This occurred in 2003: BUSINESS
Nipponese recruit homeless people to clean up nuclear plants. Many die of cancer. CHRONIC (A supplement of the world) has spoken with the players in this scandal inconceivable
DAVID JIMENEZ. Special Envoy to Tokyo
There is always a job in the plant number 1 of the Fukushima nuclear power for those have nothing to lose. Matsushita was sleeping among the four cards that have become home in a Tokyo park, when two men came to offer it. It did not require any special skills, I would pay double that in his last job as a laborer for work and would be back in 48 hours. Two days later, this ruined former executive and 10 beggars were transferred to the plant, located 200 kilometers north of the capital, and registered as cleaners.
"Cleaners" what? "Asked the foreman someone while handing them special suits and drove them to a huge metal room cylindrical shape. The temperature inside, which varied between 30 and 50 degrees, and humidity forced workers to breathe air out every three meters minutes.The radioactivity had exceeded both the maximum they thought should have been broken. One by one the men took off their masks to protect their face. "The crystal glasses are fogged up and could not see. We had to finish the job on time or pay us anything, "recalls Matsushita, 53. "A fellow approached me and said:" We are in a nuclear reactor "."
Three years after that visit to the plant in Fukushima, a sign written in Japanese characters yellow alert for stray Shinjuku Park, Tokyo, do not go to nuclear power plants. "Do not take the job, will kill you", you can read. The late notice for many of them. The recruitment of beggars, petty criminals, immigrants and poor for riskier jobs in Japanese nuclear plants have been a routine practice for more than three decades. And it still is today. Between 700 and 1,000 homeless people have died and thousands more have become ill with cancer around this time, according to research by Professor of Physics Yuko Fujita, Japan's prestigious Keio University.
TOTAL SECRET
nuclear Slaves are one of the best kept secrets in Japan. Very few people know about a practice which involves some of the largest companies in the country and the dreaded yakuza mafia, which is responsible for finding, selecting and hiring the homeless for utilities. "The mafias are intermediaries. Companies pay 30,000 yen (215 euros) for a day of work, but the contractor only receives 20,000 (142 euros). The yakuza are the difference, "says Kenji Higuchi, a Japanese journalist who has 30 years researching and documenting with photographs the plight of the homeless in Japan.
Higuchi and Professor Fujita travel each week places frequented by the homeless to warn of the risks and urge them to take their cases to the Justicia.Higuchi with his camera, is the author of the photographs in this report, and Fujita to study the effects of radioactivity have challenged the Japanese government, the multinational energy and recruitment networks in an attempt to stop an abuse that began quietly in the 70's and has been extended to make power completely dependent nuclear hiring homeless people to carry out their operations. "Japan is the site of modernity and the rising sun, but the world must know that is also a hell for these people, "says Higuchi. Japan
starred in one of the most dramatic transformations of the century to go from being a country in ruins after World War II to be the most technologically advanced society world.The change has brought electricity demand that has made the Japanese nation in one of the most dependent on nuclear energy in the world.
More than 70,000 people work constantly in the 17 plants and 52 reactors spread across the country. Although nuclear weapons have their own employees for more technical jobs, more than 80% of the templates is composed of workers unprepared, hired on a temporary basis between the most disadvantaged sections of society. The beggars are reserved for more risky tasks, from cleaning to decontaminate reactor when leaks occur, or repair work where an engineer would never dare to approach.
Nubuyuki Shimahashi was used for some of these tasks for about eight years before his death in 1994. The boy came from a poor family in Osaka, had finished high school and was in the street when he was offered a position at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka, the second largest in the country. "For years I was blinded, did not know where my son was working. Now I know that his death was a murder, "laments Michico, his mother.
The Shimahashi have been the first family to win in court a long process responsible for central blood cancer and bone Nubuyuki consumed him bedridden for two years and ended his life between insoportables.Murió pain 29 years.
The discovery of the first abuses in the nuclear industry has not frozen the recruitment of the poor. Every so often, men who represent no one knows who roam the parks in Tokyo, Yokohama and other cities with vacancies in which he deceives the homeless, concealing the risks. The plants need at least 5,000 temporary workers each year and Professor Fujita believes at least half of them are beggars.
Once, not so long ago, the homeless were a rarity in the Japanese streets. Today it is hard not to find, nuclear plants have surplus labor. Japan has spent 12 years immersed in an economic downturn that has sent thousands of employees to the street and called into question their model of economic miracle, it has placed the country among the three world's richest in per capita income. Many unemployed people can not bear the humiliation of not being able to support their families and are part of that army 30,000 people each year take their own lives. Others become homeless, wandering the parks and losing touch with their social circle rejected.
THE 'NUCLEAR GYPSIES'
The beggars who agree to work in nuclear power plants become what is known as Genpatsu Gypsies (Roma nuclear). The name refers to the nomadic lifestyle that takes them central office in search of jobs until they fall ill and in severe cases, die in neglect. "The hiring of poor is only possible with the connivance of the government," complains Kenji Higuchi, award-winning Human Rights.
Japanese authorities have set at 50 mSv (millisieverts) the amount of radioactivity that a person can receive in a year, well above 100 mSv over five years to handle most of the countries. In theory, companies that operate nuclear power plants employ the homeless until they have received the maximum radiation and then fired for the "good health", sending them back to the street. The reality is that those same laborers to be hired back days or months later under a false name. That explains why many employees have been exposed for nearly a decade of radioactivity doses hundreds of times greater than allowed.
Mitsuaki Nagao
still keeps the picture that made him an extra day in his job. It can be seen wearing one of the protective suits that he always carried, minutes before starting decontamination operations Tahastuse plant, where he worked for five years before falling ill. Now, 78 years and having spent the last five trying to overcome a bone cancer, the most common disease among Genpatsu Gypsies, Nagao has decided to sue the companies that managed the plant and the Japanese Government. The funny thing is that he was not hired one of the homeless, but the man who commanded them as Foreman. "They came to believe that behind a work in which big business is not nothing bad could happen. But these companies use their prestige to fool people, recruit for very dangerous in that people are poisoned, "complains bitterly Nagao, who is paralyzed half his body after being exposed to radiation doses higher than allowed.
For more than 30 years Kenji Higuchi has interviewed dozens of victims of nuclear power plants, documenting their illnesses and seeing how many of them dying, bedridden before dying. Perhaps because of this, having seen the suffering of the poor close, the photographer got a researcher has no problem with quoting the multinationals that hire beggars indirectly. Sitting in the office of his home in Tokyo, take a blank paper and began to work, "Panasonic, Hitachi, Toshiba ...».
HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI
companies outsource to beggars through other companies, within a system that would discharge the responsibility to keep track of workers, their origin or salud.La biggest contradiction of what is happening in Japan is that abuses occur with little protest in society in the world which best knows the consequences of the misuse of power nuclear. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped on the hitherto unknown city of Hiroshima atomic bomb at the time of impact killed 50,000 people. Another 150,000 died in the next five years as a result of radiation. History repeated itself days later with the launch of a second bomb on Nagasaki.
Based on the effects of nuclear detonations and those receiving radioactive nuclear beggars, a study reveals that up to 17 in 10,000 street workers employed in Japanese plants have a "100%" chance of dying of cancer. A much larger number is "very likely" escaped the same fate and hundreds more sick of cáncer.Teniendo in mind that since the 70's more than 300,000 temporary workers have been recruited in central Japan, Professor Higuchi Fujita and do not stop asking the same questions: How many victims will died at this time? How many have agonized without protest? How long will allow the energy consumed by the wealthy Japanese society depends on the sacrifice of the poor?
The Government and businesses defend themselves by ensuring that no one has been forced to work in nuclear and that any employee can go when he pleases. A spokesman for the Japanese Ministry of Labour was to say that "there are jobs that expose people to radiation and may be done to maintain power."
The beggars, no doubt, are willing to fill those puestos.Un day job cleaning nuclear reactors or decontaminating an area where a leak has been charged twice a day working in construction, which, anyway almost never have room for them. Most dreams rejoin society and even return to their families thanks to the new job. Once at the nuclear power, they soon realize that their destiny is to be discarded after a few days.
The testimony of several victims confirmed than normal is that access to risk areas with meters of radioactivity, but they are often manipulated by the foremen. Sometimes it is not surprising that they are the beggars themselves, fearing to be replaced by others if they know they have received an excessive dose of radiation, to conceal the situation. "If the radiation is high no one opens his mouth for fear of being unable to work more," he acknowledges Saito, one of the homeless of Tokyo's Ueno Park who admits to having made "several jobs at nuclear plants."
The lack of training or preparation for work in nuclear power plants every so often causes accidents that could be avoided if employees had received proper instructions. "Nobody seems to care. If they choose is because nobody will ask them if one day returning from work, "says Higuchi. When a temporary worker comes to medical care for sick nuclear plant or nearby hospitals, doctors routinely conceal the amount of radioactivity received by the patient and send it back to the pit with a certificate "suitable." Most desperate homeless people come to work for the day in central and in the evening in another.
the past two years, thanks mostly to Fujita and Higuchi, some patients have begun to ask for explanations. Protesting is not yet an option for the majority. Murai and Ryusuke Kunio Umeda, two nuclear slaves who fell seriously ill after being hired on several occasions, were forced to withdraw three applications after a group of yakuza who handle recruitment companies are subsidiaries threatened with death. DAILY TRANSFUSION
Hisashi Ouchi was one of the three workers who were in the fuel processing plant in Tokaimura nuclear power when there was a leak that triggered the alarm in 1999 in Japan. The employee received a radiation dose 17,000 times higher than allowed. He died after 83 days in the hospital with daily transfusions of blood and skin grafts.
The Ministry of Labor organized a massive inspection of all plants in the country, but officials of the core were alerted 24 hours before, which allowed many to conceal the irregularities. However, only two of 17 passed the country's nuclear test. In the rest were detected up to 25 violations that included lack of training of workers, lack of control over employees' exposure to radioactivity and the failure of the minimum legal checkups. Since then, the continued recruitment of beggars.
The nuclear power plant in Fukushima, which were conducted Matsushita and a dozen beggars has been denounced repeatedly by the systematic way in which recruits workers from the street. The scientist at the University of Keio Yuko Fujita says that in 1999 its leaders recruited a thousand people to replace the sarcophagus which involved one of the reactors. Three years after his own experience in Fukushima, Matsushita admits to having accepted "two or three jobs." In exchange, has lost all he had left: health. A few months ago her hair started to fall out, then came the nausea and then the diagnosis of a degenerative disease. "I have said I expect a slow death," he says.
source: elmundo.es
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Monday April 18, 2011
Video: Two robots in charge of measuring radioactivity in Fukushima
- Tuesday, 19
April 2011
Japan confirmed partial melting in two reactors at Fukushima
A third would also present serious damage, the scope is unknown. TEPCO
removed highly radioactive reactor water two of Fukushima-1
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Wednesday April 20, 2011
robots used
Fukushima-1 detected in dense vapor in the reactor number two
Map
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