Thursday, March 17, 2011

He said, she said

Long term readers will know that I'm a bit of a news fan and I tend to read about what's going on in the world.

A lot.

Partly due to work and partly due to my own interest.

Of particular interest at the moment is the situation in Japan at the Nuclear Power plant. Unsurpisingly there is a lot of concern about whats happening and I found one article which pretty well summed up why people are getting worried.

Radiation is deadly and everyone knows it's a killer. But what scares people is you can't see it. You can't see it coming, you can't dodge it, you can't get above it, you can't jump out of it's way or seek shelter from in up a tree. If no one tells you it's there you'll never know.

The news stories have done nothing to curb fears. Although you can accuse some news outlets of being sensationalist ( and in all likely hood they are) what it boils down to is the mass of contradictory information ( or he said, she said) isn't helping. On one hand you have the Japense government saying the radiation isn't at harmful levels, but then say the helecopters dropping water can't get too close to the reactors due to dangerous radiation. They say that the exclusion zone is perfectly adequate yes the USA government advise a zone almost three times as big.

And if you keep reading as many news stories as I have you'll find that the contradictions just go on and on, and on .

But there is one thing that keeps being missed in the stories of blown reactors, destroyed buildings and nuclear spent fuel pools. Or to be more precise 180 people keep being missed.

They are the technicians who are currently still at the plant battling to avoid disaster. They form in part the one thing that most experts agree on. They are in all likely hood sacrificing their long term health if not their lifes and they fight to regain control. Their all "faceless" right now but you can not deny their supreme courage.

I guess we'll see what will happen in the next few days and if this incredibile courage can overcome disaster.

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