabilizing the reactors?
That’s what we are talking about.
Perhaps they should pull a union and strike for higher wages and better working conditions while the core was overheating. /s
I think its an intentional tactic of the anti nuke power industry to overstate the dangers and impact of accidents.
All while you are burning electricity.
If true such an act is obviously criminal. But in it’s own way Japan
and it’s government are just as corrupt as ours.
And yes..... it’s probable that no one has died from the radiation
released from Fukushima.....YET.
But it’s very probable that the eventual death toll from cancers
caused by this release will dwarf the toll from the tsunami.
And I play with radiation for a living.
The official did wrong. However, I think the text miststates what he was trying to communicate.
It implies he was threatening them with some sort of blacklist, as in, “you’ll never work in this industtry again.”
In fact, the limited quotes imply that he was stating, quite accurately, that if these individuals get to the limit in 3 months, they’ll be out of a job for the rest of the year. Not because the company will fire them, but because regulations will projibit them from going near a plant for the rest of the year.
Fairly obviously, what the company should have done was either provide more effective protective equipment to limit exposure, or rotate people into the hot zone and then out to work somewhere else.
Also, the dose limits are all based on the Linear No Threshold (LNT) Model. There is some evidence that this model may be correct, but there is roughly equivalent evidence for two other models: the Threshold Model, by which there is no effect at very low doses (below the threshold); and the Radiation Hormesis Model, by which doses below a certain level actually have a positive tonic effect.
The choice of LNT for safety regulations has been made for esentially two reasons: Err on the side of caution, and political concerns.
The first reason is perfectly valid till definitive evidence is produced. The second is scientifically indefensible.
FWIW, I worked three years in Los Alamos in the 80s. Met a lot of the old guys who had actually built the first Bombs, machinists and such. Many of them complained of the health effects of the relatively high (compared to accepted levels today) they had been exposed to.
Out of politeness I never shared my thoughts at the time. If they were still around to be complaining about these effects 40 years later, those effects just could not have been that great.
Make them work cleaning up the mess inside the reactors...
There has actually been at least one death I have read about and it was the girlfriend and family who were the ones who talked about it not TEPCO or the government.
” Prison terms for those who gave such orders. “
But only after they have had to walk around through the hot areas of the plant and get an equivalent dose as their workers got.
Then send them to prison.
They have probably drastically shortened the life of every one of their workers they made do this.
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