Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Sundowner on March 16, 2011, 06:37:04 PM
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Fukushima 50
To lay down your life for another.... there is no greater act.
:salute :pray
Regards,
Sun
Fukushima 50 Stay Behind to Prevent Nuclear Meltdown
"They are known as the Fukushima 50, the workers who stayed behind at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in order to prevent a meltdown in Japan.
Between 50 and 70 plant engineers -- who have not been identified and are being hailed as heroes -- continue to work around the clock in dangerous conditions, as hundreds of thousands have evacuated the area, fearing a meltdown.
Two of the workers are missing after an explosion and fire at the Unit 4 reactor, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Workers have since resumed operations, Reuters reports.
"The longer they stay, the more dangerous it becomes for them," Margaret Harding of the American Nuclear Society told CBS News.
The engineers are trying to cool nuclear reactors with seawater, while trying to avoid fires and explosions.
"You are the only ones who can resolve a crisis. Retreat is unthinkable," Japanese Prime Minister Naota Kan told them, the Financial Times reported.
The workers have exposed themselves to high doses of radiation, which could cause cancer.
"These workers, in a few hours, are getting fairly high doses I would say by contemporary standards for worker protection, and that's likely to pose some risks down the line," David Richardson, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, told the BBC. He added that the radiation the Fukushima 50 would receive in an hour is the same amount a U.S. nuclear worker would be exposed to over an entire career..........."
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/16/fukushima-50-stay-prevent-nuclear-meltdown/
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god bless them knowing they are helping to prevent a disater or at least keeping it from happening for a while, this is unpredictable so it could go either way. lets just hope they can get this fixed.
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Makes me think of the Oceanic 6 from lost all of a sudden even tho they have nothing to do with this. Name relates, but its so heroic what they are doing there. True hero's :salute :pray
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Lets hope that they do not have the same ending as those at Chernobyl disaster. :pray
Shortly after the accident, firefighters arrived to try to extinguish the fires. First on the scene was a Chernobyl Power Station firefighter brigade under the command of Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravik, who died on 9 May 1986 of acute radiation sickness. They were not told how dangerously radioactive the smoke and the debris were, and may not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire: "We didn't know it was the reactor. No one had told us."[29]
Grigorii Khmel, the driver of one of the fire-engines, later described what happened:
We arrived there at 10 or 15 minutes to two in the morning ... We saw graphite scattered about. Misha asked: "What is graphite?" I kicked it away. But one of the fighters on the other truck picked it up. "It's hot," he said. The pieces of graphite were of different sizes, some big, some small enough to pick up ...
We didn't know much about radiation. Even those who worked there had no idea. There was no water left in the trucks. Misha filled the cistern and we aimed the water at the top. Then those boys who died went up to the roof—Vashchik Kolya and others, and Volodya Pravik ... They went up the ladder ... and I never saw them again.[30]:54
However, Anatoli Zakharov, a fireman stationed in Chernobyl since 1980, offers a different description:
I remember joking to the others, "There must be an incredible amount of radiation here. We'll be lucky if we're all still alive in the morning."
Twenty years after the disaster, he claimed the firefighters from the Fire Station No. 2 were aware of the risks.
Of course we knew! If we'd followed regulations, we would never have gone near the reactor. But it was a moral obligation—our duty. We were like kamikaze.[31]
The immediate priority was to extinguish fires on the roof of the station and the area around the building containing Reactor No. 4 to protect No. 3 and keep its core cooling systems intact. The fires were extinguished by 05:00, but many firefighters received high doses of radiation. The fire inside Reactor No. 4 continued to burn until 10 May 1986; it is possible that well over half of the graphite burned out.[7]:73 The fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping over 5,000 metric tons of sand, lead, clay, and boron onto the burning reactor and injection of liquid nitrogen. Ukrainian filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko captured film footage of a Mi-8 helicopter as it collided with a nearby construction crane, causing the helicopter to fall near the damaged reactor building and kill its four-man crew.[32]
From eyewitness accounts of the firefighters involved before they died (as reported on the CBC television series Witness), one described his experience of the radiation as "tasting like metal," and feeling a sensation similar to that of pins and needles all over his face. (This is similar to the description given by Louis Slotin, a Manhattan Project physicist who died days after a fatal radiation overdose from a criticality accident.)[33]
The explosion and fire threw hot particles of the nuclear fuel and also far more dangerous fission products, radioactive isotopes such as caesium-137, iodine-131, strontium-90 and other radionuclides, into the air: the residents of the surrounding area observed the radioactive cloud on the night of the explosion.
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God blees them. My only fear is the people/management responcible for putting them in this situation are long gone and safe from the scene.
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God blees them. My only fear is the people/management responcible for putting them in this situation are long gone and safe from the scene.
I think it was their choice to stay.
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:salute :salute :salute :salute :salute :salute
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well we all know how horrible the chernobyl accident was, there talking about this one being just as bad or worse if it all goes wrong...
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:salute :pray :salute :pray :salute
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:salute
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and if these engineers survive this.....and one were able to talk with any of them.......i'd be willing to bet that they all say that they were only doing their job. people like them give hope to the human race. :aok
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Does anyone but me feel we are screwed when the Soviets threw tens of thousands of guys to handle Chernobyl and our tulips are essentially relying on 50 guys with a government (Japans) that can't find it's head from it's ass?
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Does anyone but me feel we are screwed when the Soviets threw tens of thousands of guys to handle Chernobyl and our tulips are essentially relying on 50 guys with a government (Japans) that can't find it's head from it's ass?
Considering the average intelligence between the Japanese and the Soviets...
Nope.
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Does anyone but me feel we are screwed when the Soviets threw tens of thousands of guys to handle Chernobyl and our tulips are essentially relying on 50 guys with a government (Japans) that can't find it's head from it's ass?
nope. i think the japanese tech. is lightyears ahead of the russians.
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nope. i think the japanese tech. is lightyears ahead of the russians.
They where way ahead. The design of the Chernobyl was weak along with poor training for the employees. Another problem was the graphite.
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One
That's the number of minutes that each worker has to try to advance any task near the reactor buildings before they have to leave, then another worker continues the task for the next minute. That's the level of radioactivity they are working in.
I hope that gives you an appreciation of just how difficult it is to get anything done.
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:salute
Get it done 50, we are all counting on you
... but no presure
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50? There are 180+
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50? There are 180+
Americaner media arithmetic < Japanese 2nd-grade arithmetic
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Fukushima 50
"You are the only ones who can resolve a crisis. Retreat is unthinkable," Japanese Prime Minister Naota Kan told them, the Financial Times reported.
One time, I would like to see the people giving the order or the big speech, get in the front of the line. (And that goes for all countries)
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This is almost freaky to me, but about 2 weeks ago I took an interest in reading up on the Chernobyl accident, learning what happened and watching videos of the cleanup, etc. What really amazed was a video of 2 guys that got clearance to go all around the plant and and the City of Pripyat. They went to the local hospital and found the clothes of the first responder fire fighters in the basement of the building. The clothes those brave men wore were still highly radioactive even 20 years later. Even more amazing was the massive vehicle graveyard of all the vehicles used in the cleanup. Once again it freaked me out that you can't even get with 100 feet of the fire engines because of the lethal radiation those trucks give off.
Those men that are staying behind trying to avert a huge disaster...well words can't really describe it. :salute
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These men give me hope.
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:salute
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One time, I would like to see the people giving the order or the big speech, get in the front of the line. (And that goes for all countries)
He said that after they volunteered to stay.
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Japan's Nuclear Rescuers: 'Inevitable Some of Them May Die Within Weeks'
Workers at the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan say they expect to die from radiation sickness as a result of their efforts to bring the reactors under control, the mother of one of the men tells Fox News.
The so-called Fukushima 50, the team of brave plant workers struggling to prevent a meltdown to four reactors critically damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, are being repeatedly exposed to dangerously high radioactive levels as they attempt to bring vital cooling systems back online.
Speaking tearfully through an interpreter by phone, the mother of a 32-year-old worker said: “My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation.
“He told me they have accepted they will all probably die from radiation sickness in the short term or cancer in the long-term.”
The woman spoke to Fox News on the condition of anonymity because, she said, plant workers had been asked by management not to communicate with the media or share details with family members in order to minimize public panic.
She could not confirm if her son or other workers were already suffering from radiation sickness. But she added: “They have concluded between themselves that it is inevitable some of them may die within weeks or months. They know it is impossible for them not to have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.”....
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/31/japans-nuclear-rescuers-inevitable-die-weeks/?test=latestnews
Regards,
Sun <---speechless :salute
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It made me cry reading that. I have nothing but respect for those men. :salute
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The only source who has said they are likely going to die, is a mother of a worker, who wished to be not identified. Sorry, not a credible source for the dose they are receiving.
Not saying these are not brave and loyal workers, but this is just more sensationalism picked up by American media.
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That team needs to be lead in the plant by the CEO and upper management of the plant. I'd like to see a so called leader actually get in front one time.
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That team needs to be lead in the plant by the CEO and upper management of the plant. I'd like to see a so called leader actually get in front one time.
+1
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That team needs to be lead in the plant by the CEO and upper management of the plant. I'd like to see a so called leader actually get in front one time.
Speaking from experience in bad situations at nuclear plants, this is the last thing I would want. No one knows the insides of a plant like the operators and engineers who care for it.
I've taken higher ups in bad places before, and they are what we called "dose hores," meaning they do everything they can, including walking close to high rad areas, or leaning over grating to rack their dose up, just so they can hit their limits and be denied access back in.
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if anyone is interested, here are some Hi-Res Photos from the plant:
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm (http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm)
you can see the working firetrucks around, the place looks really nasty :(
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Speaking from experience in bad situations at nuclear plants, this is the last thing I would want. No one knows the insides of a plant like the operators and engineers who care for it.
I've taken higher ups in bad places before, and they are what we called "dose hores," meaning they do everything they can, including walking close to high rad areas, or leaning over grating to rack their dose up, just so they can hit their limits and be denied access back in.
Heh, I did not mean so they could help. But if you are going to ask for volunteers to possibly give their lives and you don;t even equip them with the required safety equipment, the decision maker should go in first. You know, lead by example instead of coming to my funeral presenting a medal.
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if anyone is interested, here are some Hi-Res Photos from the plant:
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm (http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm)
you can see the working firetrucks around, the place looks really nasty :(
Wow :eek:
Regards,
Sun