Stricken Japan nuke plant struggles to keep staff

Keeping the meltdown-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in northeastern Japan in stable condition requires a cast of thousands, but the plant’s operator is struggling to find enough workers.

It’s a trend that many expect to worsen, hampering progress in the decades-long effort to safely decommission it.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant that melted down in March 2011 after being hit by a tsunami, is finding that it can barely meet the headcount of workers required to keep the three broken reactors cool while fighting power outages and leaks, said current and former nuclear plant workers and others familiar with the situation at Fukushima.

Construction jobs are already plentiful in the area due to rebuilding of tsunami ravaged towns and cities and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s stimulus program is expected to add to the demand. Less risky, better paid decontamination projects in the region irradiated by the Fukushima meltdown are another draw.

Some Fukushima veterans are quitting as their cumulative radiation exposure approaches levels risky to health, said two long-time Fukushima nuclear workers who requested anonymity for fear of being fired.

TEPCO spokesman Ryo Shimizu denied any shortage of workers, and said the decommissioning is progressing fine.

The discrepancy may stem from the system of contracting prevalent in Japan’s nuclear industry. Plant operators farm out the running of their facilities to contractors, who in turn find the workers, and also rely on lower-level contractors to do some of their work, resulting in as many as five layers of contractors. Utilities such as TEPCO know the final headcount — 3,000 people now at Fukushima Dai-ichi — but not the difficulties in meeting it.

Hiroyuki Watanabe, a city assemblyman for Iwaki in Fukushima, who talks often to Fukushima Dai-ichi workers, believes the labor shortage is only likely to worsen.

“They are scrounging around, barely able to clear the numbers,” he said. “Why would anyone want to work at a nuclear plant, of all places, when other work is available?”

Experts, including even the most optimistic government officials, say decommissioning Fukushima Dai-ichi will take nearly a half-century. TEPCO acknowledges that the exact path to decommissioning remains unclear because an assessment of the state of the melted reactor cores has yet to be carried out.

Since being brought under control following the disaster, the plant has suffered one setback after another, and the work up to now has been one makeshift measure after another to keep the reactors from deteriorating.

One Fukushima Dai-ichi worker, who has gained a big following on Twitter because of his updates about the state of the plant since the meltdowns, said veteran workers are quitting or forced to cut back on working in highly radiated areas of the plant as their cumulative exposure rises.