With reports that TEPCO hired incompetent workers to build water storage tanks, could TEPCO have also caused thousands of deaths of cleanup workers?
This idea came up in my news reader, so I want to check its validity. It talked about 4,300 TEPCO workers dead. It's pretty outrageous that TEPCO would use subpar workers to build the water tanks that are supposed to be keeping radioactive water out of the ocean. But it would really be extremely outrageous if TEPCO's inadequacy had let thousands of workers die.
This idea came up in my news reader, so I want to check its validity. It talked about 4,300 TEPCO workers dead. It's pretty outrageous that TEPCO would use subpar workers to build the water tanks that are supposed to be keeping radioactive water out of the ocean. But it would really be extremely outrageous if TEPCO's inadequacy had let thousands of workers die.
Unless you want to spin these workers as hero's who sacrificed themselves to clean up something that was going to harm the rest of us. The cleanup workers are Chernobyl were presented as hero's.
Anyway, here's the title:
The red type, bold face, and CAPSLOCK, are all from their site. Another claim on the site is this:4300 TEPCO WORKERS DEAD AS FUKUSHIMA RADIATION STRETCHES WORLDWIDE & BRINGS NEW MUTANT DAYS OF NOAH
4300 tepco worker deaths have been covered upThis gives us some supposed evidence to try and validate. By the way, the site this is on is full of raving lunatic conspiracy theory gunk such as the "MILITARY AND CIA STATED THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE REPUBLIC" and we should expect MASSIVE ARRESTS starting any day now. So we can't expect too much in the way of accuracy.
By the way, the U.S. form of Government is a Republic - as in
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.So if the Military & CIA are in support of the Republic, well, that's their constitutional duty, and if they hadn't done so they would be derelict of duty and perhaps treasonous.
But, we can't get distracted, what about these TEPCO workers?
I did some yahoogling and -- actually -- there were dozens of blogs, all with raving lunatic conspiracy theory blog names -- with very similar titles. One wonders whether there's some black hat SEO tricks going on here? Anyway, I did finally get to some real news.
Japan earthquake: Anger over Fukushima evacuation plan - 16 March 2011
This was a news report published in the couple days after the earthquake and tsunami. Engineers were in the middle of their mad dash to avoid nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. There had already been large radiation releases into the vicinity. The Japanese government had declared a 20 kilometer evacuation zone around the power plant.
About 140,000 people living in the 20-30 kilometer zone were told to stay in their homes. At the same time, the U.S. Government ordered all Americans to stay at least 80 kilometers from the Fukushima plant.
That is one of the side controversies to the whole thing - why did the U.S. government order such a large evacuation zone, and the Japanese order a smaller one. Well, there is an issue of where would they find the space to store another 140,000 refugees.
There is this:
"They are leaving us to die," says the mayor of Minamasoma inside the exclusion zoneAs for the claim of 4,300 dead workers? The article says this:
More than 4,300 people are listed as dead but it is feared the total death toll from the catastrophe, which pulverised the country's north-east coast, will rise substantially.That's "people" not "workers"... There's a difference between those two words, people.
The claim of 4,300 dead workers implies something like - lots of people sent in to the site to do cleanup work, got radiation poisoning, died.
But this - 4,300 people - that's just the casualties, and probably aren't radiation casualties at all but from the earthquake and subsequent flooding.
Human Rights Watch: Syrian planes have killed 4,300 civilians since July - April 2013
Here's an actual tragedy, published by a regular news outlet, involving 4,300 people that actually died at the hands of their own government. This is something actual and real to be actually outraged about.
Fukushima Nuclear Plant Worker Dies - October 2011
An actual news report of an actual worker death at the site ... At that time there had been three deaths of workers at the site. According to TEPCO none were due to radiation, and weren't due to over-work. Instead
TEPCO said a male worker in his 50s became ill during a meeting Wednesday morning, before his shift started. He was taken to a hospital immediately, and died the next morning.I'm not satisfied by that explanation. However, 3 workers dead is a far cry from 4,300. We have 4,297 worker deaths to go.
"We can't disclose what was cited as the cause on his death certificate because it would amount to violation of privacy," a TEPCO spokesman said.
Japan nuclear plant workers in hospital after radiation exposure - 24 March 2011
Three cable-layers at Fukushima power plant exposed to high levels of radiation after stepping into contaminated water
Tests on the workers, who are all in their 20s and 30s, showed they were exposed to between 170 millisieverts (mSv) and 180 mSv of radiation while laying cable in the basement of the No 3 reactor's turbine building. That is above the usual legal limit of 100 mSv per year for nuclear power workers in Japan, but below a new limit of 250 mSv, introduced soon after the nuclear crisis began to enable them to spend more time inside the crippled facility.
That's three workers -- two of whom were hospitalized with radiation burns. Those two were wearing regular shoes, while the third was wearing boots and didn't get burned by radiation. The three were standing in a pool of radioactive water, and the water seeped through their protective clothing.
More than 20 workers have been injured at the Fukushima plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, since it was badly damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. They include 11 who were hurt when the No 3 reactor building exploded.
To date, 17 have been exposed to radiation exceeding 100 mSv at the plant, though none has been exposed to contamination exceeding the accumulative 250 mSv limit.
Fukushima evacuation has killed more than earthquake and tsunami, survey says - September 2013
More people have now died because of the Fukushima evacuation process than were killed in the region by the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami which caused the displacement, a survey said.
Some 300,000 people evacuated their homes in the prefecture after the disaster caused multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to Red Cross figures.
A survey by popular Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun said Monday that deaths relating to this displacement – around 1,600 – have surpassed the number killed in the region in the original disaster.
Close to 16,000 people were killed across Japan as a direct result of the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. According to the Mainichi report, 1,599 of these deaths were in the Fukushima Prefecture.
