Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Fifty Kamikazes - A Forlorn Hope?

From Wednesday's New York Times:

A small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, became the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday — and perhaps Japan’s last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe.


They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.

They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.

They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.

They struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Among the many problems that officials acknowledged on Wednesday was what appeared to be yet another fire at the plant and indications that the containment vessel surrounding a reactor may have ruptured. That reactor, No. 3, appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential — sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japan’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.
Many, if not all, of these men will die prematurely, some of them soon. Without more help on the scene, their efforts might be as futile as those of thousands of young Japanese who flew out over the sea to try to stop the American assault upon their home islands in late 1944 and 1945. Apparently, even these 50 heroes have now been evacuated, possibly through direct intervention from Emperor Akihito.

Were there more justice in this world, the entire board of directors of General Electric and of the Japanese firms responsible for the existence of these plants where they were (they are no longer existant as power plants in a positive sense) would now be taking their places.

Were there even more justice in this world, the board of directors of GE and the Japanese firms involved with creating this planetary mess would now be preparing to disembowel themselves with some very dull knives.

Pray.

4 comments:

Mark said...

These men ARE heroes who deserve our thanks and prayers, and prayers for their families, too.
Yes, they probably will all suffer radiation sickness of one degree or another,and they are completely aware of that fact and they still stay on the job.
Liken them to the old surfmen of the US Lifesaving Service with the unofficial motto, carried by the US Coast Guard as well, on that "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back."
God Bless Them!

Mark Springer
Bethel

Anonymous said...

These men are indeed heros.

I think it is offensive to use the word Kamikaze to describe them. Even if the Emperor personally requested that they try to stop the reactor disaster, that does not make them Kamikazes.

To compare them to blind worshipers of a militaristic society which twisted religion to serve the purposes of a a government is wrong. These workers may have sacrificed themselves for the good of others, but it was not for a warped cause such as the Kamikazes did. I think that this was an unintended aspect to an otherwise fine post.

Anonymous said...

I do pray.

I pray that these ordinary people succeed in their mission to reduce the distruction of our planet...Thank-you and May God bless and speed you in your mission...

I also pray that this will be a wake-up call to all people and all nations. We have access to so many ways of coping with the means of providing energy such as chosing nuclear power/energy vs. wind or solar power. We also have the opportunity to choose democracy over oligachy or facsism. THe USA became a great nation because of PUBLIC education and equality in the work place provided by unions. Think aobut it.

Anonymous said...

Bill here. Phil, I bet you remember that scratchy AM news report we received while anchored at Patton Bay while getting ready to head out in the morning for halibut fishing in 1984....Chernobyl. Early reports were very grim. Those Russians who quelled that thing have been heroes to me, and I'm sure many others,ever since. God Bless.