Download A Japanese nuclear official who spent five days inside the Fukushima nuclear plant has spoken to the media, describing the tough working and living conditions inside the crippled nuclear facility.
Kazuma Yokota says all the workers slept in the one room, eating just two Spartan meals a day.
So far 19 workers have been exposed to higher than acceptable radiation levels.
Mark Willacy of Radio Australia reports.
He's being hailed as a modern samurai - one of the so-called Fukushima 50 - although now reinforcements have swelled the number of workers inside the stricken nuclear plant to 400.
Kazuma Yokota is an official with the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and he spent five days inside the Fukushima plant.
"The working conditions were harsh," says Yokota. "The workers inside the plant were toiling very hard," he says.
We now know that because of dangerously high radiation levels the workers in the Fukushima nuclear facility can only work one-hour shifts at a time.
And it appears they weren't told of the full dangers by the plant's operator TEPCO which has since admitted that it did not properly warn the men about the high levels of radiation in the water in reactor three.
Three workers there were exposed while laying electric cables in the reactor's turbine building.
Two of them were standing up to their ankles in radioactive water for two hours.
Their protective gear was simply not up to the task, but they've now been released from hospital after having their burns treated.
As well as being exposed to radiation, Kazuma Yokota says one of the most uncomfortable aspects of the job involved the sleeping arrangements.
"The workers were all sleeping together in the plant's meeting room, in the hallway and in front of the toilet," he says. "We were only given one blanket and just two meals a day. We'd have emergency biscuits for breakfast and a small bag of rice for dinner. There was the odd can of food too," he says.
In a bid to avoid a meltdown at Fukushima these workers had the task of connecting electric cables and repairing smashed machinery and pumps - all efforts aimed at cooling the reactors.
But even a short period near the reactors meant exposing themselves to dangerous levels of radiation.
"We had lead sheets brought in and put on the floors to block the radiation," says Kazuma Yokota. "But we were still exposed. I was exposed to 883 microsieverts during the five days I was there," he says.
That's about the same as nine chest X-rays - low compared to what happened to 19 other workers who have been exposed to more than 100 times that amount.
