Missing workers found dead at Japan nuclear plant

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: msnbc

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Two missing Fukushima nuclear plant workers were found dead on Sunday as more highly radioactive water spilled into the sea and authorities struggled to seal the leak.

Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, as saying the workers had been found. No other information of the discovery was given. The workers had been missing since a hydrogen explosion at the plant.

Also, the National Police Agency said that 12,009 people were officially reported dead and 15,472 missing in the aftermath of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake, which spawned a devastating tsunami on March 11.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42397653/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

[sasha031]

1. I just posted this, it's so tragic

with no end in sight...

[jillan]

2. How many more will die? This is heartbreaking.

[louslobbs]

3. What a tragedy, my thoughts of love and support go out to the family and friends of these brave

people (heros).
Lou

[iemitsu]

4. thanks for posting this.

what a sad situation? i hope that this is stopped soon.

[freshwest]

5. I'm gonna be crying about this for years. Poor people. Think I'll donate again.

[TheMadMonk]

6. But they will not have died in vain. By simply inserting a completely...

...unrelated report of events subsequent to their deaths (radiation in the sea), between mention of those deaths and the actual event (an explosion) in which those deaths took place, their deaths will forever stand proud witness to the horrors of all things nuclear.

It is sad that they died. It is sad when miners die. It's sad when window cleaners fall from their scaffolds. All deaths are sad.

Obscenity is hijacking deaths with linguistic tricks for point scoring.

[freshwest]

7. There aren't any points to be scored here.

[jtuck004]

11. +1 eom

[TheMadMonk]

15. They died of physical trauma in an INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT that...

...happened to take place in a nuclear power plant, during a nuclear accident.

And yet virtually the entire article is devoted to the nuclear accident itself and all its attendant evils.

That's bloody point scoring in my books, maybe even "catapaulting the propoganda". Nice company BTW.

[bvar22]

19. The Nuclear Power Industry has been "catapulting the Propaganda"...

...for DECADES.

"These plants are perfectly safe.
They have been engineered to withstand earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and any other natural disaster.
Trust Us.
Perfectly safe."


I'm grateful that the opposition had the opportunity, and took the shot.

[TheMadMonk]

21. Not at all. The nuclear industry maintains a very low profile propogandawise.

Virtually all of the actual propoganda is what the ANTI's put forth. Just take a very good look at the way language is repeatedly used to call into question the credibilty of industry responses to questions they demand answers to. - "They say.", "This time.", and the tried and true tobacco industry and anti-global warming crowd trick of putting forth "experts", many with neither industry experience nor credentials, to counter a majority held opinion. All the dirty tricks we daily lay at the feet our collective DU enemies on the Right.



Not 100% safe. And it's never been claimed that they were. Simply that they are demomstrably extremely safe.

Yup and they did, performing far, far better than expected. For terrorists, I can think of at least two far easier paths to achieve far greater destruction than any attack on a nuclear facility is likely to achieve.

Again no. Simply demonstrably at least 10 times safer than coal, and more probably closer to 100 times safer. Even allowing for events like this.


Cheap shots and gutter journalism remain the same no matter what the sentiment behind them.

[Nostradammit]

9. I don't understand your meaning here.

Please explain it to me.

[TheMadMonk]

14. They died in an explosion.

The wording of the article completely superfluously inserted "as more highly radioactive water spilled into the sea and authorities struggled to seal the leak." between the anouncement of their death and its manner. Not even a date for the explosion to clearly separate things in time.

All told, 4 small paragraphs for the dead who gave the article its Headline. Two of them calling special attention to the radiation. And then about 4-5 times as much text devoted entirely to reminding readers just us how dangerous the situation is.

All up the reporting of the deaths was simply an excuse to keep pounding the drum.

[Yo_Mama]

18. They died in the initial quake/tsunami

These aren't "nuclear" victims at all:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.nuclear.bodies/

The pair -- identified as Kazahiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, both members of the utility company's operations management department -- were working in that building when the 9.0-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami struck.

The total quake/tsunami death toll is clearly going to be over 20K. It might well be over 25K. They have buried thousands of bodies in group graves.

It's difficult to conceive of such a disaster. Admittedly the death toll is a fraction of that caused by the 2004 tsunami event in Indonesia and that area, but Japan has implemented very significant quake and tsunami protection systems.

[Hannah Bell]

22. Thanks for pointing that out. They'd been reported missing since the initial disaster.

Yet thanks to the wonderful reporting, people are being given the impression that their deaths had something to do with the nuclear disaster.

[Chris_Texas]

10. well said.

[ixion]

12. care to be more specific?

[greiner3]

13. So with your icon;

I am led to ask how many shares in companies that do business with nuclear materials do you own?

[TheMadMonk]

16. Possibly a few, since 1/2 my superannuation is in a high risk pool.

But I really have no bloody idea. And whatever it is, it amounts to peanuts.

I simply stand behind nuclear power because its record speaks for itself.

Industry wide, no matter how you massage the numbers to paint nuclear power in the worst possible light, it still ranks comfortably ahead of air travel for safety. Using any fair analysis, it ranks far better still.

The average age of death for an Exon Valdez cleanup worker is 51 years. Chances are that gulf cleanup workers will die younger still. Provided protocols are adhered to, and their exposure IS properly managed, the average age of death for Fukushima cleanup workers, will very likely be indistinguishable from the population average.

[Bluegene]

17. Airline VS Nuclear

Sorry airlines and nuclear power can't even begin to be compared for safety. The damage from a nuclear accident is measured in generations not minutes or hours.

[TheMadMonk]

20. Try telling the families of 300 unrecognisable corpses, THEIR damage is done in minutes.

On average air travel kills, in accidents, somewhere around 1200 people per year.


The problem is that most "unnatural" ways of killing people do it in dribs and drabs, nibbling away at a population constantly over time. Ordinadry power plant disasters kill tens of people. Coal fired power plant operations collectively kill almost 100,000 people EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Perhaps a couple of million go toes up on the roads and I'd estimate about 1/2 that number killed by road smog alone.

Because there is such a huge gap between permissible nuclear exposure levels and the levels known to have even a tiny statistically detectable effect in a large population, nuclear litterally can not kill us in the day to day, dribs and drabs (even 500 at a time in A-380s) that virtually any other industry may. Day to day nuclear operations just do not kill in any measurable numbers.

Nuclear energy's casualties virtually all happen as a result of such extreme outlier events, that even a 100,000 life (A very high estimate) "butcher's bill" per such accident, averages out to a "comfortably" small number in the long run. So far, between Chernobyl and Fukushima (plus Windscale and TMI) real numbers are about an order of magnitude (10x) better.

All else being equal, a straight up swap from coal to uranium would save roughly 70,000 lives per year. More, many, many more, if we figure out how to safely use nuclear energy to power any significant percentage of transport (Something which has actually been technically feasible for nearly half a century.) a comparable improvement could be expected.


FFS! Conflict in the Congo alone, accounts for 45,000 odd lives per bloody month (1/2 million/year), why the hell can't people work up, towards war, a fraction of the outrage they so efortlessly direct towards nuclear energy.


Of all our large scale activities as a beligerent, rapacious technological species, those related to nuclear energy (even including the bloody weapons side of it) have the straight up best safety record of them all.

[avaistheone1]

8. Sad.

:-(

[Hannah Bell]

23. MSNBC gets the misleading reportage award for the day.

The msnbc headline manages to give the impression they died in the effort to plug the leak.