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NEWS: Fukushima Nuclear Worker Pens Manga About Experience




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chefneer
Aria Company



Joined: 27 Aug 2009
Posts: 1686
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 6:25 pm Reply with quote
I'm thinking this would be a very interesting read. There's been a lot of reporting about Fukushima Daiichi, but very little from the worker's point of view. I wonder if any North American publisher will license it. I certainly hope so.
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Dop.L



Joined: 23 Mar 2007
Posts: 713
Location: London
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 6:46 pm Reply with quote
Yes, that's kind of interesting, and as a way of raising public awareness could be valuable. I'd like to read it
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Banken



Joined: 29 May 2007
Posts: 1280
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 6:48 pm Reply with quote
I think someone misread the kanji because halfway through the article Takita become Ryuuta. lol.
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victor viper



Joined: 18 Jun 2011
Posts: 630
Location: The deep south
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:12 pm Reply with quote
chefneer wrote:
I'm thinking this would be a very interesting read. There's been a lot of reporting about Fukushima Daiichi, but very little from the worker's point of view. I wonder if any North American publisher will license it. I certainly hope so.


I wholeheartedly agree. It would be really interesting to see a first-hand account of what went on there. It seems like the kind of thing that maybe Vertical would take a shot at licensing.
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Maidenoftheredhand



Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 2633
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 8:35 pm Reply with quote
Now that Kodansha manga is on CR it would be nice if they could bring this over here.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2377
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 8:37 pm Reply with quote
victor viper wrote:
I wholeheartedly agree. It would be really interesting to see a first-hand account of what went on there. It seems like the kind of thing that maybe Vertical would take a shot at licensing.


The story is about a worker sent to work there AFTER the quake. I've already seen the accounts of many workers who went in after the major radiation alarms, and they all eventually found out that even their suits weren't able to protect them from deadly doses of radiation. The whole controversy surrounding the plant right now, on the workers' side, is how many people are being hired to work there for dirt-cheap and highly risky labor, without being given a chance to complain or having the guts to opt out, since their careers could be on the line as well. That last bit is a realistic fear, btw. One worker I read about quit after finding out how much radiation he was being exposed to two years ago, but thanks to being "contaminated," and thanks to him actively quitting, he hasn't been able to get a job outside that. Despite coming out about it to foreign media, he's kept himself quiet again and gone back to work there--a ridiculous, but understandingly desperate decision that is all-too-common already.

Which is why a manga like this is probably a huge deal to the public, since it likely documents the fears of radiation and works with the worries of the public.
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dan9999



Joined: 25 Oct 2011
Posts: 648
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 10:30 pm Reply with quote
Dop.L wrote:
Yes, that's kind of interesting, and as a way of raising public awareness could be valuable. I'd like to read it


I bet 1 buck that the only motive is the possibility of money, for this so called worker and for the publisher to monetize this tragedy.
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Banjo



Joined: 13 Dec 2010
Posts: 779
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 10:57 pm Reply with quote
drawing manga is less risky than working there, I wanna read this Cool
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 11:19 pm Reply with quote
"Special Report: Help wanted in Fukushima: Low pay, high risks and gangsters"

  • Oct 25 (Reuters) - Tetsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. He lasted less than two weeks.

    Hayashi, 41, says he was recruited for a job monitoring the radiation exposure of workers leaving the plant in the summer of 2012. Instead, when he turned up for work, he was handed off through a web of contractors and assigned, to his surprise, to one of Fukushima's hottest radiation zones.

    He was told he would have to wear an oxygen tank and a double-layer protective suit. Even then, his handlers told him, the radiation would be so high it could burn through his annual exposure limit in just under an hour.

    "I felt cheated and entrapped," Hayashi said. "I had not agreed to any of this."

    When Hayashi took his grievances to a firm on the next rung up the ladder of Fukushima contractors, he says he was fired. He filed a complaint but has not received any response from labor regulators for more than a year. All the eight companies involved, including embattled plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, declined to comment or could not be reached for comment on his case.

    Out of work, Hayashi found a second job at Fukushima, this time building a concrete base for tanks to hold spent fuel rods. His new employer skimmed almost a third of his wages - about $1,500 a month - and paid him the rest in cash in brown paper envelopes, he says. Reuters reviewed documents related to Hayashi's complaint, including pay envelopes and bank statements.

    Hayashi's hard times are not unusual in the estimated $150-billion effort to dismantle the Fukushima reactors and clean up the neighboring areas, a Reuters examination found.

    In reviewing Fukushima working conditions, Reuters interviewed more than 80 workers, employers and officials involved in the unprecedented nuclear clean-up. A common complaint: the project's dependence on a sprawling and little scrutinized network of subcontractors - many of them inexperienced with nuclear work and some of them, police say, have ties to organized crime.
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SnaphappyFMA



Joined: 14 Jan 2009
Posts: 216
Location: California
PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 11:29 pm Reply with quote
I would definitely read this.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 3524
Location: Bellevue, WA
PostPosted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 1:37 am Reply with quote
I'm not sure how many people understand this, but...

There is a difference between radiation exposure and radioactive contamination. If you go out on the beach in summer, you're being exposed to radiation... from the Sun.

Those protective suits are mainly aimed at preventing *contamination*, not exposure, though they can reduce that as well. There are different types of radiation: alpha, beta, gamma. Alpha can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Beta can be stopped by clothing. Gamma... some dense material (typically lead).

If you expose a material -- like, say, dirt -- to enough radiation, it will start to emit radiation itself. When that happens, the dirt is considered contaminated: it has itself become a source of radiation. Suits are used to keep contaminated material away from the body. They can stop alpha and beta radiation for the most part, but not gamma (at best, they can reduce the amount getting through).

So, when you're strolling through an area with large amounts of contaminated material, all emitting radiation, your suit will keep the contaminated stuff out. It will not stop entirely stop you from receiving radiation, and if you are near a source of gamma radiation, your average radiation suit won't do much to stop that.
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Banken



Joined: 29 May 2007
Posts: 1280
PostPosted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:51 am Reply with quote
From what I can remember, the pay per hour/day was actually quite high, but you could only work for a few days at most, and considering the danger of possibly health affects, it clearly wasn't worth it for anyone who already had a job.
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