Nuclear labor issues
Many questions regarding these nuclear worker conditions go unanswered, and with the exception of a few whistleblowers, the vast majority of laborers – unseen, underpaid, overworked and exploited – have few incentives to share their stories.
The uranium mill tailings dam has been leaking for a number of years, and on January 17, 2014, a catastrophic structural failure of a leach tank caused a major spill.
[13] The France-based laboratory, Commission de Recherche et d'Information Independentantes sur la Radioactivite (CRIIAD) reported elevated levels of radioactive materials in the area surrounding the mine.
The Director of Labor Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI), Hilma Shindondola-Mote, mine employees asserted that Rössing did not provide them with explanation of health problems from exposure to uranium.
At the Nabarlek, Rum Jungle, Hunter's Hill, Rockhole and Moline mines, gamma radiation exceeded safe levels by 50% causing chronic health problems for miners and workers.
[27] Due to the Cold War demand for increasingly destructive and powerful nuclear weapons, these laborers were both exposed to and brought home large amounts of radiation in the form of dust on their clothing and skin.
[45] Years prior to the Fukushima accident, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1999 that nearly 90% of Japanese nuclear power plant workers were subcontracted to perform the most hazardous jobs.
The Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center reported that temporary workers absorbed 16 times higher levels of radiation than regular TEPCO employees.
[58] Japan's second largest construction company, Obayashi Corporation, was found to, perhaps illegally, assign homeless men from the Sendai train station to work as decontamination laborers at the crippled reactors.
Several arrests were made of members of Japanese criminal syndicates, Yamaguchi-gumi, Inagawa-kai, and Sumiyoshi-sai, for arranging black-market labor recruitment operations for Obayashi.
[65] On October 20, 2015, the New York Times reported that Japan will begin to pay Fukushima accident disaster laborers recompense for cancers developed from participating in the clean up of the triple meltdowns and fuel pool clean-ups.
While preparing enriched uranium fuel for use in the Jōyō experimental breeder reactor, a criticality accident lasting 20 hours occurred during which the nuclear fission chain reaction emitted intense gamma and neutron radiation.
The explosion and fire caused by human error released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment, irradiation a large area of Europe, in particular Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
[76][77] According to the 2011 report of the German Affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), "Health Effects of Chernobyl: 25 years after the reactor catastrophe" [78] based on Yablokov's 2010 report, there were 830,000 clean-up workers; 350,000 evacuees from the 30 km highly contaminated zone; 8,300,000 people who were affected within the heavily irradiated area in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia; and six hundred million (600,000,000) European people who had exposures to radiation from the accident (Fairlie, 2007).
It was the site of the Kyshtym disaster (1957) when a storage tank explosion released 50-100 tons of high-level radioactive waste, contaminating a 290 square mile area in the eastern Ural mountains, causing radiation sickness and death.
Tissue samples and organs were removed from 65 deceased former Sellafield workers, as announced by Trade Secretary, Alistair Darling in 2007, and confirmed by Peter Lutchwyche of the British Nuclear Group.
[109][110] During the nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands approximately 300,000 GIs were exposed to radiation, the U.S. Department of Defense estimates 210,000 servicemen, however the National Association of Atomic Veterans cite between 250,000 and 400,000.
After five months of treatment, involving scrubbings and shots of zinc DTPA, he was permitted to return home, as his radiation count had fallen from 500 above standard to 200 times above safe occupational level.
The first criticality incident occurred on August 21, 1945, when physicist Harry Daghlian accidentally dropped the core, causing a burst of neutron radiation that contaminated him and a security guard, Private Robert J.
The DOE Office of Health, Safety and Security's chief of enforcement and oversight, John Boulden, states these "events are significant in that they involved improper management, handling or labeling of highly hazardous materials, including explosives, which have the potential to cause serious injury or death."
[144] Between 1957 and 1964, Rocketdyne located at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, 30 miles north of Los Angeles, California operated ten experimental nuclear reactors.
The employees at Rocky Flats Plant near Denver Colorado made plutonium warhead triggers (known as pits) for the United States nuclear weapons arsenal.
[150] On October 3, 1975, plutonium-laced sludge breached the office wall of health inspector, Byron Vaigneur at the South Carolina-based Savannah River nuclear Weapons Site.
According to a 2015 report by the Tribune News Service, Vaigneur is one of 107,394 Americans who have developed cancer and other environmental diseases from working in the nuclear weapons industry over the past 70 years.
[162] The National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, BEIR VII Phase 2 report, shows that women and children are more susceptible to increased cancer mortality than men.
[164] Dose reconstruction for occupational radiation exposure used by the U.S. Department of Labor assumes that the probability of cancer is "at least as likely as not"[165] rendering it complex for workers to claim compensation via The Act.
[166][167] The most famous of U.S. case of on an incident involving a nuclear worker is that of Karen Silkwood, an employee of the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site in Crescent, Oklahoma.
In 1974, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union stated that the Kerr-McGee plant had not only manufactured defective fuel rods, but that it had falsified records, and put employees' safety at risk.
[172][173] The Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania occurred on March 28, 1979, was rated a 5 on the 7-point International Nuclear Event Scale resulting in the meltdown of radioactive fuel in the Unit 2 reactor.
It is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and currently serves as the nation's only deep geological repository for transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste generated by the military and defense industry.
