Japanese workers defied radiation for a temp work

Fukushima Daiichi plant, above, describe Tokyo electric power, ReutersCurrent and former workers located in dangerous conditions and lax security practices.

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station KAZO, Japan - ground started, buck and could remain Masayuki Ishizawa hardly on his feet. Helmet in hand, he ran from a worker standby space outside of the plant No. 3 reactor, near where he and a group of workers repair work had done. He saw swaying like weeds a chimney and a crane. All screaming in panic was, he recalled.

Workers a portable power generator at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi refuelled last month.

Mr Ishizawa, 55, was central gate of the plant. But a security guard let him not from the complex. One had long established line of cars at the gate, and some drivers were blaring their horns. "Show me your IDs," Mr Ishizawa reminds that say guard, insisting that he follow the correct logoff page procedure. And where the guard demanded that his superiors were?

"What do you say?" Mr Ishizawa said he called in the guard. He looked over his shoulder and looked at sea, a dark shadow on the horizon, he said. He shouted back: "You know coming no tsunami is?"

Mr Ishizawa, which could finally leave is no nuclear specialist; He is not even an employee of Tokyo electric power company, the operator of the crippled plant. He is one of thousands of untrained, outpatient, temporary workers, which here and in other countries, lured by higher wages offered handle most of the dangerous work in nuclear power plants for the work with radiation. Together these contractors were exposed to radiation about 16 times as high as the levels facing, Tokyo Electric employees last year, according to Japan's nuclear and industrial Agency, which regulates the industry. These workers remain important efforts to the nuclear crisis in Fukushima Prefecture, include nuclear power plants.

They are highly paid employees at top companies and a subclass of workers who work for less pay class symptomatic stage for Japan's work force, with an elite, have less job security and fewer benefits to receive. Such practices have both critics charge the health of these workers at risk and undermine safety at the Japan 55 nuclear reactors.

"This is the hidden world of nuclear power," said Yuko Fujita, a former physics professor at Keio University in Tokyo and a longtime campaigner for improved working conditions in the nuclear industry. "Where there are dangerous conditions, these workers are told to go to." "It is dangerous for them, and it is dangerous for nuclear safety."

Of approximately 83,000 workers at Japan's 18 commercial nuclear power plants were 88 percent of contract workers in the year, which ended in March 2010, the nuclear agency said. In this work of Fukushima Daiichi, 89 percent of 10,303 workers were contractor during this period. Are the elite in Japan's nuclear industry operators such as Tokyo Electric and the producers who create and maintain the plants such as Toshiba and Hitachi. But among these companies are contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors - with wages, benefits and protection from radiation schwindender with each step down the ladder.

Interviews with over a half dozen past and current employees for Fukushima Daiichi and other plants to paint a gloomy picture of workers on the nuclear cycle: fight against heat as radiation from the reactors Drywells and spent fuel pools with mops and rags remove, the way for inspectors, technicians, and Tokyo Electric staff to clear and work in the cold to fill drums with contaminated waste.

Some workers are employed by construction sites, and some are farmers looking for extra income. Others are by local gangster, depending on the number of workers employed, not to their name type.

To avoid languages by the constant fear of eviction, hiding of injuries to difficulties for their employer, trying bandages cuts and bruises with skin colored glue to cover up.

In the most dangerous places current and former employees said, radiation, it would be turning the order the levels so high that workers would take turns only to open approach to a valve, for a few seconds, before a supervisor with a stop-watch ordered, to be passed to the next person. Similar work would be required in the Fukushima Daiichi plant now, where the three reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake automatically shut down say workers.

"Their first priority is Pan-Ku to avoid", said a current workers in the Prefecture of Fukushima Daini Pierce plant, with a Japanese expression based on the English word. Workers use the term, their dosimeter, explain, radiation exposure, reached the daily cumulative limit of 50 millisieverts measures. "If you have reached the limit, there is no longer work," the workers, said his name out of fear of dismissal by his employer not to give.

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