National television has interviewed relatives of the workers, who the plant operators insist on keeping anonymous, with one woman saying her father had accepted his fate ‘like a death sentence’.

A woman said her husband continued to work while fully aware he was being bombarded with radiation. He sent her an email saying: ‘Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.’ The workers are known as the Fukushima Fifty because they rotate into contaminated areas in teams of that number.