Radioactive Zombies in Japan

To put it mildly, radiation is a real pain to clean-up - even with protective gear the clean-up crews quickly absorb a life-time dose of radiation in an hour or two. After that heavy dosage you cannot be exposed to any more radiation without (even more) serious risk. So you need a large supply of people to clean-up radiation.

When Britain's Hanford uranium reactor caught fire in 1957, they sent in primitive robots to push the burning fuel into the back of the reactor, but soon

“the robots broke down because of the extreme radioactivity, men were sent in to cleanup the site [...] Radiation was so intense they could only work a few hours. They were running out of firefighters. The police from the [plutonium] factory had turned up looking for volunteers and they brought a bus. They decided the best way to get the volunteers was to go up to the cinema, and ‘volunteer’ the back 2 rows at the show to go… push the fuel rods out of the reactor. They were not volunteers. They were picked up off the streets and press ganged onto the roof… In 90 seconds, they received their permissible lifetime dose of radiation. The men were sent home and forgotten… They do not figure in any official casualty lists.”

[note: anyone interested in the Atlantic know that the Brits have a long dirty history of press-ganging people]

When the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded in 1986, robots were again used until they seized-up, then the fire-fighters and other professional went in, when they ran out the Soviets began using man-power from many industries as a "corps of plant workers, soldiers, firefighters, miners, construction workers and volunteers" became the clean-up crew. Despite the fact that over 600,000(!) people were eventually used, the Soviets do not seem to have simply 'press-ganged' anyone off the streets. Many of the workers volunteered to participate or to extend their work beyond the initial compulsory term and all of cleaners qualify for significant social benefits due to their veteran status.   

When Fukushima melted down in March 2011 the clean-up/containment followed the same pattern: robots then profession then "volunteers". In a noble gesture 250 elderly nuclear engineers volunteered to go inside the plant to help the containment effort.  "Elders have less sensitivity to radiation. Therefore, we have to work," said a former engineer. Kazuko Sasaki, 69, the co-founder of the group, says she has a number of personal reasons why she wants to work at the plant. "My generation, the old generation, promoted the nuclear plants. If we don't take responsibility, who will?"

Unfortunately the reality of the Fukushima clean-up is much less honorable as the Christian Science Monitor has exposed: "Fukushima radiation fallout in northern Japan requires a $35 billion cleanup that's behind schedule and lacks workers. Police say Japanese gangsters rounded up homeless men to clean up Fukushima radiation and paid them less than minimum wage [...] Many homeless people are just put into dormitories [and] left with no pay at all.”"

The Japanese government has sub-contracted the clean-up to many construction firms - a number of which have deep ties to organized crime. [America basically fused organized crime and ex-Fascist corporations to re-build Japan during their post-WWII occupation]. The construction firms have man-power shortages so they use gangsters to 'press-gang' people into the work. "We're an easy target for recruiters," a home-less man said. "They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven't eaten, they offer to find us a job."

This situation has been also confirmed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur to the disaster, he reports: “These [Fukushima] workers told me, ‘Do you know we’re actually living in a shanty town?’… Literally on the pavement… in Tokyo… They told me that people come take them.”

Japan has a history of using 'press-ganged' homeless men to clean-up radioactive sites, some were forced to work right in rooms beside the nuclear core mopping up radioactive water with towels. In Channel 4's 1995  ‘Nuclear Ginza’ documentary a Japanese professor explains: “The scenes I saw, the stories I heard, I found them difficult to believe at first… Workers go near the reactor and get exposed… Many of them become ill… sometimes die… [They're] picked off the street in the slums… I found so many… who didn’t know what had happened to them, or if they did, too frightened to speak… all their stories were the same…"

Wage skimming is the norm and many workers only get a tiny portion—if any—of the 10,000 Yen hazard allowance; the majority of workers receive no health insurance benefits from their employer and for many reasons they do not register for the national health insurance system on an individual basis.

The Japanese professor commented, "People simply don’t believe this could happen in a country like Japan… It’s as if they’re the living dead.”

'Japanese Radioactive Zombie Tramps' sound like a 1950s Sci-fi/Horror plot but it is not only a true story but a current one.


SOURCES

Nuclear Ginza: Japan's secret at-risk labor force and the Fukushima disaster
Fukushima radiation cleanup: Send in the homeless?
Reflections of a Chernobyl liquidator – the way it was and the way it will be
"Liquidators" Endured Chernobyl 25 Years Ago
Women, minorities, homeless, and prisoners used by nuclear industry for most dangerous work
Windscale: Britain's Biggest Nuclear Disaster