Japan’s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry says Tokyo Electric Power Company deliberately hid that 142 throwaway workers suffered internal radiation exposure immediately after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster began.

The 142 victims were exposed to at least 5.86 millisieverts of radiation.  One worker suffered 180.10 mSv!  The government limit, for nuke industry workers, is 100 mSv over a five year period!  To make things even worse for the poor guy, TEPCo forced him to continue working even after the massive dose of radiation!

Once again, TEPCo says they made a mistake; they read the exposure readings wrong!  They’ve used that excused continually ever since the disaster bagean!  It also turns out that many employees never got the required iodide pills, that TEPCo first claimed were handed out.

Because TEPCo has continually said they’ve misread radiation measuring instruments, Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency and National Institute of Radiological Science decided to investigate all the radiation data TEPCo submitted since the disaster began.  Their conclusions will (supposedly) be announced in April.

Now for more news of newly discovered gross incompetence at the Fukushima Daiichi: 15-hundred water control valves are flowing water that nobody knows from what, where or if the water is contaminated!

The valves are important to regulating which pipes or equipment are connected to pumps and contaminated water storage tanks. It was just revealed that throwaway workers have no idea what the 15-hundred valves are connected to!  TEPCo officials admitted that they decided to start labeling the valves in Autumn 2013, in order to “…lower the risk of erroneous operations.”  It took them three years to realize that?!

Scientists with New Zealand’s University of Auckland are monitoring muttonbirds (a shearwater sea bird) for exposure to radiation.   Muttonbirds migrate to Japan, then return to New Zealand.  They are part of the food chain in Kiwiland, and scientists are concerned they could spread radiation, specifically cesium 134.  The scientists say the cesium will show up in the bird’s feathers: “…..detection of gamma rays would tell us whether the birds spend sufficient time near Fukushima to accumulate cesium-134 from nuclear fission. Obviously the issue would then become whether that radioactivity is being absorbed into local ecosystems or the food chain.”-David Krofcheck

In Carslbad, New Mexico, special Department of Energy/Environmental Protection Agency teams have finally entered the shutdown U.S. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The team must descend 609 meters (2-thousand feet) to begin their radiological testing.  At least 17 WIPP workers were contaminated.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) reported to the U.S. Senate that safe operations at WIPP are questionable, saying reactions to the fire and radiation releases “…were not performed with the rigor necessary for a hazard category 2 defense nuclear facility. Both the federal and contractor workforce proved unprepared for emergency response.”

The DNFSB told senators they issued four warnings about operations at WIPP, since 2010.  The investigators also blasted the timing of the public alarms: “Shelter in place instructions were not given until 10 hours after the first indication of a problem, and over four hours after a release had been confirmed by local readings. As a result, the internal contamination level of workers, although minor, was nevertheless greater than necessary.”