Japan to enlist foreigners for 1st time to decommission Fukushima plant

Foreign laborers with sufficient Japanese language skills will for the first time be enlisted to decommission the reactors at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant under new visa rules, the station’s operator, TEPCO, said on Thursday. This month, Japan launched new visa statuses to attract more foreign workers and ease the impact of the nation’s shrinking workforce and population. TEPCO has previously used highly skilled foreign engineers at Fukushima, but generally refrained from accepting foreign laborers in work crews there. The jobs require a strong command of Japanese to understand technical instructions. New visas are available to foreigners with strong Japanese skills in 14 sectors suffering critical labor shortages.