UpdateTwo workers die at Fukushima Daiichi, Daini nuclear plants
Concerns raised after second fatality at tsunami-stricken nuclear plant in under 12 months, as operator Tokyo Electric Power Company told to improve safety
A worker at Japan’s destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Tuesday after falling inside an empty water storage tank, the latest in a spate of industrial accidents at the site of the March 2011 nuclear disaster, the world’s worst since Chernobyl.
Later on Tuesday, a worker aged 48 at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant, which escaped severe damage in the 2011 earthquake-tsunami disaster, died when crushed by equipment.
The deaths are the second and third in Fukushima in less than a year. Last week, labour inspectors warned the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), about the rise in accidents and ordered it to take measures to deal with the problem.
An unnamed labourer in his 50s working for construction company Hazama Ando on Monday fell into a 10-metre-high water storage tank he had been inspecting. The tank was empty at the time and the worker died on Tuesday after being taken to a local hospital, said Tepco.
“We are deeply sorry for the death of the worker and express our deepest condolences to the family. We promise to implement measures to ensure that such tragedy does not occur again,” Akira Ono, the head manager of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said in a statement. Hazama Ando had no immediate comment.
The number of accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, including heatstrokes, has almost doubled in this fiscal year to 55. The increase came as Tepco increased clean-up efforts and doubled the number of workers at the site to nearly 7,000.