Heroes of Japan's Nuclear Disaster All but Forgotten

[kristopher]

Heroes of Japan's Nuclear Disaster All but Forgotten
Mar 4, 2012 10:19 PM EST
The 'Fukushima 50' are all but forgotten a year after a tsunami crippled one of Japan's biggest nuclear facilities.



Koichi Nakagawa* sometimes wonders if he should have bailed out on his friends and other employees at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant a lot earlier.

Maybe he should have left the day he worked to restore electricity to the plant wearing his regular work clothes while others wore hazmat suits. Or the day he watched as a pink mushroom cloud formed over the plant after Reactor Unit 3 blew up.

Or maybe he should have driven away on March 11, 2011, when he felt the earth move at 2:46 p.m. Hard pavement started undulating like waves on water, windows shattered, and a female employee was frantically shouting on the public-address system: "Please evacuate! Please evacuate!" Soon hundreds of workers rushed toward the headquarters where Nakagawa was standing petrified.

Forty minutes later, they watched as the entire ocean ebbed, only to be mesmerized minutes later as a 14-meter tsunami flooded the six reactors standing along Japan's northeastern coast. The entire plant lost power, except the headquarters building.

Nakagawa could have evacuated that day...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/03/04/heroes-of-japan-s-nuclear-disaster-all-but-forgotten.html

[LiberalEsto]

1. None of the TEPCO executives was in there trying to fix anything, I noticed

One of the criteria for any kind of risky work should be that if the execs refuse, nobody else should have to do it either.

[madokie]

2. Probably live outside the danger zone too

My bet is they all have a long commute.

[FBaggins]

3. They certainly have been... but this piece doesn't do them justice.

The bulk of the article seems to be about someone who really doesn't fit the description.