DOCUMENTATION OF CORRUPTION AND DYSFUNCTION IN THE ONGOING NUCLEAR CALAMITY AT FUKUSHIMA. Here is a desperate situation where the truth is beginning to emerge. Tepco, Asias largest listed power utility, had long enjoyed close ties to regulators and lax government oversight. That came under harsh scrutiny after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a massive tsunami hit the plant on March 11, 2011. The disaster triggered three reactor meltdowns, a series of explosions and a radiation leak that forced 150,000 people to flee nearby villages...Hayashi is one of an estimated 50,000 workers who have been hired so far to shut down the nuclear plant and decontaminate the towns and villages nearby...Japans nuclear industry has relied on cheap labor since the first plants, including Fukushima, opened in the 1970s. For years, the industry has rounded up itinerant workers known as nuclear gypsies from the Sanya neighborhood of Tokyo and Kamagasaki in Osaka, areas known for large numbers of homeless men...After Hayashis first two-week stint at the plant ended, he discovered his nuclear passbook - a record of radiation exposure - had been falsified...This time a broker who recruited several workers for the subcontractor insisted on access to his bank account and then took almost a third of the roughly $160 Hayashi was supposed to be earning each day, Hayashi says...The complexity of Fukushima contracts and the shortage of workers have played into the hands of the yakuza, Japans organized crime syndicates, which have run labor rackets for generations... Jim
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 13:42:42 +0000
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