One of the best or at least most current sources for news about the failing reactors and the other parts of the Japanese earthquake recovery is the NYT’s The Lede blog. It’s posting live NHK feeds and news/commentary from its reporters on the ground. The latest seems to be that most of the last 50 workers inside the plant have been pulled out for safety reasons, although some remain. Can you imagine the stress those guys are feeling?
I keep hearing news people commenting on the orderliness and lack of anger shown by the Japanese; if those news people had ever lived there as I did they’d not be surprised by that at all. Japan has an admirable culture and society in a lot of different ways; it’s occasionally incomprehensible to Westerners, but that’s not the Japanese people’s fault.
My heart just breaks for the workers in those plants. Having been a support technician (although not, thank God, on a nuclear plant), I know well the “nobody sleeps till it’s fixed” mindset that keeps IT technicians online all night for a computer malfunction, without any lives at stake at all! I’m sure the nuclear plant techs think the same way. I wonder how many of them will die.
Helen claims she heard on Maddow that they’re already putting out calls in Europe for bone marrow donors for the workers in the plants. Proactive!