nuclear-news

Death of worker at Fukushima nuclear station – from head injury

Worker at wrecked Japan nuclear plant dies from head injury, AP The Big Story,  By MARI YAMAGUCHI Aug. 8, 2015  TOKYO (AP) — A worker at Japan’s wrecked nuclear power plant died after the hatch at the back of a truck closed on his head Saturday, the latest mishap at a complex still struggling with the cleanup from the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant said the 52-year-old man was rushed to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead soon after……..

The decades-long decommissioning of the plant, which was wrecked in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan, involves thousands of workers.

The number of accidents last year, including injuries and sickness, doubled to 64 from a year earlier. Saturday’s death, the second this year, occurred weeks after the government and TEPCO announced plans to slow down projects to improve safety. In January, a worker died after accidentally falling from atop a storage tank.

The two men involved in Saturday’s incident were assigned to the truck used at the site where a frozen underground wall is being installed near highly contaminated reactor buildings, a project aimed at curbing a contaminated water problem hampering the decommissioning of the plant. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6c411d81dfc340639f9d8b6d15d6787b/worker-wrecked-japan-nuclear-plant-dies-head-injury

August 10, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general