Japan Update: As of 21:30, 12 April, TOKYO

News Source: Japan Times

Heroes and realists found among the brave “Fukushima 700”

Although lionized as the “Fukushima 50” by the foreign media, there are in fact about 700 workers engaged in the daily struggle with the “invisible enemy” at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

A month has passed in the dangerous and lonely efforts to resolve the crisis at the nuclear plant, and still, there is no end in sight. There are many tales emerging of the unselfishness and bravery of these workers, while others take a more realistic view of why they are risking their lives amid high radiation levels to cool down the plant’s overheating fuel rods.

A man in his 40s, who was dispatched to Fukushima No. 1 from a partner of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), said, “I did not want to go there. But if I reject the request, I will lose my job.”

The daily pay is less than 20,000 yen ($236).

“I hear some construction workers were employed at a wage of several tens of thousands of yen per hour. But we are working on a conventional daily wage as our company has had cooperative relationships with TEPCO,” the man said.

Meanwhile, many of the man’s colleagues volunteered to go into the plant, saying, “We are the only workers (that can do the job).” Because of that gung-ho spirit, they share a sense of solidarity, the man added.

At one of the plant’s subcontractors, the president and elderly executives volunteered, hoping that they would be chosen instead of younger workers, because they were worried about the long-term health effects on them.

“Even we can do simple work, such as laying cables,” one of the elderly executives said.

Immediately after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, the number of TEPCO employees and others from the firm’s business partners, such as Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., at Fukushima No. 1 totaled more than 700. After an explosion took place at a building housing the No. 2 reactor on March 15, however, most of them evacuated. Only about 70 workers remained and continued the recovery work.

Their number was initially announced as 50. Because of that, foreign media labeled them the “Fukushima 50.”

Today, the more accurate “Fukushima 700” at the plant are classified into such groups as “recovery,” “information,” “medical service” and “security.”

When the crisis began in mid-March, many workers stayed in the plant’s compound for more than 10 days in a row. At present, they are working in alternate shifts, taking two days off at a time.

This month, a TEPCO employee living in the Tokyo metropolitan area told his wife, “I may have to go (to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant) again.”