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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Many dead in explosion of workers at the facility for Fireworks

WAIPAHU, Hawaii (AP) - three workers were killed and two others are bunker in an explosion in a Fireworks store on Friday.

The authorities was another worker injured in the explosion that burned 40 metres away, trees and shrubs.

A next hours after the first explosions, firefighters from entering the storage facility, a former military bunker in a suburb of Honolulu, for the two missing men are looking for stop.

"The risk is too great, to the Savior," said Capt. Terry Seelig the Honolulu Fire Department. "It is too unstable, tunnel enter the bunker."

The police robot for views from the inside, sent the helped rescuers said that the bunker was still too hot entering Friday night, said Captain Seelig.

Rescue teams were returned Saturday morning.

"It is all we can do, but let it not cool off," said Captain Seelig.

The explosion, the Waikele Business Center on the island of Oahu, was reported at 9 am

The missing men were last seen inside the bunker before the explosion.

", Which indicates that she survived the explosion, not," said Captain Seelig.

All men were employees of Donaldson Company, an environmental services and unexploded ordnance disposal companies, said Peter Savio, who treated the leases for the plant.

The company could not immediately be reached for comment.

The storage facility was approved by the Fire Department, to keep Fireworks.

Captain Seelig said there was no danger to the surrounding residential area.

The bunker is about one and a half to two miles from the entrance of the business center.

Karen Pacleb, the Hinterhof entrance is faced, said they heard no explosion, but the smoke smelled.

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City room: Sanitation workers is under attack

A city sanitation Department worker was attacked and was a threatened a motorist was angry when he could not their truck as she raised said the authorities trash, on Saturday.

Officials said the attack Friday unfolds at 7:30 pm as the worker, Vincent DeBlasio and Beverly Watson, made their way to the North along the East 96th Street, between Rutland road and East New York Avenue in East Flatbush.

The Union that represents them, the Uniformed Sanitationmen Association, quickly renewed its call to national law, an attack on a sanitation workers would make it a crime.

Mr DeBlasio, 30, said that he was busy download living garbage in the back of the truck was a car drawn upwards and the driver "very angry" he could not stand.

"He has out of the car, and he said ' Park the thing;" Put the somewhere, truck ' ", Mr DeBlasio, said that the Department on Dec. 13 joined. '"My partner said, ' can not set we everywhere, it is this anywhere to this truck set.' "He to give us a chance."

The man then cursed and threatened Ms Watson, returned to his car and began talking about a cell phone, added Mr DeBlasio. He said he then noticed another man, who with a woman at the curb, way to him as a trash can had been emptied.

"While I was in the middle of the store, I got stamped right in the mouth," said Mr DeBlasio.

Mr DeBlasio fell backward, hitting his elbow and his head. The attacker ran and entered a building on the corner. Mrs Watson referred to a supervisor, who then called the police.

Were officers from the 67th Precinct "in a very short time", said Mr DeBlasio.

The officers arrested the man in the car, as Henry rink, 28, Brooklyn identified. Mr. rink was accused in the path of the sanitation workers, which prevents that they their work by State administration and harassment disability and threatening, punch, Mrs Watson, said the police.

According to the information on the website of the State Department of Correctional Services Mr. rink was little more than five years in prison for robbery, burglary and assault convictions. 2006 He was released into the care of parole.

Mr DeBlasio was for cuts and other minor injuries at the Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center treated. Investigators were still the man search, who punched him.

On Saturday, the Union on the case to promote their cause legislation in Albany passing it a crime, sanitation workers attack would seize. Sanitation workers would equality, in law, with their colleagues civil service in fire and police departments of the city.

"This legislation, if a crime for the attacks on the city has all other workers, then a crime to have let to you because we everyday are out on the street," said Harry Nespoli, President of the Association of the Uniformed Sanitationmen.

"It seems as it happens more and more to us." As soon as the weather is better, which are people more driving around and they are very impatient. All we do is our task to do. "We recognize that people in a hurry, but we just try to do our work."

Mr DeBlasio said that workers always, "on the back of" your mind, the possibility of violence. But he said in this case there was really nowhere else for them, to the truck and that the attacker "does not give us a chance," to get out of the way.

"It was 15 feet from where the exchange of words, which I happen stamped took," he said. "We were just working." Not a word was out of my mouth; "All the words were partner and man between my."

All said Mr Nespoli, sanitation do their best workers to stay by driver out of the way. He added however, that workers on verbal jibes and bad, and are increasingly exposed.

"We trying to get the block to you courtesy, go," he said, adding that at the same time, his workers have to offset trash get their commitment.

"We can hide with this truck;" "It is a big white elephant is", he said. "We should not in the House and we continue to have in a tempo move." But if the big, we will be a while there. "It is not everyone give a right to get their hands."

Mr a. Nespoli said that the legislation was introduced last year in Albany, after an other sanitation attacked workers with a shovel in Manhattan. But he said the Bill "only there died."

Jim Grossman, a spokesman for the Union, said the Bill had passed in the Senate last year but "it was reports never Committee," in the State Assembly.

Vito A. Turso, a spokesman for the sanitation Department, said, "New York City sanitation workers very hard work and many challenges are on their routes and their safety is the paramount concern of the Department." "So we would support this pending legislation."

A spokesman for Governor Andrew M. Cuomo could not immediately comment on the problem.

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Workers Give Glimpse of Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

of March 15. Hundreds of firefighters, Self-Defense Forces and workers from Tokyo Electric Power convened at the sports training center, arguing long and loudly about how best to restore cooling systems and prevent nuclear fuel from overheating. Complicating matters, a lack of phone service meant that they had little input from upper management.

“There were so many ideas, the meeting turned into a panic,” said one longtime Tokyo Electric veteran present that day. He made the comments in an interview with The New York Times, one of several interviews that provided a rare glimpse of the crisis as the company’s workers experienced it. “There were serious arguments between the various sections about whether to go, how to use electrical lines, which facilities to use and so on.”

The quarreling echoed the alarm bells ringing throughout Tokyo Electric, which has been grappling with an unprecedented set of challenges since March 11, when the severe earthquake and massive tsunami upended northeastern Japan. It is also an insight, through interviews, e-mails and blog posts, into the problems faced by the thousands of often anxious but eager Tokyo Electric Power employees working to re-establish order.

Many of them — especially the small number charged with approaching damaged reactors and exposing themselves to unusually high doses of radiation — are viewed as heroes, preventing the world’s second-worst nuclear calamity from becoming even more dire.

But unlike their bosses, who appear daily in blue work coats to apologize to the public and explain why the company has not yet succeeded in taming the reactors, the front-line workers have remained almost entirely anonymous.

In the interviews and in some e-mail and published blog items, several line workers expressed frustration at the slow pace of the recovery efforts, sometimes conflicting orders from their bosses and unavoidable hurdles like damaged roads. In many cases, the line workers want the public to know that they feel remorse for the nuclear crisis, but also that they are trying their best to fix it.

“My town is gone,” wrote a worker named Emiko Ueno, in an email obtained by The Times. “My parents are still missing. I still cannot get in the area because of the evacuation order. I still have to work in such a mental state. This is my limit.”

At the top, a manager who circulated her note urged his workers to “please think about what you can do for Fukushima after reading this e-mail.”

Tokyo Electric keeps a tight lid on its workers under normal circumstances, and workers say they risk censure for speaking out. Some, however, have become lightning rods. Soon after the crisis began, Michiko Otsuki, who worked at the Daiichi plant after the earthquake, wrote on a social media site called Mixi that Tokyo Electric workers were trying hard and risking their lives to repair the plant.

She apologized for the confusion and the insecurity that people felt as a result of the nuclear accident. But Ms. Otsuki soon removed the post from her site because, she said, people had misinterpreted what she meant to say. It was too early, she added, to ask people to stop being critical of Tokyo Electric.

In the early days after the earthquake and tsunami, many Tokyo Electric workers had little time to speak out. An explosion had blown the roof off one of the reactor buildings in Fukushima, heightening fears of large-scale radiation exposure. To stabilize the reactors and restart cooling systems, the company rushed to reconnect the power plant to the electric grid.

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