The whereabouts of 69 people who had worked at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant remain unknown, including 30 who have not even been identified, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said June 20.
The whereabouts of 69 people who had worked at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant remain unknown, including 30 who have not even been identified, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said June 20.
Government officials are criticizing TEPCO's sloppy management of paperwork on the workers, saying it is now hampering follow-up radiation checks and allowed potential terrorists to enter the plant's site.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare instructed TEPCO to locate the workers immediately for radiation-exposure tests.
TEPCO determined that 3,639 people worked at the plant from the onset of the nuclear accident to March 31.
The company measured radiation exposure levels of 3,514 workers and reported the results to the ministry. Of the remaining 125 workers, TEPCO said it been unable to contact 69, who were apparently dispatched from the company's subcontractors.
According to the ministry, TEPCO asked its subcontractors to send employees who had worked at the plant to undergo internal radiation exposure checks at TEPCO facilities. But half of the subcontractors said they did not have such employees. The rest did not answer by June 20.
TEPCO said it does not even have the names of about 30 workers.
A labor ministry official said TEPCO's handling of information on workers was full of flaws.
The ministry suspects that the unidentified workers either incorrectly wrote their company's names or deliberately used false names and nonexistent companies.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that allowing unidentified people to work at the plant posed a serious risk of a terrorist attack.
The agency asked the utility to submit a report on this matter.
Before the March 11 tsunami knocked out external power to the plant, TEPCO entered data on all personnel at the radiation control area into a database. However, since the tsunami rendered the database system inoperable, TEPCO has been handwriting such data.
TEPCO kept records of external radiation exposure checks of all workers, as workers at the plant had to write their names and companies on a sheet of paper when borrowing dosimeters from TEPCO until mid-April. However, the company did not require workers to show employee ID cards or driver's licenses until March 31 at the earliest.
A worker in his 40s at the plant said they were required to only write their names before starting work in the initial phase of the crisis.
The multitiered network between TEPCO and its subcontractors made it nearly impossible to keep all records of contact information on workers in such an emergency, he said.
The labor ministry wants the company to find and test the other workers as soon as possible.
The utility said June 20 that another worker was found to have been exposed to more than 250 millisieverts of radiation, the government's safety standard.
That means nine workers have been exposed to radiation levels above the standard since the crisis started.
If the pre-quake standard of 100 millisieverts is used, 124 workers have been exposed to high radiation levels.
(This article was written by Jin Nishikawa and Yoichi Yonetani.)