• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Japan nuclear crisis: 50 brave men the last hope in crisis

danarhea

danarhea

Slayer of the DP Newsbot
DP Veteran
Joined
Aug 27, 2005
Messages
43,602
Reaction score
26,256
Location
Houston, TX
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Conservative
AN elite team of engineers who represent Japan's desperate last line of defense against a nuclear catastrophe was last night making another bid to bring the Fukushima power plant under control.
Click to expand...

With all the threads in this forum about the Japan quake, and with all the news articles, there is not much that is being said about a small group of heroes, who are most likely, at this time, giving their lives for their country. The consensus is that all 50 of what is known as the Fukushima 50 have volunteered for a probable death sentence, in Japan's last ditch effort to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

Win or lose, IMHO, these brave men will always be winners, and will be rightly memorialized in history as heroes. Please say a prayer for them and the mission they volunteered for, a mission in which they have offered to lay down their own lives in order to save many of their fellow countrymen.

Patriotism is alive and well in Japan.

Article is here.
 
Last edited:
The Fukushima 50 are no doubt doing a heroic job, however I believe the big hope now it the power line being run to the plant so that the water can be circulated over the rods and finally get control of the situation.

These units are toast and can never be used again according to the experts because they used Sea water early on, but once under control they might be able to decommission the units.

We know from all the talk since this began that we have technology that can eleminate this kind of problem from ever happening in new units we build.

Problem now is there is so much conflicting and confusing information coming out alone with the news hype putting fear in peoples minds that is completely unnecessary, and all this makes it hard to know what to do next.

One thing that points out the effect of the hype is all the comparisons that have been made to the Chernobyl disaster list the number of dead . This has caused a run on iodine pills, which are useless right now as there is very little chance of any fallout reaching the West Coast.
 
Councilman said:
The Fukushima 50 are no doubt doing a heroic job, however I believe the big hope now it the power line being run to the plant so that the water can be circulated over the rods and finally get control of the situation.

These units are toast and can never be used again according to the experts because they used Sea water early on, but once under control they might be able to decommission the units.

We know from all the talk since this began that we have technology that can eleminate this kind of problem from ever happening in new units we build.

Problem now is there is so much conflicting and confusing information coming out alone with the news hype putting fear in peoples minds that is completely unnecessary, and all this makes it hard to know what to do next.

One thing that points out the effect of the hype is all the comparisons that have been made to the Chernobyl disaster list the number of dead . This has caused a run on iodine pills, which are useless right now as there is very little chance of any fallout reaching the West Coast.
Click to expand...

I read somewhere that they were going to shutdown this plant anyway.
 
American said:
I read somewhere that they were going to shutdown this plant anyway.
Click to expand...

Best thing they can do with this plant is to bury it under tons of sand and cement.
 
danarhea said:
Best thing they can do with this plant is to bury it under tons of sand and cement.
Click to expand...

Funny thing happened tonight. Dr. Michio Kaku was interviewed, and he said the same thing. LOL.
 
Wow. Can't get that last scene of K-19 The Widowmaker out of my head now. These 50 men are beyond brave. I hope they somehow make it through this.
 
armageddon.jpg


If the only black guy sacrifices himself so everyone else can live we are officially living in a movie.
 
Arcadius said:
armageddon.jpg


If the only black guy sacrifices himself so everyone else can live we are officially living in a movie.
Click to expand...

How in the hell did race make it into this thread?
 
Arcadius said:
That was a joke about movies, not race. It just involved race. I was making a humorous comment on the similarities to your average disaster film.
Click to expand...

There would need to be a gorgeous blonde that was saved at the last minute also.
 
dontworrybehappy said:
There would need to be a gorgeous blonde that was saved at the last minute also.
Click to expand...

That's not really a disaster movie cliche. The biggest disaster movie cliche is the black guy and or the old guy sacrificing themselves for the rest of the team and or the world.
 
Arcadius said:
That's not really a disaster movie cliche. The biggest disaster movie cliche is the black guy and or the old guy sacrificing themselves for the rest of the team and or the world.
Click to expand...

I thought it was the blonde dumping the guy, who then jumps into the volcano.
 
I heard it's actually 180 to 200 men that are working in 50 man shifts.
 
Latest news reports have about 180 persons working in shifts of 50.

Another anecdote, from the BBC:

1351: Andrew Dickinson, in Hiroshima, writes: "Today a shopkeeper who overcharged me for some fruit cycled to the bus station on the off chance of finding me to pay me back. Japanese spirit and kindness remains strong."
 
I have a friend who did japanese studies in college and went over to teach english there for some years who first pointed these guys out to me. He believes in time these individuals are going to be immortalized within the common consiousness of Japan much like the 47 Ronin. He said it was a perfect example of Yamato-damashii, essentially the Japanese Spirit.

There is no doubting the bravery or the sacrifice of these men.
 
Zyphlin said:
I have a friend who did japanese studies in college and went over to teach english there for some years who first pointed these guys out to me. He believes in time these individuals are going to be immortalized within the common consiousness of Japan much like the 47 Ronin. He said it was a perfect example of Yamato-damashii, essentially the Japanese Spirit.

There is no doubting the bravery or the sacrifice of these men.
Click to expand...

They will most likely die a long and painful death too. Yet they are standing strong. I guess its almost like kamakazi pilots. These are kamakazi nuke plant workers.
 
Something to give you an idea of what these people are risking:

Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards.
Click to expand...

Source: The Daily Mail

This the reason these workers are pouring water on the reactor from helicopter and firehose hundreds of feet away from the buildings and even then workers have to be pulled back after an hour of exposure. Some reports say that for these reactors to get power restored would require workers going to the control room. At 4 sieverts an hour it would pretty much be guaranteed that the people who go in there will get radiation sickness. Just two hours in that plant would amount to a fatal dose by itself even with medical treatment not even considering the radiation any of these workers have been exposed to since this began. In other words getting power restored to these cooling systems could very well be a suicide mission for whoever goes in there. Tragically reports suggest that not only could this effort fail to activate the cooling systems due to all the damage, but that it could even cause some sort of explosion in the reactors.
 
Demon of Light said:
Something to give you an idea of what these people are risking:



Source: The Daily Mail

This the reason these workers are pouring water on the reactor from helicopter and firehose hundreds of feet away from the buildings and even then workers have to be pulled back after an hour of exposure. Some reports say that for these reactors to get power restored would require workers going to the control room. At 4 sieverts an hour it would pretty much be guaranteed that the people who go in there will get radiation sickness. Just two hours in that plant would amount to a fatal dose by itself even with medical treatment not even considering the radiation any of these workers have been exposed to since this began. In other words getting power restored to these cooling systems could very well be a suicide mission for whoever goes in there. Tragically reports suggest that not only could this effort fail to activate the cooling systems due to all the damage, but that it could even cause some sort of explosion in the reactors.
Click to expand...

For all you old school guys like me, who are familiar with Rads, there are 100 Seiverts to a Rad (1 Sievert = 10 Millirads). So 4 Sieverts per hour is only 40 Millirads of radiation per hour. The problem here is that it is cumulative, so long exposures can be quite dangerous. But if your exposure was for a few seconds only, you are taking about Microrads now, which isn't that bad. You get more than that with a chest x-ray.
 
Last edited:
Raising the limit again

The owner of the stricken nuclear power complex in northeastern Japan said Saturday that it will hike the radiation exposure limit for its workers at the plant from 100 millisieverts per shift to 150 millisieverts, Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said some workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have already been exposed to more than 100 millisieverts and that the company, citing the unprecedented nature of the crisis, has raised the limit to 150 millisieverts for some outdoor workers.

"This is a considerable amount of radiation," said G. Donald Frey, a medical physicist and professor of radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina. "The limit for radiation workers in the United States is 50 millisieverts per year, but we try to keep them to less than 5 millisieverts per year."
Click to expand...

Source: CNN

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some of the workers are already getting radiation sickness, there was a report that maybe one was I believe.
 
NKH said that two of these workers are already hospitalized with radiation sickness.

With strong radiation exposure, highly energetic gamma particles strike electrons and knock them out of their orbiting shell. In a living organism, this circumstance causes rapid and cascading biological mutations. With a fatal level of radiation exposure, flesh will blacken and swell tremendously which in turn leads to major cracks and fissures. The skin then sloughs off. It is a horrible way to die. Death typically occurs anywhere between 3-14 days.
 
danarhea said:
With all the threads in this forum about the Japan quake, and with all the news articles, there is not much that is being said about a small group of heroes, who are most likely, at this time, giving their lives for their country. The consensus is that all 50 of what is known as the Fukushima 50 have volunteered for a probable death sentence, in Japan's last ditch effort to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

Win or lose, IMHO, these brave men will always be winners, and will be rightly memorialized in history as heroes. Please say a prayer for them and the mission they volunteered for, a mission in which they have offered to lay down their own lives in order to save many of their fellow countrymen.

Patriotism is alive and well in Japan.

Article is here.
Click to expand...

They are extremely brave. Personally, I find the idea of working in conditions like that terrifying.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom