Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s latest road map in the battle to bring its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant under control contains moves to limit radiation exposure and improve access to medical treatment for workers at the plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s latest road map in the battle to bring its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant under control contains moves to limit radiation exposure and improve access to medical treatment for workers at the plant.
Plant operator TEPCO released its revised road map to resolve the nuclear crisis on June 17. Aside from health issues, the plan is basically unchanged from the previous one and aims to bring the reactors to a stable cool-down by July.
TEPCO decided to tighten radiological control for the workers after eight were exposed beyond the 250-millisievert ceiling that the government established soon after the accident for those working under the plant's dangerous conditions. Before the quake, the limit was 100 millisieverts.
The eight have been excluded from working at the site.
The utility is trying to accurately and quickly assess the levels of internal radiation exposure per worker by installing more whole-body geiger counters. Four will be installed by the end of July and more later for a total of 14.
It also assigned a team of doctors to the plant in late May to be available around the clock for worker health checks.
Steps to safeguard worker health were added to the road map after it became clear that bringing the reactors under control will be a long, drawn-out process.
Radiological management of the workers has been a daunting task since the crisis began because the radiation-measuring machines at the plant were knocked out by the tsunami unleashed by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
The situation has not improved much since.
TEPCO acknowledged that health check of about 3,700 people who worked at the plant from the crisis to late March have not yet been completed.
Another problem is that if the more-experienced workers have to be removed from the site due to overexposure to radiation, it could have significant implications for the entire shutdown process.
TEPCO said it will process data on worker radiation exposure levels by computer, instead of calculating them manually.
The utility will also make available 2,500 protective suits containing cooling agents designed to protect workers from heat in summer.
But the latest road map did not say how many more workers will be mobilized at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, or when.
"Health management of the plant workers, including radiation exposure, is the crucial point," Sakae Muto, a TEPCO executive vice president in charge of the nuclear power sector, told a news conference on June 17. "As for staff, we believe that we can secure (enough) workers after a review."
The company said earlier that it will reassign employees from the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture and its headquarters in Tokyo, to the restoration work. It was also set to ask for cooperation from companies that do joint business with TEPCO.
A senior official at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare welcomed the TEPCO measures to protect workers from radiation exposure.
But the official said the labor ministry is concerned about the utility's staffing problem.
The ministry plans to again urge TEPCO to make a detailed labor plan, outlining exactly how many workers will be needed for each task and the estimated radiation exposure each task would produce.
(This article was written by Hidenori Tsuboya and Yuko Matsuura.)