Japanese Worker’s Death Not Linked to Radiation

The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the contract worker, who was in his 60s, died after carrying heavy equipment in a waste disposal building of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The company said that he was wearing radiation-protection clothing and a mask when he collapsed, and that his body did not show high levels of radioactive contamination.

Japanese news media reports later quoted a doctor at the plant as saying the man had apparently suffered a heart attack. The death is the first by one of the workers struggling to bring the Fukushima Daiichi plant under control since it lost power and cooling functions after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Contractors who work at nuclear power plants in Japan have traditionally labored in some of the most hazardous conditions, battling intense heat and braving radiation exposure to do such jobs as cleaning radioactive materials from surfaces in the plants.

The waste disposal building the contract worker had been in has been used to store radiation-contaminated runoff taken from the plant’s damaged reactor buildings, where the water is obstructing workers’ efforts to bring the reactors under better control.

On Saturday, nuclear officials said they had found more than 12 feet of water in the basement of Reactor No. 1.

Another power company announced on Saturday that it had completed the shutdown of a nuclear plant elsewhere in Japan, honoring a request by the prime minister to suspend operations at the plant for safety reasons.

The company, Chubu Electric Power, said it had halted operations of the last active reactor at the Hamaoka plant, which sits atop a major earthquake fault line.