Tsunami survivor returns to help save nuclear plant

Radiation controller Hiroyuki Kohno is taking on a job many others have declined - to head back to the disaster zone to join crews struggling to avert meltdown. -- PHOTO: AP

KAZO (Japan)- THREE weeks after watching a massive wave smash into the Fukushima nuclear plant, Mr Hiroyuki Kohno is heading back to the disaster zone to join crews struggling to avert a meltdown.

The 44-year-old radiation controller, who has worked in the nuclear industry since his late teens, has taken on a job many others have declined, with a clear understanding that the mission will likely be the last of his career.

'To be honest, no one wants to go,' Mr Kohno, who is soft-spoken and bespectacled, told AFP at the evacuation centre in the city of Kazo north of Tokyo that has been his home since the March 11 disaster.

'Radiation levels at the plant are unbelievably high compared with normal conditions. I know that when I go this time, I will return with a body no longer capable of work at a nuclear plant.'

Mr Kohno, who was employed at the now-crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant for a decade, left northeastern Japan soon after the quake and tsunami, but a fortnight later he received an email he had been half expecting.

'Attention,' read the email from his company, a subcontractor of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. 'We would like you to come work at the plant. Can you?' Single and without a family of his own, he felt it was his duty to accept the assignment. -- AFP