A worker at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has died of a heart attack, the operator said yesterday, the fifth death at the power station since it was hit by a tsunami in March last year.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said the man, who was in his 50s, suffered a cardiac arrest on Wednesday while working on the installation of a tank to store contaminated water.
He was confirmed dead by hospital doctors, company spokesman Jun Oshima said, adding it was not believed radiation from the broken reactors had played a part.
“As far as we know, he is the fifth person to have died after falling sick during work at the plant since the accident,” Oshima said.
“It doesn’t seem that there was a causal link between his death and radiation because he died of a heart attack,” he said.
The cumulative radiation dose the worker received was measured at 25.24 millisieverts, he said.
Under Japanese regulations, nuclear plant workers can be exposed to a maximum of 50 millisieverts annually and 100 millisieverts total in five years. Asked whether the fatality rate at Fukushima Dai-ichi was higher than at other nuclear plants, Oshima said direct comparisons were difficult to make, citing the large number of employees and the different nature of the work.
About 3,000 workers are engaged in decommissioning the crippled plant. Much of the work is physically demanding construction work, in contrast to the less exacting operation and inspection required at functioning nuclear plants, the spokesman said.
The quake-sparked tsunami last year knocked out cooling systems at the nuclear power plant, causing three reactors to go into meltdown in the world’s worst atomic disaster for 25 years.
Nobody is officially recorded as having died as a direct result of the radiation released in the disaster.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS