NUCLEAR LAB EMPLOYEES WITH RADIATION-LINKED CANCERS HAVE BEEN FORCED TO WAIT YEARS FOR POTENTIAL BENEFITS At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, workers are still waiting for answers about who is liable for sicknesses they say were caused by radiation from the lab. REBECCA MOSS PACIFIC STANDARD, Nov 30, 2018
Ten years ago, a security guard at Los Alamos National Laboratory submitted a petition to the federal government seeking compensation and benefits for his fellow lab workers who were sick with cancer and believed that radiation at the lab was to blame.
Andrew Evaskovich’s petition took advantage of a process put in place by Congress in 2000 that allowed groups of workers to secure benefits if they could show that they worked at a nuclear facility, that they had a cancer linked to radiation, and that lab managers failed to accurately keep track of their exposures over time.
Under the law, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency that makes recommendations on work-related injuries and illnesses, had six months to review Evaskovich’s petition and recommend whether it should be approved or denied.
A decade later, Evaskovich and his colleagues are still waiting for a final answer. Continue reading →
A security guard at Los Alamos National Laboratory has been seeking compensation for fellow lab workers who’ve become ill, but the government has repeatedly denied the petition and he’s still waiting for a final answer. by Rebecca Moss, Santa Fe New Mexican Nov. 30 Ten years ago, a Los Alamos National Laboratory security guard named Andrew Evaskovich submitted a petition seeking compensation for fellow nuclear lab workers diagnosed with cancer linked to radiation. The government has repeatedly recommended denying the petition, despite evidence of continuing safety and recordkeeping problems at Los Alamos. And today, Evaskovich is still waiting for an answer. (Read our investigation.)
October 2000: Congress creates a program to compensate nuclear workers who’ve become sick after being exposed to hazardous levels of radiation or toxic chemicals. The law allows groups of workers to petition the government for easier access to compensation if their worksite has not kept adequate worker health records. The process has yet to help workers who started after 1996, when labs had to begin meeting higher safety standards.
2000 to 2004: Government inspectors find continuing worker safety problems at Los Alamos. A top official writes that Los Alamos labs’ “corrective actions have not been effective in preventing the recurrence of the radiological and safety basis violations.”
March 2006: Internal government memos are revealed showing a plan to deny petitions seeking special compensation for workers whose exposure records are missing or were destroyed, as a way to keep the costs down.
January 2008: A government watchdog report finds numerous incidents of “unusually high, unexplained dosage readings for workers” at Los Alamos.
April 2008: Evaskovich files a petition seeking compensation for ill Los Alamos workers employed between 1976 and 2005 who may not have adequate records of radiation exposure, based on his research showing problems with lab safety and recordkeeping.
January 2009: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, recommends for the first time that Evaskovich’s petition be denied, saying Los Alamos records’ show the lab had a health and safety program and was monitoring workers.
February 2009: A government advisory board disagrees and tells NIOSH to continue studying the petition.
July 2009: Workers are exposed to radioactive arsenic-74 at two areas of the lab, violating radiation safety practices in part because personnel “did not recognize the extremely high beta radiation dose rate associated with the arsenic.” Los Alamos is later fined for the incident.
July 2010: In response to a different petition, the government provides easier access to benefits for workers employed at Los Alamos prior to 1975.
August 2012: NIOSH reverses course and says that workers employed prior to 1996 should be eligible for compensation as a group since they “may have accumulated substantial chronic exposures through intakes of inadequately monitored radionuclides.” It also says it needs to continue studying those who started work in subsequent years.
February 2014: Lab workers improperly pack nuclear waste, which causes a drum to burst at an underground nuclear waste facility in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The accident exposes more than 20 workers to radiation and is one of the costliest nuclear accidents in Department of Energy history.
August 2015: The DOE cites Los Alamos for six violations, with issues going back a decade, including a near-runaway chain reaction.
April 2017: NIOSH once again recommends denying Evaskovich’s petition for Los Alamos workers, saying the stricter rules implemented in 1996 meant the lab didn’t have systemic problems after that.
July 2017: Independent consultants disagree. The lab “did not magically” have the ability to follow the rules in 1996 just because the government said it had to, said one of the consultants who had been hired to provide technical advice to the government’s advisory board.
October 2018: NIOSH again recommends that Evaskovich’s petition be denied, saying it has plenty of documents to estimate workers’ radiation exposure, even if they weren’t individually monitored by the lab.
The Department of Energy and NIOSH both say that nuclear sites are safer and have done a better job monitoring workers since the new rules were implemented in 1996. Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark said that workers are closely monitored for radiation exposure and that the lab complies with all federal requirements.
Ill Hanford workers, of which there have been far too many dating back far too long to be considered a coincidence, have toiled for decades amid a radioactive bouillabaisse of chemicals related to the federal Energy Department’s cleanup of the nuclear site.
But until Washington state officials stepped up last year and did the right thing by ensuring that workers filing health claims would have an easier time winning compensation, these workers had to prove to the federal government that their variety of cancers and neurological and respiratory ailments were unequivocally caused by what, literally, was a toxic work environment.
It was a burden of proof too daunting for workers, often of little economic means to fight aggressive Energy Department lawyers setting down layers of bureaucratic hurdles. The state was right to champion the plight of sickened employees, even if some in the business and insurance lobby felt the state law was too sweeping in scope.
Under the new law, signed by Gov. Jay Inslee earlier this year, workers’ medical conditions are assumed to be caused by radiological exposure at Hanford – unless convincing evidence can be made showing other causal factors. That, essentially, flipped the so-called burden of proof from the workers to the federal government.
Since then, 28 of the 34 claims reviewed by the state Department of Labor and Industries have been approved, the state agency reported. That’s a far cry from the near blanket denials — five times the rate of other worker comp claims to the state, according to the advocacy group Hanford Challenge — under the previous policy guidelines set forth by the DOE.
But this week, the Justice Department delivered a rebuke to the state — and, by proxy, its workers who spent their careers cleaning up the chemical mess left over from plutonium production for nuclear weapons. In a letter sent to Inslee, the DOJ asserts the state’s law aiding worker claims violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The federal government, in short, does not believe a state has the right to “directly regulate” a federal agency. Washington’s new law, therefore, is said to “discriminate” against the federal government and its contractors.
Really? If there’s any discrimination at play here, it’s the Energy Department’s long-standing policy of making it burdensome for sickened workers to receive due compensation.
If the state does not settle with the federal government — presumably halting its practice of giving Hanford workers the benefit of the doubt in health claims — the DOJ will take legal action.
Nuclear fallout: $15.5 billion in compensation and counting
They built our atomic bombs; now they’re dying of cancer
Nearly 33,500 former nuclear site workers died due to radiation exposure- report
Nuclear Fallout: This story produced in partnership with ProPublica and the Santa Fe New Mexican. (Richly illustrated with photographs, videos, charts, documents interactive map) Wave 3, By Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik|November 12, 2018 LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO (InvestigateTV)– Clear, plastic water bottles, with the caps all slightly twisted open, fill a small refrigerator under Gilbert Mondragon’s kitchen counter. The lids all loosened by his 4- and 6-year old daughters because, at just 38, Mondragon suffers from limited mobility and strength. He blames his conditions on years of exposure to chemicals and radiation at the facility that produced the world’s first atomic bomb: Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Gilbert Mondragon, 38, pulls the cap off a plastic water bottle that had been twisted open by his young daughters. He hasn’t the strength for those simple tasks anymore and blames his 20-year career at the Los Alamos National Lab. He quit this year because of his serious lung issues, which he suspects were caused by exposures at the nuclear facility. (InvestigateTV/Andy Miller)
Mondragon is hardly alone in his thinking; there are thousands more nuclear weapons workers who are sick or dead. The government too recognizes that workers have been harmed; the Department of Labor administers programs to compensate “the men and women who sacrificed so much for our country’s national security.”
But InvestigateTV found workers with medical issues struggling to get compensated from a program that has ballooned ten times original cost estimates. More than 6,000 workers from Los Alamos alone have filed to get money for their medical problems, with around 53 percent of claims approved.
The Los Alamos lab, the top-secret site for bomb design in 1943, has had numerous safety violations and evidence of improper monitoring, federal inspection reports show. Continue reading →
Four Japan firms used foreign trainees to clean up at Fukushima plant after nuclear meltdowns: final report, Japan Times, BY SARAH SUK, STAFF WRITER, 19 Oct 18The government concluded Friday that four companies had used foreign trainees to perform work cleaning up radioactive contamination after the March 2011 tsunami triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.The headline figure from the final report on a survey conducted by the Justice Ministry, the labor ministry and the Organization for Technical Intern Training was the same as that in the interim report, released in mid-July, which reflected results of surveying fewer than 200 companies with foreign trainee programs.
Officials visited a total of 1,018 such companies with facilities in eight prefectures in eastern and northeastern Japan, interviewing technical interns there to confirm the situation, after the issue came to light in March.
Of the four companies, one in Iwate Prefecture has been banned from accepting foreign trainees for five years. It was found to have neglected to pay allowances for decontamination work, amounting to a combined ¥1.5 million, to three trainees.
The government has issued a similar ban for three years to a firm in Fukushima Prefecture for not paying a total of ¥180,000 to three interns for overtime work.
TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE, The workers of Fukushima Daiichi BY ANDREW DECK METROPOLIS JAPAN, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018“………an elaborate operation that also aspires to full decommissioning of Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 by 2050. Now seven years into this proposed timeline, some critics have questioned its feasibility. According to Daisuke Hirose, a TEPCO spokesperson who debriefed Metropolis on the state of decommissioning, there are three major priorities in fulfilling the plan as scheduled.
The most complex is the location and extraction of nuclear fuel debris. Hundreds of tons of melted fuel remain buried deep within Units 1, 2 and 3, the exact locations of which remain unknown. Rubble and fatal radioactivity levels have rendered these parts of the reactor buildings inaccessible to humans, leaving remote-controlled robots the most viable method of investigation. Only minimal fuel debris in Unit 2 has currently been identified and the means of extraction have not been finalized, but Hirose says TEPCO will meet a 2021 benchmark for initial fuel extraction. Alongside the handling of nuclear debris, the plant must confront a rapid accumulation of contaminated water on site, perhaps the most urgent task facing the operation. ……….
Our coach passed the border of the “difficult to return zone,” a government-designated boundary that separates areas of Fukushima deemed habitable from those deemed uninhabitable. Suddenly we were facing the Fukushima “ghost towns” of popular imagination. While Fukushima Daiichi is ground zero, the heart of this disaster is in the abandoned towns of the prefecture: homes and businesses and schools left behind in an instant, hard evidence of the 160,000 residents that were displaced by the disaster. Abandoned vehicles, shattered windows, hollowed-out storefronts, a dilapidated pachinko parlor and seven years of weeds rising from cracks in the cement — they all passed by the coach windows on our approach to Fukushima Daiichi.
We were not the only vehicles on this highway, trucks rumbled past us and cars lined the road. Calling these “ghost towns” is a misnomer: these towns may be uninhabited, but they are not unoccupied. Many of these vehicles belonged to a decontamination project that spans the original 20km exclusion zone and beyond. It is not operated by TEPCO, but rather a web of government agencies and municipalities. Their job, first and foremost, entails the mass removal of dirt, stripping entire towns of topsoil and manually washing down rooftops and other surfaces that were doused in radioactive particles in an effort to clean away radiation. Fields of black refuse sacks, millions of which are filled with contaminated soil, now litter the prefecture without plans for their permanent storage or removal. Regardless of this work’s efficacy, it is an undertaking that requires a massive labor force; Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reports that more than 46,000 were employed in Fukushima decontamination work in 2016.
The harsh reality is that the disaster has disrupted the industries that once thrived in Fukushima Prefecture — fishing, agriculture and service jobs. Currently, only half of the region’s 1,000 fishermen are going out to sea and they face highly reduced demand. The decontamination industry is one of the few thriving seven years later, but this line of work is not without its risks. In early September, the UN human rights division released a statement warning of possible worker exploitation in the recovery effort, both within the prefectural decontamination projects and on the 1F site. “Workers hired to decontaminate Fukushima reportedly include migrant workers, asylum seekers and people who are homeless,” wrote three UN Special Rapporteurs. “They are often exposed to a myriad of human rights abuses, forced to make the abhorrent choice between their health and income, and their plight is invisible to most consumers and policymakers with the power to change it.” Japan’s Foreign Ministry responded by calling the statement “extremely regrettable.”
There are many people who shoulder the burden of the nuclear disaster: parents sending their children to school with Geiger counters on their backpacks, farmers who have lost their livestock and livelihood, elderly left to care for deserted towns as the young set roots far from Futaba-gun, multi-generation Fukushima lineages that have been forced to abandon their familial homes for prefabricated temporary housing units. Yamamoto carries one small burden of this sweeping tragedy, as do the other workers of Fukushima Daiichi, as do those who labor in irradiated fields without other means of income. They are trying to extinguish a danger that can’t be seen, but its presence is felt in every aspect of their work. At times the job they’ve been assigned feels beyond comprehension, but Fukushima is not a supernatural disaster and Yamamoto is no ghostbuster. This disaster is deeply human, founded in both nature and negligence. “If you think in terms of decades, the long road ahead and the abstractness of it all will crush you,” says Yamamoto. “But just as with any other work, if you split up big projects into smaller pieces, the feeling of accomplishment from each small victory will keep you motivated.” Inside the exclusion zone, we witness the people of Fukushima trying to take their land a few steps closer to normal. https://metropolisjapan.com/workers-of-fukushima-daiichi-power-plant/
California Gov. Brown Signs Historic Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Bill, https://www.powermag.com/press-releases/california-gov-brown-signs-historic-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-bill/Power Magazine, 09/20/2018 SACRAMENTO,CA – California Gov. Jerry Brown today signed into law a bill to protect the environment, workers, and local communities during the closure of California’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo.Senate Bill 1090, which had wide bipartisan support, will help to ensure that the electricity generated by the giant plant is replaced with zero-carbon options led by energy efficiency and renewable energy. The new law also mandates full funding of a $350 million employee retention program and the $85 million community impact mitigation program, which are needed to ensure that the plant is adequately staffed and essential emergency services are provided through the end of the plant’s license period in 2025.
Plant owner Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), citizen and environmental groups including NRDC, and labor organizations in June 2016 announced an agreement to close the two reactors by August 2025 and replace their generation with lower-cost, zero-carbon alternatives. Their joint proposal asked the California Public Utilities Commission to authorize the replacement of the electricity being generated by the plant 250 miles south of San Francisco with emissions-free options led by energy efficiency, wind and solar power, and included protections for plant workers and surrounding communities during the transition. When the CPUC rejected much of the historic joint proposal in January, supporters turned to the Legislature.
Following is a statement from Ralph Cavanagh, energy program co-director at the Natural Resources Defense Council:
“Governor Brown made climate history again today when he signed this legislation to specifically authorize that Diablo Canyon’s electricity generation be replaced with carbon-free resources like energy efficiency and wind and solar power. This groundbreaking legislation also ensures that we account for the full impact of the plant’s closure on the workers and surrounding communities.”
US agrees to improve worker safety at polluted nuclear site https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/us-agrees-to-improve-worker-safety-at-polluted-nuclear-site/837630607, By: PHUONG LE, Associated Press, Sep 19, 2018 – SEATTLE (AP) – The U.S. government will test and implement a new system to capture and destroy dangerous vapors released at the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site as part of a settlement agreement reached Wednesday.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson told reporters that the agreement represents a major win for hundreds of workers who have been getting sick for years while cleaning up the nation’s nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington.
“Those workers deserve to be protected,” Ferguson said.
He added that the U.S. Department of Energy did not take the issue seriously and resisted putting protections in place.
“There’s no way to sugar coat this,” Ferguson said.
The Energy Department will for the first time test a new technology that Ferguson called “game-changing” that would protect workers from the vapor exposures.
Under the agreement, the agency will pay $925,000 in fees and costs to the state and Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that has for decades been warning about worker safety. The agency will also install a new vapor monitoring and alarm system and maintain safety measures that are currently in place, including supplying air and respirators.
The Department of Energy said in an emailed statement that the agreement “acknowledges the extensive actions” that the agency, and its contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions LLC, have taken to protect workers from potential exposure to chemical vapors.
The agency said they continue to “take a very conservative approach to protecting workers from potential exposures to chemical vapors” and that agreement reinforces the ongoing effort.
The state, Hanford Challenge and the pipefitters union Local 598 sued the Energy Department in 2015 and its contractor for tank farms containing nuclear waste, seeking better protection for workers at risk of inhaling vapors or gases that leaked from underground storage tanks.
The agreement puts that federal lawsuit on hold while the Energy Department tests and implements a new system to capture and destroy vapors escaping waste tanks. Ferguson said if the federal agency doesn’t meet its obligations, legal action could resume.
“Hearing and documenting dozens of stories of sick workers was heartbreaking,” said Meredith Crafton, a lawyer representing Hanford Challenge, whose voice broke as she spoke to reporters.
The agreement protects workers in the interim but also creates incentives to find better technology to protect workers in the future, she said.
The 586-square-mile (943-square-kilometer) Hanford nuclear site located along the Columbia River in Eastern Washington state produced up to 70 percent of the plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal since it was established in World War II.
Hanford has 177 underground tanks made of steel that contain more that 54 million gallons (204 million liters) of radioactive and chemical wastes.
Ferguson said studies over the last 20 years, including by the Energy Department and other government agencies, have shown workers falling ill after being exposed to the vapors. They’ve experienced dizziness, nausea and other issues.
Construction Enquirer 13th Sept 2018, Construction union Unite has agreed a deal to carry on working if anyone is
killed during construction of the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. The
Enquirer understands that construction workers were encouraged to agree to
the deal last month to protect payouts to the family of any worker who dies
on the project. It goes against standard practice to down tools on site in
the event of a fatality. http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2018/09/13/hinkley-workers-sign-no-death-stoppage-deal/
An alternative to propping up coal power plants: Retrain workers for solar, The Conversation,Joshua M. Pearce, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan Technological University, August 23, 2018The Trump administration announced new pollution rules for coal-fired power plantsdesigned to keep existing coal power plants operating more and save American coal mining jobs.
Profitability for U.S. coal power plants has plummeted, and one major coal company after another has filed for bankruptcy, including the world’s largest private-sector coal company, Peabody Energy.
A study I co-authored analyzed the question of retraining current coal workers for employment in the solar industry. We found that this transition is feasible in most cases and would even result in better pay for nearly all of the current coal workers.
How to make the jump?
What is left of the coal mining industry represents a unique demographic compared to the rest of America. It is white (96.4 percent); male (96.2 percent); aging, with an average age of 43.8 years old; and relatively uneducated, with 76.7 percent having earned only a high school degree or equivalent. Many are highly skilled, however, with the largest sector of jobs being equipment operators at 27 percent. Many of these skills can be transferred directly into the solar industry.
In the study, we evaluated the skill sets of current coal workers and tabulated salaries. For each type of coal position, we determined the closest equivalent solar position and tried to match current coal salaries. We then quantified the time and investment required to retrain each worker.
Our results show there is a wide variety of employment opportunities in solar – the industry overall already employs more than five times more people than in coal mining, at over 250,000 by one industry group estimate. We also found the annual pay is generally better at all levels of education, even with the lowest-skilled jobs. For example, janitors in the coal industry could increase their salaries by 7 percent by becoming low-skilled mechanical assemblers in the solar industry.
Overall, we found that after retraining, technical workers (the vast majority) would make more money in the solar industry than they do in coal. Also note this study was about careers and was done before an uptick in the practice of hiring temporary coal workers. The only downside on salaries we found are that managers and particularly executives would make less in solar than coal. This represents only about 3.2 percent of coal workers that are professional administrators.
Nuclear Plant Closures Bring Economic Pain to Cities and Towns, Pew, STATELINE ARTICLE, September 5, 2018, By: Martha T. Moore “…….. Aging nuclear power plants are closing, doomed by the high cost of refurbishing them and the low price of natural gas. That is causing fiscal pain for municipalities that rely on revenue from the plants, and creating political pressure for state subsidies to forestall further shutdowns……….
Six reactors have shut down in the past five years, and eight more reactors are scheduled to close by 2025 at plants in California, Iowa, Massachusetts and Michigan. Nuclear power operators have said they will close a further five reactors at four plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania if those states don’t offer subsidies.
The closure of Indian Point, announced in January 2017, capped decades of controversy over its safety, and was a victory for environmental groups and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had long opposed the plant.
But the closure presents the local Hendrick-Hudson school district, where 2,500 children practice evacuation drills annually and nurses have iodide pills on hand in case of a radiation leak, with a budget crisis. About one-third of the district’s annual $79 million budget comes from Indian Point’s payment in lieu of taxes. By 2024, three years after the power plant huts, the yearly payments will have dwindled from $25 million to $1.35 million. ……..
Many nuclear power plants have curried public favor by being good corporate citizens. In Londonderry, for example, Three Mile Island runs a golf tournament for the local fire department that raises enough money to cover the $50,000 annual mortgage payment on the firehouse.
Redevelopment of Three Mile Island isn’t an option, Letavic said, because of the nuclear waste that will remain on the site, which is in the middle of the Susquehanna River……
In Lacey Township on the New Jersey shore, the nation’s oldest operating nuclear plant, Oyster Creek, will shut down in September after 49 years. The town gets $11 million in annual taxes from Oyster Creek and has identified itself so closely with the nuclear plant that its municipal seal bears the symbol of an atom as well as a sailboat and a pheasant. …….
Asking for State Help
Four states have moved to shore up nuclear power plants financially despite opposition from some environmental groups, consumer advocates and the coal and natural gas power industries.
In 2016, New York passed a $7.6 billion package to help three upstate nuclear power plants — though not Indian Point. And Illinois passed legislation directing $2.4 billion to two plants in the state through “zero emissions credits”
……..In New Jersey, where 40 percent of the state’s electricity comes from nuclear plants, the state will subsidize two plants at a rate of $300 million a year under a bill enacted in May. (Oyster Creek was not included in the subsidy plan.) Connecticut enacted legislation last October that could allow its sole nuclear plant, the Millstone reactor in Waterford, to sell electricity at higher prices if Dominion Energy, its owner, can show the reactor is financially strapped. ………
Leaving no stone unturned in heatstroke battle at nuclear plant http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201808180033.htmlBy HIROSHI ISHIZUKA/ Staff Writer , 18 Aug 18 OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–How to avert a heatstroke is more pressing than usual in Japan this summer as the archipelago bakes in a record heat wave.
It’s not just sun-worshipers, children, the elderly and the infirm who should worry.
Spare a thought for the 5,000 or so workers who toil at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to get it ready for decommissioning.
They have to work outside in protective gear, with limited access to water and other resources.
At 5 a.m. on Aug. 6, a manager reminded a 20-strong group from IHI Plant Construction Co., which was contracted by Tokyo Electric Power Co., of the importance of adhering strictly to work rules.
“Please limit your efforts to shifts of less than 90 minutes,” the manager told the assembled workers in a lounge at the plant as he checked the complexion of each individual to gauge their health condition.
The workers are installing storage tanks for radioactive water that is accumulating at the plant.
They are not permitted to take food and beverages with them because of the risk of internal radiation exposure if the perishables are contaminated while they are working.
Water stations have been set up, but workers generally don’t bother to quench their thirst as it means they have to change out of their work gear to reach the sites.
During the morning meeting, the manager also checked each worker’s alcohol level and made sure that everybody had water from oral rehydration solution. After that, workers put a cold insulator in their vests and headed to the work site.
The Fukushima plant complex has about 900 tanks set up. IHI Plant Construction installed about 20 percent of them.
The workers’ primary responsibility in recent weeks is to inspect the condition of covers put in place to stop rainwater from accumulating around the tanks.
The workers are spared from the scorching sun as they work under cover, but coping with 90 to 95 percent humidity is a formidable challenge.
Junichi Ono, the head of the IHI Plant Construction’s task force assigned to the plant, said his company has tried to take every precaution against heatstroke.
“We need to pay attention because we work in a humid environment,” he said. “If a worker falls sick, we will lose valuable time taking that person to the doctor.”
According to TEPCO, 23 workers suffered heatstroke in the summer of 2011, shortly after the nuclear crisis unfolded at the plant.
Learning a lesson from that, workers were later instructed to start their tasks early in the morning and not work outdoors in principle between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. in July and August, the hottest part of the day.
The “summer time” schedule appears to be paying off.
In fiscal 2014, the number of workers afflicted with heatstroke at the plant stood at 15.
It dropped to four in fiscal 2016, but went back up to six in fiscal 2017 despite it being a relatively cool summer that year.
Although this year’s heat wave is unprecedented, only four workers have suffered heatstroke at the plant this summer.
The Japan Meteorological Agency forecast blistering summer heat in the coming week after a respite this weekend.
In September, one of the UN experts, Baskut Tuncak, will present a report to the UN Human Rights Council, calling on States and employers to strengthen protection for workers from exposure to toxic substances, and proposing principles in that regard. The UN experts: Mr. Baskut Tuncak, Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Ms. Urmila Bhoola, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences,and Mr. Dainius Puras, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health …
A federal program that has paid out more than $60 million to former Apollo area nuclear workers for radiation-related illnesses is looking for more former nuclear workers throughout the region who might be eligible for compensation.
The U.S. Department of Labor will hold an information meeting for former workers in the nuclear materials industry or their survivors on Aug. 22 from 9 a.m. noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Quality Inn in New Kensington.
There are about 14 work sites eligible in Southwestern Pennsylvania, including some steel mills and nuclear fuel processing plants.
Among them are the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) in Apollo and Parks Township, Westinghouse Atomic Power Development Plant in East Pittsburgh, Westinghouse Nuclear Fuels Division in Cheswick, and Aluminum Co. of America — Alcoa — in New Kensington.
The benefits proved helpful to deceased workers’ families to shore up medical expenses and the financial losses.
But it still doesn’t make up for the loss of a loved one.
“It just seems trivial — $150,000 for someone’s life, but it did help my mom out,” said Shellie Robertson, 57, Washington Township, whose father, John Grazetti, died in 2015 at the age of 74 from acute myeloid leukemia.
Grazetti, of Washington Township, was a NUMEC worker as was his father, John Grazetti Sr., who died of colon cancer and a brother who has recently been diagnosed with rectal cancer, according to Robertson.
All three men had cancers associated with exposures to radioactive substances encountered at work, and the compensation claims to the Labor Department by the three men have been accepted.
“My dad said he would probably die of cancer,” Robertson said. “He knew.”
Grazetti, who worked at NUMEC for about 20 years, didn’t talk much about his job, according to his daughter.
All the family knew what that he was foreman and worked with chemicals. However, Robertson did recall her father having to submit urine samples for the company to test for what is now known as radiation over-exposures.
Near the end of his life, Robertson started to hear NUMEC stories when her dad and uncle would talk.
“They would have to clean up stuff, spray down the walls. I remember the soles of my father’s shoes being eaten away from the stuff he was walking in.”
Paid out so far: $15 billion
To date, the program has paid more than $129.3 million in compensation and medical benefits to 1,138 claimants living in Pennsylvania and more than $15.2 billion nationwide, according to the Labor Department.
The government established the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICPA) in 2000 to pay sick nuclear workers a lump sum of $150,000 and coverage of related medical expenses.
The program pays people who became ill because of working for a private business subcontracted by the federal government to develop and produce components for nuclear weapons.
Generally, eligible workers must have worked a certain amount of time and developed one of 22 cancers designated by the program and or other illnesses. The benefit also is payable to families of deceased workers.
The Labor Department has visited the area before and is visiting again because there still might be workers or their families still eligible for the benefit.
In Pennsylvania, most of the nuclear workers covered by the program were employed in the 1960s and 1970s.
It’s difficult to say how many more workers could be eligible for the program, but they could number in the hundreds, according to estimates provided by an EEOICPA program official several years ago.
Mary Ann Thomas is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Mary Ann at 724-226-4691, mthomas@tribweb.com or via Twitter @MaThomas_Trib.
The solar industry accounts for the largest share of jobs in renewable energy, with nearly 3.4 million people employed in research, production, installation and maintenance of solar panels — an increase of 9 percent from 2016. The solar sector is followed by liquid biofuels, with 1.9 million jobs, and hydropower, with 1.5 million. The IRENA report finds that employment in the global wind industry decreased slightly from 2016 to 2017, shrinking to 1.15 million. China is home to 65 percent of the world’s solar jobs, and 43 percent of all renewable energy jobs. Due to the region’s robust manufacturing sector, four-fifths of all renewable energy jobs are located in Asia.
“The data underscores an increasingly regionalized picture, highlighting that in countries where attractive policies exist, the economic, social and environmental benefits of renewable energy are most evident,” said Adnan Z. Amin, director general of IRENA.
nuclear-news 