Stricken Japan nuke plant struggles to keep staff
TOKYO – Keeping the meltdown-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in northeastern Japan in stable condition requires a cast of thousands. Increasingly the plant’s operator is struggling to find enough workers, a trend that many expect to worsen and hamper progress in the decades-long effort to safely decommission it.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant that melted down in March 2011 after being hit by a tsunami, is finding that it can barely meet the headcount of workers required to keep the three broken reactors cool while fighting power outages and leaks of tons of radiated water, said current and former nuclear plant workers and others familiar with the situation at Fukushima.
Construction jobs are already plentiful in the area because of rebuilding of tsunami-ravaged towns and cities. Other public works spending planned by the government, under the “Abenomics” stimulus programs of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is likely to make well-paying construction jobs more abundant. And less risky, better paid decontamination projects in the region irradiated by the Fukushima meltdown are another draw.
Gunmen kill seven soldiers in bloody month for Iraq
BAGHDAD – Gunmen killed at least seven soldiers in central Iraq on Thursday, officials said, in the latest episode of violence to hit the country in a particularly bloody month.
The first skirmish took place in the early hours of Thursday when militants attacked an army check point in the town of Taji, killing four soldiers and wounding four others, two police officers said. The militants fled the area after a brief gunbattle and did not suffer any casualties, they said.
At dawn, another group of militants exchanged fire with military forces and pro-government Sunni militia in the western village of Karma, near the city of Fallujah, two other police officers said. Three soldiers were killed and 18 were wounded, including seven Sunni fighters.
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