Elderly Japanese Ask To Replace Younger Workers At Dangerous Nuclear Plants

A few months ago, I spoke to a Japanese woman about the triple earthquake, tidal wave and nuclear disaster that shattered her country earlier this year. She said: "Japan will recover: it is a proud country with a Samurai spirit," and now I know what she's talking about. From stories of ordinary people donning scuba gear to find loved ones, to these senior citizens offering to take the place of younger workers in the dangerous, damaged nuclear power stations, imagine if every country showed this much honour and compassion. How different as a society would we be? Via NPR.

Japanese Seniors: Send Us To Damaged Nuclear Plant by Lucy Craft - September 12, 2011

They are all retirees, and they have all volunteered for a single, dangerous mission: to replace younger workers at the badly damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. The Skilled Veterans Corps for Fukushima consists of more than 500 seniors who have signed up for a job that has been called courageous — and suicidal. Kazuko Sasaki, a 72-year-old grandmother, is one of those ready to serve. "My generation built these nuclear plants. So we have to take responsibility for them. We can't dump this on the next generation," she says.

The founder of Skilled Veterans is Yasuteru Yamada, a slight, soft-spoken man of 72. An engineer who has spent his life around industrial plants, Yamada says he and his retired colleagues quickly realized after the March 11 disaster that conditions at Fukushima were far bleaker than the government was letting on. His decision to gather senior volunteers, he says, was based neither on courage nor altruism, but on a brutally realistic calculus. It would be better to send men and women who have finished raising families and are in the sunset of their lives, rather than younger workers whose lives could be cut short by extreme radiation exposure. 

Continued at NPR.
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