Documentary “Nuclear Ginza” – Part 1
The dark underbelly of the nuclear industry is revealed in this documentary. It is true historically, but also explains how workers are treated today in the nuclear industry. Most people do not understand nuclear power, radiation or the harm it can cause, even with just a few minutes of exposure in a place like the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant.
There should be busloads of NEW workers going into Fukushima Daichi every day to work on cleaning up the mess there. Instead, only a few workers wander around, and no one is even there on weekends.
Temp workers hired by subcontractor firms that bring in laborers for the nuclear industry are told to cover up their radiation badges with lead shields, to put them on in a place that gets less radiation or to not wear them at all.
Of course, workers have to swear to secrecy by signing contracts and never talk about anything, even if what they are part of and getting paid for consists of crimes, fraud, scams or worse.
The link below goes to the calculations that estimate total ‘safe’ radiation exposure before a worker needs to be replaced at Fukushima, and how many workers are theoretically required to clean it up.
The combination of Mafia type gangs subcontracting workers, fear, intimidation, secrecy agreements, and isolation of workers from the average person in cities has enabled the nuclear industry to cover up this dark side of the industry.
Many of these workers who work at nuclear power plants as either ‘temp’ workers or permanent laborers who go into the highest radiation zones or clean up radiation ‘spills’ get sick and die later on, but without even appearing on the radar screen, because no one is tracking this and the industry definitely does NOT want to know about it.
Since radiation does it’s damaging and disease/death causing work slowly, it takes several years for radiation damage to even show up. Since most high radiation work is done by temp workers who are not tracked or given health care benefits, they do not show up in any statistics.
Most of the low level temp workers are put into high radiation environments, and then tossed back onto the street once the nuclear industry is done with them. The higher level permanent employees who are permanent, are more often than not put in positions where radiation exposure is minimal, at sites located away from the high radiation sources.
Documentary “Nuclear Ginza” – Part 2
Since it seems that the Mafia controls all of the temp labor in the nuclear industry in Japan, the incentives for transparency are few or non-existent. Because the Mafia tends to hide everything it does, that strategy extends into how it gets workers, what radiation they are exposed to and the negative health effects on those workers. No one seems to care, as long as the work gets done.
Because no investment fund or investor is putting money into nuclear power, it is mostly taxpayers footing the bill for the nuclear power industry through subsidies, loan guarantees and grants, globally. The nuclear industry is a 50 year old industry, supposedly mature and not needing subsidies anymore. But the industry actually could not survive WITHOUT these taxpayer provided corporate welfare programs.
No new nuclear power plants can be built without extensive loan guarantees, subsidies and public ‘protection’ via unlimited taxpayer insurance funding. In cases of accidents, which happen with great regularity, insurance companies bail out and disappear after an initial small amount of coverage. The insurance industry only covers a small portion of the risk, at a huge cost. The large bulk of risk and exposure to nuclear accidents is provided by the public taxpayer. The Fukushima accident in Japan is estimated to cost up to 10 TRILLION dollars.
The nuclear industry is not only expensive, inefficient and polluting, it is also greatly dependent on massive amounts of labor, which is exploited in negative ways. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Tennessee Valley Authority, a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant takes around 25,000 workers to support it’s operation.
Of course, if there is an accident, just ONE nuclear power plant may then require over 1 MILLION people to sacrifice their health and potentially they lives to ‘save’ the world from the impending global life extinction event. This is exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
The radiation exposure records of these workers all conveniently ‘disappeared’, just like they are at Fukushima, for ‘temp’ workers. However, to collect benefits due to the damage caused by radiation, the workers had to ‘prove’ that they were exposed to huge amounts of radiation. Since no records were kept or they disappeared, it was very difficult for any worker to get compensated for radiation damage.
When viewed from this vantage point, one can see that the fewer people required to staff a power plant of any kind, the more efficient and safe it probably is, long term.
A nuclear power plant takes 25,000 people to operate and run, but only if no accidents happen. A 1,000 megawatt oil fired plant only needs about 500 people to staff it. A coal fired plant requires around 250 people to staff it. A natural gas facility only needs around 60 workers.
The equivalent geothermal, tide, solar or wind powered production facilities are all very efficient, using as few as 20-60 workers to keep these clean and green power plants operating for long periods of time. There is no risk of these melting down and causing the extinction of all life on the planet, as is the case with ALL nuclear power plants.
AGR Free Press 