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Nuclear power in Japan

As of November 2015, Japan has one nuclear power plant in operation.
Prior to the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, and the nuclear disasters that resulted from it, Japan had generated 30% of its electrical power from nuclear reactors and planned to increase that share to 40%. Nuclear energy was a national strategic priority in Japan, but there had been concern about the ability of Japan's nuclear plants to withstand seismic activity. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007.


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TEPCO'S DEADLY LIES

Among the company's record of more than 200 proven falsifications of safety inspection reports are several relating to the stricken Fukushima Daiichi facility itself. In 2002, TEPCO admitted to falsifying reports about cracks that had been detected in core shrouds at reactors number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, as far back as 1993.
In 1999, one of Japan's worst nuclear accidents occurred at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant, 120 kilometres north of Tokyo. An uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction at the plant, operated by JCO, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining, killed two employees and leaked radioactivity over the countryside. Fifty-five workers were exposed to radiation and 300,000 people ordered to stay indoors, after the circumvention of safety standards caused a leak. Government officials later said safety equipment at the plant had been missing.
Three years later, TEPCO was exposed as falsifying safety data, including at the ageing Fukushima Daiichi facility. Initially, the company admitted 29 cases of falsification. Eventually, however, it admitted to 200 occasions, over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities. According to the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), TEPCO had attempted to hide cracks in reactor vessel shrouds in 13 units, including Fukushima Daiichi (6 reactors), Fukushima Daini (4 reactors), and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa (7 reactors).
TEPCO's wrongdoings were only revealed as a result of whistle-blowing by a former engineer at General Electric (GE), a company with close connections to TEPCO. GE built the plants and has been contracted by TEPCO to carry out inspection and operational matters for decades. Two years earlier, the engineer had reported the safety frauds to the relevant ministry, MITI, the forerunner of the current Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), only to have the government supply his name to TEPCO and conspire with the company to bury the information.
Hitachi, which conducted the air tightness checks for TEPCO, was also implicated in the manipulation of test results. On two occasions, the pressure readings in Fukushima's No 1 reactor were unstable, so workers were instructed to inject air into the container to make it appear that pressure was being maintained.
TEPCO's litany of deliberate violations of the most elementary safety standards, enabled by the collusion of one government after another, is a graphic demonstration of the intolerable danger posed to the world's population by the capitalist economic order itself, based as it is on the extraction of private profit at all costs.

Rumi Nagashima - Tokyo, Japan - Japanese (Global Lives Project, 2007) ~08:13:58-08:28:57

Nuclear labor issues | Wikipedia audio article

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00:03:07 1 Uranium mining and milling
00:03:18 1.1 Canada
00:04:26 1.2 Namibia
00:06:03 1.3 Malawi
00:07:11 1.4 New Zealand and Australia
00:09:11 1.5 United States
00:11:21 2 Asian nuclear industry
00:11:31 2.1 India
00:12:54 2.2 South Korea
00:13:42 2.3 Japan
00:13:51 2.3.1 Fukushima
00:23:42 2.3.2 Tokaimura nuclear facility
00:25:15 3 European nuclear industry
00:25:26 3.1 France
00:27:25 3.2 Russia
00:27:34 3.2.1 Chernobyl (1986)
00:30:19 3.2.2 Mayak Production Association
00:32:07 3.3 United Kingdom
00:35:15 4 American nuclear industry
00:35:26 4.1 Nuclear weapons production workers
00:38:16 4.1.1 Military workers and contractors
00:40:54 4.2 Nuclear weapons production facilities
00:41:05 4.2.1 Fernald Feed Plant – Ohio, US
00:43:18 4.2.2 Hanford Nuclear Reservation – Washington, US
00:45:58 4.2.3 Idaho National Laboratory – Idaho, US
00:47:24 4.2.4 Los Alamos National Laboratories – New Mexico, US
00:48:44 4.2.5 Oak Ridge – Tennessee, US
00:49:38 4.2.6 Pantex Plant – Texas, US
00:52:03 4.2.7 Rocketdyne – California, US
00:54:38 4.2.8 Rocky Flats Plant – Colorado, US
00:56:07 4.2.9 Savannah River Plant
00:57:11 4.3 Commercial nuclear workers
00:58:01 4.3.1 Short-term workers
01:00:17 4.3.2 Divers
01:01:19 4.3.3 Radium workers
01:03:09 4.3.4 Shipyard workers
01:04:13 4.3.5 Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site
01:06:55 4.3.6 Three-mile Island (1979)
01:07:28 4.3.7 Sequoyah Fuels Corporation
01:08:22 4.3.8 West Valley Nuclear Site
01:09:45 5 Waste storage
01:09:55 5.1 Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)
01:13:38 6 See also



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SUMMARY
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Nuclear labor issues exist within the international nuclear power industry and the nuclear weapons production sector worldwide, impacting upon the lives and health of laborers, itinerant workers and their families.A subculture of frequently undocumented workers do the dirty, difficult, and potentially dangerous work shunned by regular employees. They are called in the vernacular Nuclear Nomads, Bio-Robots, Lumnizers, Glow Boys, Radium Girls, the Fukushima 50, Liquidators, Atomic Gypsies, Gamma Sponges, Nuclear Gypsies, Genpatsu Gypsies, Nuclear Samurai and Jumpers. When they exceed their allowable radiation exposure limit at a specific facility, they often migrate to a different nuclear facility. The industry implicitly accepts this conduct as it can not operate without these practices. The World Nuclear Association states that the transient workforce of nuclear gypsies - casual workers employed by subcontractors has been part of the nuclear scene for at least four decades.Existent labor laws protecting worker's health rights are not always properly enforced. Records are required to be kept, but frequently they are not. Some personnel were not properly trained resulting in their own exposure to toxic amounts of radiation. At several facilities there are ongoing failures to perform required radiological screenings or to implement corrective actions.
Many questions regarding these nuclear worker conditions go unanswered, and with the exception of a few whistleblowers, the vast majority of laborers - unseen, underpaid, overworked and exploited, have few incentives to share their stories. The median annual wage for hazardous radioactive materials removal workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is $37,590 in the U.S - $18 per hour. A 15-country collaborative cohort study of cancer risks due to exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation, involving 407,391 nuclear industry workers showed significant increase in cancer mortality. The study evaluated 31 types of cancers, primary and secondary.