By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

In an act of selfless heroism, fifty workers at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have opted to stay on the job in order to continue trying to stabilize the situation, even though they risk life-threatening radiation exposure.

CBS News is reporting that of the plant’s 800 workers, all have evacuated except for 50 people who are staying on the job with the hopes of averting a Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster that could cause massive casualties.

Although communication with the workers inside the plant is nearly impossible, a CBS News consultant spoke to a Japanese official who was able to make contact with one of the “Fukushima 50” inside the control center of the facility.

The official said that his friend told him that he was not afraid to die, that that was his job.

Even though the radiation levels in the plant have decreased, they remain at dangerously high levels of radiation.

Death by radiation can be gruesome. It starts with radiation sickness that involves, vomiting, spontaneous bleeding, bloody diarrhea, sloughing of skin, hair loss, severe fatigue, and mouth ulcers. As a general rule, anyone who begins to vomit within one hour of exposure to radiation is likely to die. Long-term effects of radiation exposure include cancers such as leukemia and thyroid cancer, as well as non-malignant diseases such as cardiovascular, respiratory and digestive diseases. 

“The longer they stay the more dangerous it becomes for them,” said expert Margaret Harding to CBS. “I think it is a testament to their guts for them to say, ‘We’ll stay and if that means we go, we go.'”

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