Japanese retirees volunteer to work in stricken nuclear plant

Air Langhi · Jul 4, 2011

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-nuclear-old-20110704,0,4305882,full.story

Reporting from Tokyo—
They were two old friends catching up over coffee, retirees swapping stories and gasping at the unfolding nuclear nightmare at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

But instead of merely throwing their hands up over the disaster that shook the plant in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Nobuhiro Shiotani and Yasuteru Yamada, both 72-year-old scientists, decided they could do something to help.

The youngest is 60, the oldest 78.

Many call the volunteers crazy, dismissing them as a Suicide Corps — an over-the-hill gang with a death wish. Others say that the effort should be left up to those who allowed the problem to occur — the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco. The group of skilled veterans, however, insists this is no pie-in-the-sky dream, but a plan based on real science, if not a bit of grim math.

They ask, why risk the health of the younger generation to perform such work in a perilous radioactive environment? Cells reproduce more slowly in the bodies of older people, they reason, so any cancer caused by absorbed radioactivity would take much longer to form.

Yamada says he'll be dead from something else long before any radiation-caused cancer can kill him.

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You got to salute the Japanese old folks. These were the people who were young children when WW2 was going on and probably were there when the bombs went off.

blathersby · Jul 4, 2011

Anyone ever follow up with this? I read the same story a little over a month ago.

rockbox · Jul 4, 2011

These guys are true heroes.

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Japanese retirees volunteer to work in stricken nuclear plant

Air Langhi Contributing Member

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rockbox Around before clutchcity.com

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