• The job of cleaning up the radioactive mess at Fukushima has found its way into the hands not of TEPCO (Tokyo Electric) employees, but rather a collection of large companies.
   
• Those large companies put RFQ’s out on the wire for smaller contract labor companies to bid on.

• Smaller contract labor companies won the bids despite having no experience working with nuclear materials. “A common complaint: the project’s dependence on a sprawling and little scrutinized network of subcontractors – many of them inexperienced with nuclear work and some of them, police say, have ties to organized crime.”
   
• Hundreds of smaller firms have employees working in areas around the mangled nuclear power plant cleaning up radioactive debris, soil and dirt… and TEPCO has gone on record saying it has a hard time monitoring the hiring practices and working conditions brought forth by many of those smaller companies. As stated by one the Fukushima clean up employees, “Even then, his handlers told him, the radiation would be so high it could burn through his annual exposure limit in just under an hour.”
   
• TEPCO has recently admitted that the clean up effort has 25% more jobs available than applicants. Those outside the situation believe this may have resulted in clean up firms stepping “… into the gap, recruiting people whose lives have reached a dead end or who have trouble finding a job outside the disaster zone.”
   
• Apparently, Japan’s nuclear industry has relied on a group called “nuclear gypsies” for construction of several of its nuclear power plants since possibly the 1970’s… and that members of that same migrant labor force have come around to clean up the Fukushima site.
   
• Many of the companies currently involved with the Fukushima clean up effort grandfathered out of legislation requiring screenings and checking of credentials. “… contractors working on decontamination have not been required to disclose information on management or undergo any screening.”
   
• Rumors of Yakuza (Japan’s dominant crime syndicate) involvement with a number of the contract labor companies involved in the clean up project have surfaced.

Not so sure about YOU, but we see a NUCLEAR problem with this mess. Pun intended.

Given the potential ramifications for the Pacific Ocean if the Fukushima site does not get cleaned up quickly and properly, and of the plant not correctly getting shut down to safe levels in a timely and safe manner, one would think that the rest of the world would pressure the Japanese Government into taking action to organize the rat’s nest of contractors at the site.

But, as the article we read said about the use of contract labor in Japan, “There’s been a century of tradition of big Japanese companies using contractors, and that’s just the way it in Japan.”

For more details on the situation, because we certainly could not have included them all in this simple article, we suggest reading the source article on Yahoo.

Moral of the story?

As we stated several times in the past, we suggest bringing a Geiger counter with you the next time you go out for sushi!

A (not-so) recent (anymore) report from the contaminated reactor site stated that as much as 110 gallons of highly radioactive water may have accidentally spilled from a rainwater overflow tank and found its way into the Pacific Ocean.

What caused the leak? Heavy rainfall in the region caused rainwater collection tanks to overflow — and apparently some of the large containers lacked level gauges so workers could not easily monitor content levels.

Officials believe the leaked water carried a radioactive load of around 580,000 becquerels per liter and contained both cesium and strontium. The latter, if consumed, may accumulate in a person’s bones where it will irradiate its surroundings continuously. That radiation will more than likely result in the formation of cancer cells.

By comparison, health and safety officials state that ‘safe’ drinking water ought to have no more than 10 becquerels per liter.

Moral of the story?

In addition to worrying about mercury accumulating in our systems if we enjoy certain types of seafood on a regular basis, we must now turn the lights off before we eat sushi… to make certain it doesn’t glow in the dark!

Just kidding about glowing in the dark, but we think you catch our drift. We may, however, borrow a Geiger Counter from our survival stash to take with us the next time we go out for sushi, though.

Today we read an article on Yahoo that contained seemingly one piece of bad news after another. For your convenience we will attempt to highlight the horrors taking place at the crippled TEPCO controlled nuclear power plant below:

• Earlier this week workers at the Fukushima site reported finding levels of known radioactive (and carcinogenic) materials like strontium in well water samples taken very recently. Health experts say materials like strontium build up in bones where they may eventually cause cancer.
   
• TEPCO stated that it now seems pretty likely that contaminated water leaking from the Fukushima site may have reached underground waterways that take water from land out towards the sea and testing of some ground water samples showed concentrations of up 3,200 becquerels per liter. By comparison, drinking water ought not contain more than 10 becquerels of radioactivity per liter.
   
• In a statement made previously, personnel at the Fukushima site stated that around 300 tons of mildly polluted water runs into the Pacific Ocean each day in underground currents of ground water — and now tests show that unsafe levels of radioactive materials may exist as unwanted component of that continually flowing river of pollution into the Pacific Ocean.
   
• The recent news of ground water contamination greatly complicates the plan of putting in an ‘ice barrier’ around the plant to keep ground water from becoming contaminated.
   
• Samples of ocean water taken from offshore locations have not (yet) turned up positive for contamination.
   
• TEPCO and the Japanese Government have both stated that they would entertain discussions with non-Japanese sources regarding possible solutions for the Fukushima radioactive waste water situation.

The article also mentioned Tokyo, Japan’s successful bid to host the 2020 Olympics… but honestly WE DON’T CARE about the 2020 Olympics when something desperately needs to get done to stop the flow of radioactive water and materials into the Pacific Ocean.

Let us not forget how Godzilla ‘supposedly’ got mutated: Radioactivity. At this point no one seems to know WHAT’s on the full list of radioactive materials that has already made its way into subterranean waterways headed into the ocean OR exactly WHERE all those contaminants have gone — except out into the sea… someplace… they think.

Coming to a beach near you…

Anyone who believes waste products from the Fukushima reactor site cannot reach their country needs to spend a few minutes researching past and present news stories about debris from the 2011 tsunami in Asia washing up on shorelines all around the world.

Moral of the story?

Stay tuned for more bad news, folks… More. Bad. News.