Saturday, March 2, 2013

'I am one of the Fukushima fifty': One of the men who risked their lives to prevent a catastrophe shares his story

They displayed a bravery few can comprehend, yet very little is known about the men who stayed behind to save Japan’s stricken nuclear plant. In a rare interview, David McNeill meets Atsufumi Yoshizawa, who was at work on 11 March 2011 when disaster struck - The Independent.uk

...About 250 km south in Tokyo, the government feared a nightmare scenario: a vast toxic cloud heading toward the world’s most populated metropolis. Rumours swirled that Tepco was preparing to completely pull out its staff from the Daiichi plant, leaving it to spin out of control. Mr Yoshizawa denies this. “We never intended to abandon our jobs,” he insists. “At the time that rumour was circulating I was volunteering to go back.” He recalls despairing at the situation. “Most people thought we would not be coming back from the plant,” he says, on the verge of tears. In the media the Fukushima 50 was born, although Mr Yoshizawa says that in reality there were 70 of them, mostly in their middle age. “We had all resolved to stay till the end.”

Throughout the following weeks on the frontline of the crisis, the men endured brutal conditions. Deliveries stalled, food almost ran out and water was restricted to a single 500ml bottle every two days. Working in shifts, surviving on biscuits and sleeping when he could inside the radiation-proofed bunker, Mr Yoshizawa lost weight and grew a beard. As elite firefighters succeeded in getting water to the overheating reactors, the collective psyche inside the bunker lightened and the dreaded words “oshimai da” (it’s the end), were no longer heard. Exhausted and dishevelled on his first trip back to a sunny Tokyo a month after the quake, he was startled to find life going on as normal.

...a select list of employees who absorbed potentially harmful amounts of radiation are qualified for unlimited aftercare. His own final tally of internal exposure was 50 millisieverts – the upper annual limit in the US for nuclear plant workers....