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The High-Radiation Lives and Risks of Nuclear-Nomad Subcontractors
Harperdog writes "Gabrielle Hecht has an interesting piece on the subcontracted workers of the nuclear energy industry, in Japan and elsewhere. These workers face far more exposure to radiation than salaried workers; in Japan, 90% of the nuclear workforce is contracted. This is an eye-opening look at a practice that 'carries exceptional risks and implications. And until these are recognized and documented, complex social and physiological realities will continue to be hidden.' A good read, but I would like to know how the Fukushima 50 are doing."
If companies contract this work out, rather than have in house workers do it, they are much less responsible for the long term consequences. It simply makes good business sense. You can argue whether or not the contractors fully understand the risks that they are taking and the likely outcomes, but at the end of the day it's a free market system and if they are willing to put their lives and future on the line, then let them do it.
I was under the impression that in the U.S., at least, radiation dosage was tracked on a lifetime basis via a Nuclear Regulatory Commission database, REIRS, and anyone working at a nuclear facility, even on a contract basis, has to have the numbers from their dosage monitoring submitted to it. I don't think you can get away with laying them off and then someone else rehiring them while pretending they're a new person, because their dosage will get filed under the same social-security number in REIRS.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Having RFTA (yes, I know), I've discovered that the summary is quite misleading. The article claims that 90% of the Japanese nuclear workforce is sub-contractors. Timothy, "sub-contracted" and "contracted" don't mean the same thing.
Translation: Temporary contract workers do work that the plant workers won't do is riskier.
Let's file that one in the "You don't say!" category. It's like that throughout the entire processing industry. Need to hot tap onto a gas pipeline? Get a contractor. Need to go in a vessel that has an inert atmosphere? Too dangerous, get a contractor.
Industries are full of contracting companies who exist specifically to absorb high business risk and appear "disposable" to the plant. They are after all not the plant's employees. If they die it won't be "us" who has to pay compensation, it'll be "them".
I would like to know how the Fukushima 50 are doing
Fukushima 15 are (still) living a happy life with their family
Fukushima 25 are (still) living, at the hospital
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The BBC produced an excellent and troubling documentary about Japan's “contracted” labour within the nuclear industry. It also covers exposure to radiation in general in across the workforce. Search for "Nuclear Ginza"
I'm no expert, but the explanation I've seen about the health effects of radiation, would indicate the parent can't be right about people being in the hospital. . .
The way I've heard it explained is that there's basically four categories of effects you can get from radiation, based on dosage:
* High or Very high levels - severe radiation poisoning, die within hours or days, maybe a few weeks if you're unlucky - so wouldn't still be in the hospital.
* Moderate levels - something very similar to sunburn, might be in hospital for a short time for treatment, have increased risk of cancer developing, but that will take 5 - 25 years. People in this category would have been out of the hospital in maybe April or May of last year.
* Low levels - No immediate health effects. Increased risk of cancer in 5 - 25 years.
* Very low levels - No health effects, essentially no increased risk of cancer (maybe something like .01 percent increased risk, but so close to zero as to be effectively zero increase in risk of cancer).
None of those categories would still be in the hospital - you either die quickly, or die years later.
they're taking advantage of the poor and uneducated people. This isn't a complex situation. Nobody cares. They're disposable.
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A nuclear story mdsolar did not submit. At least it will put nuclear power in a positive light. We all know it needs that now since the SOTU did not even mention nuclear.....
from http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2009/10/guenther-wallraff-returnsfrom-way-down.html
His summary is dead on (roughly translated from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganz_unten#Inhalt):
'Hidden complex social and physiological realities?' I think 'exploitation' and the strive for 'profits' sums it up nicely.
I was in the nuclear field in the Navy many years ago, and if one of us (highly trained, expensively trained, hard to hire otherwise, etc) received too much exposure, we became normal enlisted men, of no use to the nuclear area. So when any task with high radiation exposure, 'normals' were assigned. The assumption was that these men would never get this expose again. Really, there is no other way.
These are trained and skills construction tradespeople. I was a scheduler at nuke plant, the contract workers made $50 to $120 an hour. Why, you ask? ask yourself, for example, what kind of "pipefitter" works with 16" diameter stainless pipe, in a rad area. A very well trained expensive one, that's who.
In the USA, In the 8 months or so prior to a refueling outage, through the first couple weeks of an outage, a huge amount of "construction" work is undertaken at a plant involving maintenance, inspections and repairs. A plant that has a couple hundred full time employees will bring on hundreds of contractors, sometimes a thousand or so total. These contractors make their very good living going from plant to plant for pre-outage and outage work. They make way more money than the average IT worker, I can tell you 7-10 years ago it was $50 to $120 an hour, and during the actual outage there would be 10 or 12 hour days for the first couple weeks, that's time and a half and usually gets to double time overtime per week. Those skilled tradesmen made serious coin. The plant issues dose meters and film badges and monitors the rad exposure of all workers, and *already knows* the dose for each area and type of work, there is no faking of exposure nor even possibility of doing so. The federal NRC has an office on site to oversee work, dose, compliance.
Quote from Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, U.S. Navy, (27 January 1900 – 8 July 1986) was known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy".
I'll be philosophical. Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn't have any life — fish or anything. Gradually, about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet—and probably in the entire system—reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin... Now when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible... Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it... I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. Have I given you an answer to your question?
nonsense, the nuclear industry does not permit dose anywhere near that which causes detectable harm. The only type of "nuclear worker" at greater risk for cancer is not at power plant, but miners, enrichment and weapons assembly plant workers.
And it shows up if you search for it in google... the first hit for me is "wikiquote" even! fnj is a lazy troll.
It is very hard for anyone to submit a nuclear power story that is both positive and which does not reek of BS. Thorium anyone?
These are trained and skills construction tradespeople. I was a scheduler at nuke plant, the contract workers made $50 to $120 an hour. Why, you ask? ask yourself, for example, what kind of "pipefitter" works with 16" diameter stainless pipe, in a rad area. A very well trained expensive one, that's who.
Yep. My wife does payroll for a company that does work on reactors. Those guys make very good money; hourly rates of $30+, plus per diem and time-and-a-half/double-time as appropriate. The "poor, uneducated" workers GP was referring to easily make twice as much or more than I make as an experienced engineer.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
The IAEA Status Report 2 November 2011 contains a table of worker exposures. In March 2011, 98 workers (out of 3742) received more than 100 mSv. But that was related to the initial disaster. By September 2011, 7 workers received between 20-50 mSv, the other 1039 workers received far less. The average dose to workers in September was only 1.80 mSv (people in Denver get 12 mSv a year).
Even if there are "hidden" unmeasured gypsy workers, their doses could not be highly in excess of permanent salaried workers, unless they go swimming the spent fuel pools. The radiation levels at Fukushima Daiichi is now far lower then it was in March, so it's very hard to accumulate high doses unless you enter the reactor buildings. It's likely those few who enter the reactors are the trained staff conducting surveys and they well monitored.
The Japanese introduced the GD-450 (glass badge) radiation dosimeter about 10 years ago, it's manufactured by Chiyoda Technol Corporation and is used throughout Japan's nuclear industry and hospitals etc. Dosimetry measurements are, from what I read, uploaded to a central computer (FGD-650 reader and server computer system). The badges contain the users ID printed on two stickers, one on the front and another on metal frame hidden inside the badge, presumably to prevent tampering.
They handed out 230,000 glass badges to civilians in Fukushima Provence last September, so clearly the centralised system can handle large numbers. For example, 36,767 glass badges handed out in Fukushima City revealed an average dose of 0.26 mSv over 3 months. I'm pretty sure this survey is run by the Japanese Ministry of Health, it would be easy to share the worker data if it's not already.
Refs:
The Large Scale Personal Monitoring Service Using The Latest Personal Monitor GLASS BADGE Norimichi Juto
IAEA Fukushima Daiichi Status Report 2 November 2011 (see table 3).