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The melted-down nuclear power plant at Fukushima has been in crisis mode for nearly three years now—recent accidents at the plant have released radioactive waste into the ocean, radiation levels around the site have been found to be higher than previously thought, and the ruptured reactor core still isn’t contained.
And yet the Tokyo Electric Power Company isn’t exactly breaking the bank to dismantle the site—according to recent reports, it’s paying such low wages to the rotating host of “liquidators,” the workers in charge of dismantling the compromised reactor. For the thousand plus job offers in Fukushima, only a quarter are filled. The lowest-paid among them earn about $60 a day (6,000 yen) to expose themselves to the highest levels of radiation.
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Furthermore, according to reports from The Guardian, morale is “plummeting” among the remaining workers, who see no end in sight. They’re also harboring health concerns, depression, and having severe bouts with anxiety—all for $60 a day. Oh yeah, and UN scientists just found that the radiation levels for the early workers may be up to 20 percent higher than Japan’s estimates. Fukushima, then, has got to be one of the worst places to work on the planet.
Phillipe Pons, a reporter for World Crunch, met with some of these liquidators and their supervisors, and they paint an ugly picture. They had to meet out of sight, anonymously, because the liquidators worried they’d lose their jobs.
“The quality of work is mediocre because the management asks us to work fast, but the guys aren’t experienced enough,” the supervisor of a radioactivity inspection company told Pons. “Sometimes they don’t even know the names of the tools. The teams often change. There’s a mandatory rotation because workers who have received the maximum radiation exposure must leave the zone. But others leave prematurely because they think they’re not paid enough. If we don’t manage to form a qualified and trustworthy team quickly, we won’t be able to work fast and efficiently. We even lack qualified team supervisors.”
The Guardian interviewed a 42-year-old liquidator who wasn’t much more optimistic. He says alcoholism is a problem for the overworked and traumatized workforce.
“Lots of men I know drink heavily in the evening and come to work with the shakes the next day. I know of several who worked with hangovers during the summer and collapsed with heatstroke, he says.”
One liquidator told him he was plenty concerned about health and overexposure, but rarely said anything.
“It’s the same thing for workplace accidents — there’s a collective solidarity,” he says. “If it isn’t too serious, we hide them to avoid problems with the social insurance.”
All told, not exactly a great way to run the dismantling effort for the highest-profile nuclear disaster in decades. And if you’re still not convinced “Fukushima reactor liquidator” isn’t the most cursed job title on the planet, there’s this: A massive, “once-in-a-decade” typhoon headed directly for the frought nuke plant. Get the hell out of Fukushima, folks.
