"Unskilled and Destitute Are Hiring Targets for Fukushima Cleanup"

"NARAHA, Japan — 'Out of work? Nowhere to live? Nowhere to go? Nothing to eat?' the online ad reads. 'Come to Fukushima.'

That grim posting targeting the destitute, by a company seeking laborers for the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is one of the starkest indications yet of an increasingly troubled search for workers willing to carry out the hazardous decommissioning at the site.

The plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as Tepco, has been shifting its attention away, leaving the complex cleanup to an often badly managed, poorly trained, demoralized and sometimes unskilled work force that has made some dangerous missteps. At the same time, the company is pouring its resources into another plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, that it hopes to restart this year as part of the government’s push to return to nuclear energy three years after the world’s second-worst nuclear disaster. It is a move that some members of the country’s nuclear regulatory board have criticized."

Hiroko Tabuchi reports for the New York Times March 16, 2014.

SEE ALSO:

"Japan Ponders Lessons of Quake, Tsunami, Nuclear Meltdown" (ENS)

"Three years after Fukushima tragedy, Japan makes U-turn on nuclear energy" (Christian Science Monitor)

"Thousands in Japan protest nuclear power, conditions at Fukushima" (Aljazeera America)

"Reversing Course, Japan Makes Push to Restart Dormant Nuclear Plants" (New York Times)

"Japan Mulls Nuclear Revival Not Even 3 Years After Fukushima" (TIME)

Opinion: "In Japan, Nuclear Safety Uncertain" (Denver Post)

"Public Asked To Test Water for Radiation" (AP)

"Gangsters and ‘Slaves’: the People Cleaning Up Fukushima" (Aljazeera America)