Radioactive Labor Structure in Fukushima Daiichi
The evil of the nuclear power industry is in its labor structure.
Permanent employees of nuclear power generation plants usually do not tackle tasks where they may be exposed to high radioactive doses, but workers hired by second-tire or third-tire contractors are assigned to radioactively dangerous jobs in plants.
Owners or operators of nuclear power generation plants are usually large companies recognized as excellent ones in terms of financial and social status. Regular employees of such companies are well protected by management. From those employees, future leaders of the nuclear industry might emerge. They are under life-long protection of the nuclear industry.
So, they use subcontractors for dangerous jobs in a nuclear power plant. And a main subcontractor usually use a second-tire subcontractor which in turn contracts a third-tire subcontractor. This chain of weird outsourcing continues often to involve sixth or seventh-tire subcontracting. A little generous wages an electric power generation company pays to one worker, who is expected to work in a highly contaminated environment, reduce substantially when they reach the hand of the worker, since each tire subcontractor takes big portions off them. Sometimes a subcontract worker employed at the bottom of this hierarchy through a long and complicated chain of subcontracting receives only a half, one third or so of the original wages. For the worst example, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the owner of Fukushima Daiichi, pays $1,000 per day to a recovery worker, but the worker actually gets only $100 as subcontractors pick money from the original amount as costs for management or any excuses.
What is worse, those subcontract workers receive high doses. It is not only dangerous to their health but also problematic to their professional life. When their institutional limit of exposure to radiation is exceeded, they are not allowed to work. And since more and more workers have come to have a higher cumulative radiation dose, it is afraid that there will be shortage of manpower in the Fukushima Daiichi plant in near future.
An average dose for subcontract workers in Fukushima Daiichi was over 1 milli Sievert, but that for regular employees of TEPCO is less than 0.4 milli Sievert as of 2010 when the Fukushima Daiichi accident did not yet occur.
As of 2012 (after the accident in Fukushima was set off in March 2011), there were reportedly 281 subcontract workers whose cumulative dose was between 15 and 20 milli Sievert, but there were no TEPCO stuff who marked this level of dosage. .
In one year over 150 workers reached cumulative exposure levels which exceed 5 year upper limit
According to Japanese law, nuclear plant workers can be exposed to no more than 50 millisieverts of radiation per year and 100 millisieverts over the span of 5 years.
The labor ministry says that as of March 2012, just one year since the onset of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, 167 workers had left the plant with cumulative exposure levels of over 100 millisieverts.
During the spring months of April, May, and June, 79 workers were exposed to more than 20 millisieverts, and 215 others from 10 to 20 millisieverts.
University of Tokyo Professor Kazumitsu Nawata warns of the consequences of losing nuclear plant workers with necessary expertise. He says young workers must be trained due to the need for massive manpower to fully bring the Daiichi plant under control.Nonetheless, the most sinful party is wealthy consumers living in Tokyo and other big cities. Their lavish living has been based on abundant electricity transmitted from power generation plants, once including Fukushima Daiichi and other nuclear power generation plants. They never suffer a high radiation dose.
The Fukushima Daiichi accident exposed this sinful structure of the industry in terms of safety and welfare of workers as well as dignity of citizens.
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Act 3:17 And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.
Act 3:18 But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.
Act 3:19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.