This situation is similar to my shipyard experience when I served on a submarine. We had a cracked pressurizer, so went into the shipyard to repair/weld it. They brought in some highly qualified and highly paid welders to go into the reactor compartment and weld over the crack. The reactor was shutdown, of course.
The cleanup of potentially contaminated water from the bilge area of the reactor compartment was done by some of the dirtiest people with little apparent education. These people were willing to do the dirty work and were probably pulled of the street from near the shipyard. It seemed they were sacrificial workers.