Two workers died Jan. 20 in separate accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants, prompting the operator to step up training programs to prevent a recurrence.
Two workers died Jan. 20 in separate accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants, prompting the operator to step up training programs to prevent a recurrence.
Akira Ono, manager of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, told a news conference Jan. 20 that industrial accidents have been on the rise since the crippled No. 1 plant entered the full-fledged decommissioning phase.
He said many of the accidents involved inexperienced workers. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, will strengthen worker training programs to prevent further incidents, he said.
According to TEPCO and Fukushima prefectural police, a 55-year-old worker fell into a rainwater storage tank on Jan. 19 at the No. 1 plant. He apparently had neglected to securely fasten a safety harness. The man died on Jan. 20.
The same day, a 48-year-old worker at the No. 2 plant, located 12 kilometers south of the No. 1 plant, died after his head became caught in machinery at a waste disposal facility.
Fukushima prefectural authorities on Jan. 20 called on TEPCO to take prompt steps to prevent further accidents at the plants.
The number of industrial accidents, both minor and serious, at the No. 1 plant has risen in recent years. TEPCO doubled the number of workers to 7,000 last December, from 3,400 a year earlier, to step up cleanup efforts.
“Many workers recruited in recent months are scratch workers, having no previous experience at nuclear power plants,” said a plant worker in his 30s.
A 56-year-old man, who was engaged in disposal work of contaminated water, blamed face masks worn by workers to protect them from radiation, noting that the gear makes verbal communication extremely difficult.
According to the prefectural government’s labor bureau, the number of serious industrial accidents involving decommissioning workers at the No. 1 plant doubled to eight in 2014 from a year earlier.
Bureau officials cited inadequately trained new workers and poor visibility caused by the radiation protection masks for the rise in accidents and worker injuries.
The bureau had instructed TEPCO on Jan. 16 to take steps to prevent industrial accidents at the facility.