27/03 TEPCO workers not warned of radiation risk

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Tokyo Electric Power Co. knew of the possibility of highly concentrated radioactive leakage at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor, but it failed to alert workers before three of them were exposed to radiation Thursday, it was learned Saturday.

The worker's exposure to highly radioactive ankle-deep water in the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor was most likely due to TEPCO's failure to share information about the leakage of radioactive materials with the workers, the company admitted.

Another cause of the mishap was the failure on the part of the workers to pay attention to the pool of radiation-polluted water while laying power cables in spite of radiation alarms sounding, according to TEPCO.

The company had detected 200 millisieverts per hour of radiation leaking from the first basement of the turbine building of the No. 1 reactor on March 18, six days before the accident.

TEPCO acknowledged on Saturday it had been aware that the pool of water in question at the No. 3 reactor's turbine building could contain a high concentration of radioactive materials.

The information about measurement findings at the No. 1 reactor's turbine building, however, was not conveyed to the workers before they started the task of laying cables Thursday morning, the company said.

If the workers had been told of the possibility that a pool of water in the building contained high concentrations of radiation, their radiation exposure probably would have been averted, analysts said.

Working with their feet submerged in the water up to their ankles, the three continued working even when the dosimeters they were wearing began sounding alarms. The workers later said they thought the dosimeters might be malfunctioning.

Hirota Koyama, deputy chief of TEPCO's Fukushima office, said: "If a system of information sharing [about the radiation exposure risks] had been properly in place, the accident might have been averted at the No. 3 reactor. We deeply regret that it wasn't."

(Mar. 27, 2011)