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A Japanese diver reflects on unknown workers exposed to radiation on the tenth anniversary of Fukushima. appears in the horizon

Have you ever heard of atomic divers? Hisashi Okazaki, 58, who worked at nuclear power plants as a diver while exposed to radiation, wants people to know that professional divers like him are working in dangerous conditions to operate nuclear reactors, on the tenth anniversary of the founding of Fukushima Nuclear Power. Disaster approach.

Among the places where he worked in his 33-year career as a professional diver is the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which would later enter into a state of collapse after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the resulting tsunami in March 2011.

Hisashi Okazaki in Ehime Prefecture, September 18, 2020 (Mainichi / Shunsuke Sekiya)

After graduating from high school, Okazaki, who is based in Seo in Ehime Prefecture, western Japan, joined the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force. Four years later he left and got a professional diving license. Since then, he has worked primarily as a self-employed diver holding jobs both at home and abroad, carrying out tasks including laying oil pipelines and four-legged marine defenses, as well as repairing sea walls damaged after the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake. With illustrations of his dives as a record of what he has done, he has collected more than 3,670 to date.

In 2006, one of the divers Okazaki invited him to a nuclear job. It was the first time that he worked inside a nuclear power facility and was exposed to radiation, but he agreed. Looking back, he said he did because “I thought I wanted to try anything I could try. I had no worries.” His daily wage was 47,000 yen, double the usual wage of around 25,000 yen for a typical daily diving job.

Before work, 20 divers gathered together to train at a heavy machinery manufacturer’s facility in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo. They wore special heavy helmets weighing about 15 kilograms, and they wore dry suits modified to prevent water from entering them. Up to six cables were connected, including an air hose, imaging and radiation measurements. Their arms and legs, as well as their chests, are equipped with dosimetry equipment. After a week of training, the divers were dispersed to a number of nuclear plants across the country. Okazaki has been sent to Reactor No. 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

There, it dived into the factory quenching chamber, which cools the reactor’s containment vessel in case the steam release causes its pressure to rise. The chamber is a circular cake-shaped facility at the bottom of the pot, with a depth of 3 meters of water. Okazaki’s maintenance had to be done as he filled it and worked with another diver to exchange equipment at the facility.

An illustration of a diver replacing underwater equipment is shown in this photo provided by Hisashi Okazaki.

The area they worked in had high doses of radiation, and in a single day of diving they could work for about two hours. When they approach an area with an especially high dose, they will be directed via an audio cable not to move forward. The divers stayed in Fukushima Prefecture for about a month. The legal occupational exposure limits for radiation to the worker were set at 50 mSv per year, but in just 12 days of working at the plant, Okazaki was exposed to a total of 7.34 mSv. At the end of the mission, all the contaminated equipment they used was put into a barrel and disposed of.

“I didn’t feel satisfied doing something that left no trace,” Okazaki said. On his way back from Fukushima to Tokyo, Okazaki asked himself while in a car about the purpose of his work that exposed him to radiation, and the younger diver who worked with him on the job said, “We did this for this view (of the city) at night, right? Okazaki was a little relieved by what they said, and then he continued the underwater cleaning work at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan.

Then in March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. Okazaki viewed images of a hydrogen explosion at Reactor No. 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station from a TV set on an offshore work barge off Cape Moroto Misaki in Kochi Prefecture, western Japan. “I never imagined that the power would be lost and explode,” he said.

Consideration is being given to using divers to shut down a failed nuclear reactor, such as removal work and other tasks. So far, about 4,000 people work at the Fukushima Daiichi plant every day. The shutdown work, which is expected to take decades from now to the end, uses robots to get some tasks done, but the role of human workers exposed to radiation remains vital. “Even in reactors that use the most technologically advanced equipment, there are departments that can only be handled by humans, and divers are part of the group of workers who take on such jobs,” Okazaki said.

(Japanese origin by Shunsuke Sekiya, City News Administration)

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