More volunteers 'prepared for death' at Fukushima

Originally posted by richaado
See! I don't know what a 'meltdown' means.
...
Am I wrong? Please educate me if I am.

I clarified the definitions of meltdown and partial meltdown for you in my post before yours and even cited a source. I suggest you review my post again. While you're not completely wrong, you're not completely right either.

Anyone think about the fact that we haven't heard anything about this "brave self-sacrifice" from the workers themselves? By the time we would get a chance to talk to them---after this is all under control-----they will be dead from these levels of exposure. No interviews, no memoirs.

I'll believe it's self-sacrifice and not forced suicide when I hear the workers themselves claim it.

Do these guys ever sleep? I know they work in shifts of 50, sometimes more I'm sure, but does anyone know just how long one of their shifts might be?

I heard it was something like not even an hour long, due to the radiation becoming unsafe after a while, and as a preventative measure overall.

To the people saying we have great people. Ya we know this is about us now it is about the Japanes. Try not to talk off topic. This is about the japanese heros .

Not about the 9-11 heros.

yes they are heros we know but his is talk of Japan now.


Stay on topic. I agree we have heros too. but this is not the topic of discussion right now.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by richaado
See! I don't know what a 'meltdown' means.
...
Am I wrong? Please educate me if I am.

I clarified the definitions of meltdown and partial meltdown for you in my post before yours and even cited a source. I suggest you review my post again. While you're not completely wrong, you're not completely right either.

Yes. And than you for being patient with me.

Would you be so kind as to advise me whether or not I'd be correct in using the term 'full meltdown' to refer to the reactor being melted right the way through and a 'partial meltdown' to refer to anything less than this?

If so, from now on when I am speaking of a meltdown I'll be more specific so as to avoid confusion. - I'll only use the term 'meltdown' to describe a situation where the reactor's fuel has actually breached the containment.

Originally posted by extmai
reply to post by Heyyo_yoyo

 

Great people, great culture. Here in the western society, most of the people would just run away!

Notice people...He didn't say "ALL" but "MOST" which is 100% true !!!!

Hello everyone.

As you can tell form my profile.....I'm a newbie when it comes to posting on here but just wanted to share this and hope if some of you guys here can confirm if this is genuine:

www.iris.edu...

The above link monitors EQ all around the globe...and apparently China is still suffering big Quakes. 4.9 hit yesterday...is this for real??? And where is all the news gone with regards to China??? Sky hasn't mentioned s**t for the last few days.

Anyone who hasn't read THIS yet should.

"Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour. We get radiation from outer space. But that’s one millisievert per year. A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760. Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose. You call that safe? And what media have reported this? None."

Originally posted by Redneck from Hell
you are trying very hard to belittle their actions in as a polite way as possible. Thats sad even though you'll be fast to disagree.

Belittle? Not at all. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

You talk like you are an expert, and know the reason behind their actions, but you clearly don't.

Not an expert. I do live here. Is that experience enough for you?

"They see themselves as failures", that right there renders your post invalid, because these men are simply enginners, if they had any power that rose above the executives that run the show, then I see how the "failure" arguement might be taken seriously.

You show a gross misunderstanding of the culture in general. They are NOT American, and do not think like Americans, so you cannot impose your own American opinions on them. From the time they are born, they are groomed with a work ethic that is rigid and highly disciplined....they take pride EVERYTHING they do, from the smallest task to the largest, because that is how they work. Every job on the totem pole is important, and they function that way. In a culture where there is rarely such a thing as "no-fault", you can bet your next paycheck that every single one of the workers, from the top down to the bottom, felt/feels a sense of responsibility. That sentiment is very foreign to Americans, and is the extreme opposite. Having observed this for some time now, I think a happy medium in the middle of the two extremes is good.

Your post reeks of stored jealously.

Seriously? That's what you got from my post?

"most of the workers chose to stay because if they had failed and lived while others died, they most likely would have committed suicide. To them, there was no other choice....die with failure or die with honor"
----Yeah I would too. I don't think you accounted for the severity of this situation. It's a nuclear power plant for god's sake. It changes the whole ball game. It's not some hold up at a bank, where you as a security quard must do your duty. I like how you "know" the mentality of everyone of these men.

I get that you're trying to pick an argument with me, but you've completely misunderstood the tone of my post. Your gross lack of understanding of their culture (again, I live here), doesn't make me a know-it-all. It does, however, make me intimate with how they function as a people within their unique culture.

"They see themselves as failures, trying to make it right"
----I think you read too many post WW2 articles regarding Japanese culture. First they didn't cause this. I don't see how they would think of themselves as failures. An earthquake, and a tsunami caused it. They are enginners,soldiers, workers etc trained to run the plant. They are not executives who may or may not have skipped out on safety precautions. They are also valunteers.Your comment made no sense at all.
There is no failure in the ordeal these men are in. They are going beyond their duty. There job title does not constitute staying in a place that might get them killed through an explosion, or health effects in the near future.

OK, clearly, you need to pay more attention in school, and if you're not still in high school, you should be ashamed at your lack of ability to spell common words, or at the very least, the lack of motivation to use a spell check.

As a former Marine, I'm very familiar with WWII history, and I never once equated what's going on today with anything regarding WWII. But since you brought up the point, this IS the culture that birthed Kamikaze pilots, the ritual of Harakiri, and countless stories of mass suicides in order to keep from being dishonored by being captured by the enemy. Of those, the most prevalent still today, is suicide - the rates of which are startling compared to Americans, and the reasons for such suicides even more startling. Clearly, you've never visited the east. I'm not going to sit here and argue with someone who cannot comprehend these cultural concepts, nor someone who cannot stop tripping on his own opinions long enough to see that he's arguing points that were never made.

The original workers of the plant have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation, trying to save the rest of the planet from a meltdown caused by their reactors. At this point, the country is united and one. That's it, nothing else. There are no excuses and no finger pointing. The mistakes of a few become the mistakes of an entire country, and had the reactors been built inland, maybe this wouldn't be happening. But that's not important right now. What's important is saving the country and saving the rest of the planet from radiation, and now we have volunteers who have stepped up and shouldered the responsibility in place of the others. This is where you don't understand the cultural thinking. Sure, they are volunteers, but a volunteer in Japan is different than a volunteer in America. They simply aren't just volunteers any more. They are now working to rebuild their country and the bestow honor upon all those who lost their lives, and also honor in the eyes of the rest of the world who are panicked over the possibility of fallout. Honor is still a very huge thing in their culture, and has NOTHING to do with WWII. You only happen to know about it BECAUSE of the war, but it's always been there. They are a very proud (in a humble way, of course), and strong people, but they're not any more perfect than Americans.

Originally posted by richierich931
"Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour. We get radiation from outer space. But that’s one millisievert per year. A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760. Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose. You call that safe? And what media have reported this? None."

The last I heard they were rotating workers out to limit their total allowable annual dosage of 250 millisieverts, which would be 37 minutes at 400 mSv per hour.

Here are the symptoms of getting 250 millisieverts in one day:
en.wikipedia.org...

Symptoms of acute radiation (within one day):[16]

* 0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None (no symptoms)

If they keep workers' annual exposure below 250mSv as they claim to be doing or attempting to do, the workers should be fine. If they exceed that amount there's an elevated health risk.

400 mSv per hour is still a lot lower than Chernobyl, where the fuel pieces that were blown up by the explosion and were lying around measured 300,000 mSv per hour.

Well, now the news comes out about the fate of the original Fukushima 50 - Heroes who battled the radiation of the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor plant to attempt securing it and curtailing an ultimate demise from a radioactive meltdown.


The report states that all 50 expect to die from radiation poisoning....

Japan nuclear crisis: Fukushima 50 'expect to die'

The so-called Fukushima 50, the group of around 300 technicians, soldiers and firemen who work in shifts of 50, have been exposed repeatedly to dangerously high radioactive levels as they attempt to avert a nuclear disaster.

The mother of one of the men has admitted that the group have discussed their situation and have accepted that death is a strong possibility.

“My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary in the long-term.”

Damn.... JUST GOD DAMN IT !...