After the battle to cool the reactors, the race to restore power – and thus bring the plant’s systems back under control – is the other main task. Mr Tamura, who has been closely involved in that fight, said that he and his colleagues were sleeping on the floor at the plant to begin with. “There isn’t a shift system as such, we’re on call 24 hours,” he said. “I’ve only come here to take a shower, then tomorrow I’m back on. We’ve been working one hour on and two hours off to minimise our exposure. The group doing our task started off as 10 people. Now there are 30, it’s given us a chance to come here and eat.”