A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.
The Skilled Veterans Corps, as they call themselves, is made up of retired engineers and other professionals, all over the age of 60.
They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.
Admirable sense of duty to start with, but smart too:
Volunteering to take the place of younger workers at the power station is not brave, Mr Yamada says, but logical. Mr Yamada has been getting back in touch with old friends via e-mail and even messages on Twitter.
"I am 72 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live," he says. "Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer."
There is real shortage of both logic and pragmatism in this world, and these guys have both. So many people don't understand radiation at all but of course these engineers do. The unspoken bit here is the risk of sterility or genetic damage, but with workers (effectively if not absolutely)past their reproductive years this problem is obviated.
This seemed a nice change from my railing and doomsaying, and it ties in with the previous post on nuclear hysteria too so win-win. I hope to still be of some use when I'm elderly, and this group's members are good role models for anyone who's looking for that.
3 comments:
True, there is always a little logic in the far corners of nuclear madness... Marie Curie pondering the mysteries of radium as she sat in the garden holding pieces of it night after night. Still depressing that anyone would willingly make the choice of taking this level of exposure, though i agree it's better than forcing young workers to give up their fertility and even lives as liquidators for some mega utility's poor disaster management planning.
There would be even more logic if the technology had been allowed to progress naturally so that we had better, smaller, safer reactors instead of these dinosaurs.
i'd agree with you (in theory), if i had even a modicum of trust in the govts and utilities running the nuclear industry
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