Japanese workers who are “not afraid to die” are struggling to head off a nuclear disaster at the stricken Fukushima reactors in an effort some are calling a “suicide mission.”
On Wednesday, 180 workers bravely headed back to the plant to pump water onto the over-heating reactors. They have been rotating in shifts of 50 men, nicknamed the “Fukushima Fifty.”
The workers had been pulled back, but they “later headed back into the reactor for difficult and dangerous work, wearing radiation suits and gas masks or oxygen tanks that provide little protection from the invisible radiation rays bombarding their bodies,” Britain’s Daily mail reported.
A source in contact with the emergency teams told CBS they were “not afraid to die” as they fight to stave off a meltdown.
Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, told ABC News: “We’re very close now to the point of no return. It’s gotten worse. We’re talking about workers coming into the reactor perhaps as a suicide mission and we may have to abandon ship.”
“They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel.”
David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned scientists, also said the workers could be on a suicide mission. He told National Public radio that radiation levels at some locations in the reactors “would be high enough that you would receive a lethal dose in something like 16 seconds.”
And Dr. Chandon Guha, a radiation expert at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said of the reactor workers: “These are heroes.”
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12 comments:
These people are true patriots and love their families and motherland. God bless the work they are doing, and working through the high risks, Godspeed.
May the good Lord bless their bravery and protect them to the utmost.
I was stationed in Japan in 1969 with VMFA 232 as a nuclear trained ordnance man. My job was to arm and load ordnance on J4's...and to load a nuclear weapon to drop on N. Viet Nam. Thank God I never had do just that. These Japanese workers at the failing nuclear plant are the salt of the earth...they will die a slow painful death in order to save their fellow beings. It goes to show, love of country, isn't just an American trait.
If there is a silver lining to this crisis, it's the character that these people are demonstrating to our self-absorbed world.
I hope it sinks in.
Especially in Washington, DC
no looting no Guard called out
these people even the elderly were out and trying to put their lives together right away and not crying that their government failed and needed to help them
The Japanese are Superior to Americans in every way we should be ashamed at what we have become.
Hopefully we will be, 8:16.
And we should be.
The Japanese will face tremendous hardship for many years to come.
But my guess is they will, like these heroic workers, step up to each challenge and selflessly do what needs to be done so that all may prosper together.
Remember Dec. 7, 1941, for those of you who know or remember that date in history. 1,117 still lie entombed, only a couple hundred were ever recovered. My family has never forgotten.
9:04, I agree that what the Japanese did was egregious, but good lands--that was 70 years ago! There is so much to admire about the Japanese, as the entries before yours show.
9:04-
Their act was terrible, but two nukes had quite an effect on their attitude, I think.
We did what we had to do, but I think that was pretty close to an eye for an eye, don't you?
I don't think the world will ever have a problem like that with them again.
I agree the Japanese have done a far better job with this earthquake tsunami than Americans would.
But the Nuclear Plant news is propaganda. Sure losing a Nuclear plant is expensive. But very few died fighting Chernobyl after the first day and some even survived that. It is not even close to a suicide mission unless you count the chance of an explosion killing them. 3 Mile Island killed exactly ZERO. This is not that dangerous. Sure they are courageous going in there but the 9/11 firefighters have them beat by a huge margin. So do servicemen, firefighters and policemen around the world many subjected to far more dangerous situations.
This is just liberals trying to make us not use the best source of energy on earth.
I think we paid them back with two a bombs, don't you?
It was NOT necessary to nuke the Japanese people in 1945. They tried their best to surrender, but the Allies did not allow them to surrender. They knew they were beaten.
The Allies wanted to show off their new weapons of mass destruction and used the Japanese citizens to prove a point.
Learn the truth Americans! We may be a proud people but our Leaders have never been admirable.
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