Third worker dies at Japan's troubled nuclear plant

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Third worker dies at Japan's troubled nuclear plant

By Kiyoshi Takenaka | Reuters – 2 hours 36 minutes ago

TOKYO (Reuters) - A worker at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear

power plant died on Saturday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said,

bringing the death toll at the complex to three since a massive earthquake and

tsunami in March.

Despite the prolonged nuclear crisis, Prime Minister Naoto Kan is set to

announce at a G8 summit in France that Japan will keep using nuclear power, the

Yomiuri newspaper said.

The cause of the worker's death was unknown. The man, in his 60s, was employed

by one of Tokyo Electric's contractors and started working at the plant on

Friday. He was exposed to 0.17 millisieverts of radiation on Saturday, Tokyo

Electric said.

The Japanese government's maximum level of exposure for male workers at the

plant is 250 millisieverts for the duration of the effort to bring it under

control.

The worker fell ill 50 minutes after starting work at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday (5

p.m. EDT on Friday) and brought to the plant's medical room unconscious. He was

later moved to a nearby hospital and confirmed dead, a Tokyo Electric spokesman

said.

Working conditions at the plant are harsh. Goshi Hosono, a special adviser to

Prime Minister Naoto Kan and a ruling Democratic Party lawmaker, voiced concerns

about the working environment at the Fukushima complex on Wednesday.

" I would like to spend my energy to improve working conditions. Many people told

us working environment (at the plant) is way too bad, " Hosono told a news

conference.

The March quake and tsunami triggered cooling system malfunctions at the plant,

and caused radiation to leak into the atmosphere and the sea, prompting Kan to

review Japan's nuclear-leaning energy policy from scratch.

Kan plans to tell the G8 summit at the end of May in Deauville, France, that

Japan will rely more on renewable energy, but it will also enhance safety of

atomic power and continue nuclear power usage, making it clear the country is

not withdrawing from nuclear power generation, the Yomiuri said.

Engineers are still struggling to bring the Fukushima plant under control. Two

Tokyo Electric employees went missing while patrolling the plant soon after the

quake and were later found dead.

The government plans to soon unveil a timetable to show how it aims to proceed

with the nuclear crisis-related steps such as containing the radiation leak, and

investigating the cause of the accident, the Asahi newspaper said.

In what might be a fresh hurdle to bringing the troubled plant under control,

Tokyo Electric said it found a large amount of water in the basement of the

building that houses the No.1 reactor at the Fukushima plant.

It is likely that water that was injected into the reactor to cool it down

leaked out into the basement, a Tokyo Electric official said.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Magnowski)