Japan's nuclear gypsies

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, December 4, 2011

PHOTOGRAPH by the Los Angeles Times

NAMIE, Japan -- KazuoOkawa's luckless career as a "nuclear gypsy" began one night at apoker game.

The year was 1992, and jobs were scarce in this farming town inthe shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. An unemployed Okawagambled and drank a lot.

He was dealing cards when a stranger made him an offer: manage acrew of unskilled workers at the nearby plant. "Just gather a team ofyoung guys and show up at the front gate; I'll tell you what to do,"instructed the man, who Okawa later learned was a recruiter for a local jobsubcontracting firm.

Okawa didn't know the first thing about nuclear power, but hefigured, what could go wrong?

He became what's known in Japan as a "jumper" or"nuclear gypsy" for the way he moved among various nuclear plants.But the nickname that Okawa disliked most was burakumin, a derisivelabel for those who worked the thankless jobs he and others performed.

Such unskilled contractors exist at the bottom rung of thenation's employment ladder, subjecting themselves to perilous doses ofradioactivity.

Solicited from day labor sites across the country, manycontractors are told little of the task ahead.

"The recruiters call out their windows that they have twodays of work; it's not unlike the way migrant farm workers are hired in theU.S.," said Kim Kearfott, a nuclear engineer and radiation health expertat the University of Michigan.

"Many are given their training en route to the plant.They're told: 'Oh, by the way, we're going to Fukushima. If you don't like it,you can get off the truck right now.' There's no such thing as informedconsent, like you would have in a human medical experiment," she said.

After an earthquake-triggered tsunami deluged the Fukushimaplant in March, a disaster that cascaded into reactor core meltdowns, activistsare calling for better government regulation of what they call the nuclearindustry's dirtiest secret.

For decades, they say, atomic plants have maintained atwo-tiered workforce: one made up of highly paid and well-trained utilityemployees, and another of contractors with less training and fewer healthbenefits.

Last year, 88% of the 83,000 workers at the nation's 18commercial nuclear power plants were contract workers, according to Japan'sNuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a government regulator.

A study by the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, aTokyo-based watchdog group, found that contractors last year accounted for 96%of the harmful radiation absorbed by workers at the nation's nuclear powerplants. Temporary workers at the Fukushima plant in 2010 also faced radiationlevels 16 times higher than did employees of the plant's owner-operator, TokyoElectric Power Co., because contractors are called in for the most dangerouswork, according to the government's industrial safety agency.

"This job is a death sentence, performed by workers whoaren't being given information about the dangers they face," said HiroakiKoide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Instituteand author of the book "The Lie of Nuclear Power."

Okawa, who was off work from the plant the day of the tsunami,immediately quit the job and the "suicidal work" he performed there:mopping up leaks of radioactive water, wiping down "hot" equipmentand filling drums with contaminated nuclear waste.

He described an unofficial pecking order at most nuclear plantsamong contractors, with the greenest workers often assigned the most dangerousjobs until they got enough experience to question the work or a newer workercame along.

"In the beginning, you get a little training; they show youhow to use your tools," said Okawa, 56. "But then you're left to workwith radiation you can't see, smell or taste. If you think about it, youimagine it might be killing you. But you don't want to think about it."

Okawa, a small man with powerfully built hands, said contractorsknew they faced layoff once they reached exposure limits, so many switched offdosimeters and other radiation measuring devices.

"Guys needed the work, so they cut corners," he said."The plant bosses knew it but looked the other way."

Now the Fukushima plant needs its temporary workers more thanever, to help Tokyo Electric Power Co. engineers shut down the strickenreactors for good. The "gypsies" are being paid salaries severaltimes higher than before the accident, says Okawa, who says he was offered $650a day to return to work at Fukushima after the reactor meltdowns there.

On a recent day, hundreds of contractors milled about anabandoned soccer complex near the Fukushima plant that Tokyo Electric PowerCo., known as Tepco, has transformed into a nuclear-worker locker room anddebriefing center. Men waited in line to pick up dosimeters and disposed ofdirty clothes from a just-completed shift. Buses packed with blank-facedworkers ran continuously between the center, known as J-Village, and the planta few miles away.

Tepco defended its worker training, which "includes basicknowledge of protection against radiation, such as how to manage radiationdoses or how to put on and take off protective suits and other equipment,"said Mayumi Yoshida, who works in the utility's corporate communicationsoffice.

But nuclear experts point to what they call a lax safety culturethat downplays the risk of radiation exposure.

"What's troubling is that both the utilities and thegovernment are saying there isn't a problem, while we know the doses theseworkers are being subjected to [are] quite high," said KristinShrader-Frechette, a professor of radiobiology and philosophy at Notre DameUniversity.

After the Fukushima disaster, the government raised the annuallimit for allowable radiation exposure from 200 millisieverts to 250 fornuclear plant workers, Shrader-Frechette said.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Scientific Committee on theEffects of Atomic Radiation has warned that exposure to just 30 millisieverts ayear can cause cancer. "The government is allowing workers to receive morethan seven times that amount," she said.

Tepco says it monitors radiation absorption rates among workers,who are not allowed to exceed government-set limits.

Since the start of Japan's nuclear boom in the 1970s, utilitieshave relied on temporary workers for maintenance and plant repair jobs, whileproviding little follow-up health training, activists say.

"Typically, these workers are only told of the dose theyget from an individual or daily exposure, not the cumulative dose over the timethey work at a particular plant," said Shrader-Frechette. "As theymove from job to job, nobody is asking questions about their repeated highdoses at different sites. We're calling for a nuclear dosage tracking system inJapan and other nations."

Activists say utilitiesrely on a network of contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors tosupply those who work for short periods, absorb a maximum of radiation and arethen let go.

Hiroyuki Watanabe, a city councilman in Iwaki, just south of theFukushima plant, said past medical tests on plant contractors who had becomesick did not produce a definite link to radiation exposure. Still, he thinksthe utilities should be more forthright about the dangers such workers face.

"It's wrong to prey on the poor who need to feed theirfamilies," he said. "They're considered disposable, and that'simmoral."

No matter what people called him, Okawa is proud of the work heperformed for his nation's nuclear industry. He labored among teams of men whoevery day faced incredible risks without complaint.

Yet his scariest work had nothing to do with radioactiveexposure. "I stood atop a building once, seeing the danger with my owneyes," Okawa said. "That's the way many guys felt about radioactivity:You had to see the danger to fear it. We never saw it.”