They are willing to work on fuel removal in the most dangerous areas of Fukushima Daiichi to protect younger workers from high radiation doses. They said they are elders, were no longer having children and might die of natural causes before some of the long latency cancers would make them seriously ill.
Now 700 plus members strong, they are retired workers from Fukushima, and engineers and technicians from other branches of industry. They made this extraordinary offer only four weeks after the Fukushima disaster. However 14 months later TEPCO has not yet given them permission to work.
Yastel Yamada is cofounder and Director of their organization, the Skilled Veterans Corps for Fukushima. Through August 2012 he is on a speaking tour in the US. The SVCF has two primary goals. One is to inform the US public about the very serious problems of the cleanup at the plant, and secondly to appeal to the US government to put pressure on the Japanese government to convince TEPCO to allow the Skilled Veterans to work. Recorded July 30, 2012, Ukiah, CA
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)
