April 5, 2011

Brave workers still toiling at Fukushima Dai-ichi

Hat tip to Annie, who sent me a link to this story. It's called "Japanese tsunami survivor returns to help save nuclear plant". Note that once again, the good articles are coming from outside the United States. This one is in the West Australian.

These heroic workers are willingly taking on a suicide mission to help save their country. I call that newsworthy. Here's an excerpt from the article:
Three weeks after watching a massive wave smash into the Fukushima nuclear plant, Hiroyuki Kohno is heading back to the disaster zone to join crews struggling to avert a meltdown.
The 44-year-old radiation controller, who has worked in the nuclear industry since his late teens, has taken on a job many others have declined, with a clear understanding that the mission will likely be the last of his career.
Why don't we see articles like this in US newspapers? I don't understand this lapse. It's such a compelling story yet we only find comprehensive coverage of the nuclear crisis in foreign newspapers. American "news" is officially a joke now. We can't do anything right.

2 comments:

Anna Guess Pick said...

Could it be that "big money" is saying don't speak of this too much?

I know we are on our way to add another nuclear plant here in Missouri, and there are few that want to discuss whether this should go forward or not. Even if you take the element of a disaster out of the discussion there is still the issue of what to do with the spent fuel. There are 104 nuclear plants in the US - you have to put the spent fuel some place safe, most people don't realize this. It doesn't just get used up.

Thanks for the hat tip. Laying around just surfing the net isn't always a waste of time.

writenow said...

That's right. You schmooze around the internet and earn hat tips, thus making your time productive. It's like roman catholics when they're doing boring or hard work -- they can "offer it up", thus making the time worthwhile. I like our way better.

I don't know if the nuclear news is actually being hidden from us because of corporate fat cats who want to build more plants. Could be, I guess. Who knows, what with the sad state of our country? Motivation seems driven only by greed today. It's incredibly sad. It really is.