Geiger Counter Sales Skyrocket in Tokyo (I bought one too!)

Well, I've always bragged that I was a trend leader...

LENA LOVITCH - NEW TOY

On this blog, I've written extensively about how you can't trust the government (nor can you trust the mass media) and the best way to protect yourselves and your family is to gather information yourselves. This has been especially true during the recent nuclear accident at Fukushima. 


While the situation in and about Fukushima is very serious, due to weather patterns and distance Tokyo is still a safe place. I've listed educational and science institutes and other places where you can check the daily radiation levels in Tokyo in the air and water everyday here and at the top of this blog daily. Even so, I thought it would be fun and interesting to do checking on my own. So I bought a personal geiger counter.

Well, I should say, I ordered a personal geiger counter from Amazon Marketplace. It never arrived. I almost got cheated by a dishonest dealer (named Frontline Mobility) who now, it seems, has lost their contract with Amazon after many people (including me) complained. That was a dealer in the USA.


Then, I ordered one from a dealer in Japan using Amazon.co.jp Marketplace.... Hmmm? Same sorts of problems, it seems. It's been weeks now since I ordered and still no geiger counter. This has happened even though when I ordered the dealer claimed to have it in stock and that shipping would be within three days....


Now this! Just today I found an article on Yahoo that says that sales of personal geiger counters have skyrocketed in Japan! 


Reuters reports:

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) – With a nuclear plant just 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo still leaking radiation, demand for personal Geiger counters has skyrocketed in the Japanese capital and manufacturers are struggling to keep up with the demand.

Engineers are battling to plug radiation leaks and bring the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant under control more than two months after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and deadly tsunami that devastated a swathe of Japan's coastline.

With many people unsure of who to trust for their information, some buy Geiger counters to check for themselves.

In Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics mecca, many stores have sold out and are unable to keep up with demand for the devices.

"Nobody even looked at or even knew the name (of the Geiger counter), but ever since the earthquake struck people have become very interested," said Makoto Ogasawara, sales manager at electronics store Akibaoo.

"We are selling 100 times more."

(snip)...

"We are producing four to five times more of the Geiger counter (than usual)," said Michihiro Kitazawa, Fuji Electric CEO.

Most of the Geiger counters at that factory are hand-made, which takes roughly 3 to 4 months. It makes about a dozen different types, producing about 2,000 per type each month.

Kitazawa said his company has also benefited from efforts to make the devices less complex so anybody can use them.

"Of course, there was the earthquake, but in the past 2-3 years, we have been trying to produce Geiger counters that are easier to operate," he added.

But most of the Geiger counters made at the factory will still be used by those working inside nuclear power plants, prompting the company to carry out rigorous checks to make sure the devices are working correctly.

"We really care about credibility," Kitazawa said.

Sigh...I am told by the dealer on Amazon.co.jp that the geiger counter I ordered will arrive by tomorrow... I continue to have my doubts. It's now been almost two months since I ordered a geiger counter and I am still not a proud owner of a device. 

No sign of any geiger counter...

I think, at this rate, I am hoping to have one by Christmas... But I am not holding my breath. I am not holding my breath waiting for the device to be delivered nor am I holding it in fear of breathing in radioactive fallout.

I just want my new "toy". As soon as I get it. I am going to go around Tokyo and check for myself and report on what I find. Stay tuned!

Fighting Radioactivity? Pensioners to the Rescue!

Sometimes the Japanese just blow my mind. The entire fabric of society here and how people work as a team and believe in doing their utmost for the betterment of all is just amazing. The spirit of self-sacrifice that these wonderful people show to each other is awe inspiring.


Here is a jaw-dropping story about how 60 ~ 70+-year old senior citizens Japanese are banding together to work at the crippled nuclear power plants at Fukushima.


DW-World.de Deutsche Welle reports: 

High levels of radiation and uncertainty as to how long it might take to get the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi stabilized mean that the health of workers and people in the area is becoming an increasingly important concern.

The authorities are already finding it difficult to find enough people who are willing to go into the contaminated area and carry out necessary construction and decontamination work. However, a group of middle-aged volunteers have said they are willing to step in and put their lives at risk.

"My acquaintances and I talked very intensively about the accident and about how we could help contain the disaster," explained 72-year-old Yasuteru Yamada who came up with the idea.

"A functioning cooling system is indispensable," he pointed out. "But who is supposed to build it? Only people can do it. So why not us? Since we don’t have such a long future ahead?"

Pensioners at Fukushima

Yamada is a former engineer who studied metallurgy. He set up "Qualified Veterans for Fukushima Nuclear Plant No. 1" as a registered charity to convince the authorities of its seriousness.

He did not name the people he had already spoken to but said that the hope was that a plan would have been "developed by the end of May or at the latest in June."

Yamada also explained that the initiative was not a kamikaze action at all, but one that has been very well thought through. "Things have to be done in a team," he said. "Our project should be part of a long-term plan under state control. We have to examine people’s skills very carefully to find out what tasks are appropriate for them."

450 helping hands

Yamada and his friends have now contacted 2,500 people in Tokyo and the surroundings. Some 450 people have already offered their help and 90 of them - all in their 60s - have agreed to work in the plant itself. He says they are "worried about what’s coming. But should we not do anything just because we are worried?"

It is an amazing testament to the spirit and kinship of the Japanese that the elders would do this for the others and the youth of this country. While this is not the entire picture, it is a small slice showing why the Japanese spirit of sacrifice is considered a nobel and extremely honorable trait.


These old folks are heroes.


There's many more like them. Let us bow our heads and treat them with respect, not just in Fukushima, but when opening doors for them or giving up our train seats for these folks.


Read more: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6530334,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-asia-5133-rdf

Most of Nuclear Fallout From Fukushima to Hit USA

There is an interesting interview over at the Huffington Post with nuclear engineer Akira Tokuhiro. Tokuhiro talks about most of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima blowing over the USA and not Japan.

IDA MARIA - BAD KARMA

This is interesting Interesting information for the Flyjin who ran away from Tokyo, Nagoya and even farther away soon after the accident (and got much higher doses of radiation flying in planes than we were getting in Tokyo) and another curious point about how an accident at a USA designed nuclear power plant causes great damage to both Northern Japan and the USA.


Tokuhiro says:


"There is a difference amongst the following: nuclear physicist, nuclear engineer, nuclear reactor operator, nuclear non-proliferation specialist.

During the current crisis, all these 'experts' have been in the media.

The ranking of 'experts' who REALLY know how the reactor accident took place is as follows.

1) Nuclear reactor operator (he/she is really the forensic surgeon, the auto mechanic who can build and drive the car)

2) Nuclear engineer (he/she is the forensic and internal/external medicine practitioner; the automobile design and analysis engineer)

As for the other two, they only understand the principles. It is as if they know the principles of driving a car but have never driven the car nor designed a car nor repaired a car.

Would you ask a podiatrist about a medical heart condition? Would you ask a medical ethicist? I think you get my point.

It takes all kinds of people to run the global nuclear industry. However, who do you trust in terms of knowledge?"


The article continues:

"I asked him about his own family in Tokyo and about Japanese culture in general regarding the lack of information. Akira replied that Japan is very centralized, Tokyo-centric and that these things seemed to be taking place very far away and that the people in Tokyo were not in shelters, evacuated perhaps forever from their homes. He told me about the diary he was reading online of one evacuee who had been a nuclear engineer working at Fukushima, who had been evacuated with his family. (It can be found in the original on the Japan Nuclear Industrial Forum here: www.jaif.or.jp). This man is an expert and he can be trusted to know what is going on and analyze the information.

.....

Fukushima differs from other nuclear reactors in that it uses a dirty fuel or MOX which is banned in many of the countries where nuclear power is a major energy source. My Swedish-Russian nuclear physicist friend is sending me links for reliable radioactivity readings and weather/wind patterns. We must remember some of what is posted on the internet are simulations, not actual readings. But he did add this:

The most terrifying fact is that the Japanese power plants are using 'dirty' fuel, which most countries have rejected and banned. Needless to say that the Americans built them. Since the Earth is moving Counterclockwise most of the fall-out will drop on U.S."

Interesting to read that even Tokuhiro's comments are completely about the immediate area around the nuclear power plant (and not Tokyo) and how efforts need to be focused there. It is also surprising to see that most of the radiation is going to fall on the USA.... It's a US designed nuclear power plant too....I guess karma can be a real biatch!


It's also relieving to see that the basic background radiation levels in Tokyo as measured by non-governmental agencies are still comparative to pre-earthquake levels showing no alarming spike and still 1/4 the radiation levels of Rome, Italy. The rdiation levels in Tokyo at this very moment are: 0.063 microgray per hour. If you flew from Tokyo to New York you would absorb about 200 micrograys of radiation. This means that the daily background radiation levels living in Tokyo straight for 8.69 months is roughly equal to one one way flight to New York from Narita. 


Are you panicking yet?


For today's levels compared with pre-quake levels see here. (If that link doesn't work, copy & paste this: http://bit.ly/erHm9p)


For more see: Japan's radiation scare hugely overblown by western media

Radioactive Contamination Found Outside of 50 Kilometer Exclusion Zone. Is This a Threat to Tokyo?

The news has it that radioactive fallout from the Fukushima crippled reactors have contaminated an area outside of the government sanctioned 50 kilometer exclusion zone.

This is very bad news for those poor folks living in the contaminated area and north of there. I hope that this situation can be resolved as soon as possible and that those poor folks - all of them - affected by this tragic incident can soon return to normal lives as soon as possible. 

Even with this information, as has been stated over and over on this very blog, this new information still does not constitute a threat to Tokyo. Why? As I have written, since the beginning of this mess, in Life in Tokyo Goes On:


"First the good news. For those of us living in Tokyo or to the south or west of the nuclear accident, we are in pretty good shape. Why? Think about it; All weather systems and storms come up from China or the southern island of Kyushu direction. They then hit western Japan, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto in the Kansai area, and then move on up into to Kanto region where Tokyo is. The storms always move this way. 

This means that the prevailing winds are always blowing from the south or the west. This is good news for us in Tokyo as the nuclear fallout will head north or out over the Pacific ocean.


The prevailing winds in Japan blow from south or west. They always have. Radioactive materials, since they are materials, and in many cases, "heavy," cannot blow upwind nor can they flow upstream.

Think about it, dust does not blow against the wind. Sludge does not flow upstream. It can't. It's not my wishes, it's simply the way nature works.... Physically impossible.

If this accident had happened at the power plants south of Tokyo, Hamaoka or Tokai, then we might have a major problem here in Tokyo... (I can say that, while very surprised that they agreed to it, I am happy that Hamaoka is being decommissioned!)

The Fukushima nuclear accident is most definitely a problem for those living near the disaster area - or north of it - but for those of us living 230 kilometers upwind from it, in Tokyo, it is merely an inconvenience (not to belittle a major problem).

The fact that the "new" area where the contamination has been found is downwind from the Fukushima nuclear power plants, but a quick glance at a relief map of Japan shows you a "valley" between mountains that is a perfect funnel for the wind (always has been) to blow through that area. That mountain range is called the Ou mountain range. 

It would have been very irresponsible for anyone (me) to point that out to people before the fact, I think. It would have been "よけな話" since I am neither a meteorologist, geologist, nor trained in any area of nuclear science. If I had pointed that out, it would have been fear mongering or sensationalism.

Here is a standard relief map of Japan. Notice the Ou mountain range with the highest peak being Mt. Zao (dark black circle) - red arrows point to the apex of the Ou mountain range. There are blue arrows that show the direction of prevailing winds. People who really stopped to think about it who lived in that area must have suspected the worst was to come. Poor folks.

I suspect that, now some people will put two and two together and seriously consider leaving with their children. I would think long and hard about it if I lived in the "line of fire" of the blue arrows. I think it would be prudent to do so.

Here is a map of the "newly" affected area:

Here is a map just released of the affected area outside of the exclusion zone. I have added a red arrow showing the direction of contamination outside the stated exclusion zone. It is downwind heading straight for Mt. Zao and the Ou mountain range. Of course, the contamination will turn, with the wind, when it comes against the Ou mountain range. Like I said, considering weather conditions (direction of prevailing winds) this should come as no surprise to anyone.

While this news about the contamination being blown outside of the exclusion zone is bad news for sure, it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone. It certainly doesn't show any extra danger to Tokyo which is 230 kilometers to the south.

As the old saying goes, "You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." 


To see the current level of radiation in Tokyo (and to see that it is 100's of times within the safe levels and to compare to before the nuclear incident), click here: If that link doesn't work, copy and paste this: 
http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/emergency/monitoring.tokyo-eiken.go.jp/monitoring/past_data.html

Golden Week, the News and Nuclear Holocaust... A Regular Day in Tokyo

Today is April 29, 2011. It is the first day of the annual "Golden Week" Holiday in Japan. From today, many Japanese business people will take an entire week off from work and travel with their families to visit their hometowns and their parent's homes. That's about it. That's the big news. Nothing much else happening... After I write this blog post, I'm going to take a nap.

CHAD VADER: DAY SHIFT MANAGER - NOTHING HAPPENS 

YOU NEED A LAUGH. WATCH THIS VIDEO. IT'S PRETTY FUNNY!

My family will stick around Tokyo, as we always do, during Golden Week as, during this time, Tokyo is empty and an wonderful place to be.


It's now been about seven weeks since the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred. In spite of the scandalous panic and spittle coming from the main stream media about how Tokyo was going to be filled with deadly radiation, we're still here.

Inspite of the mass media pronouncements of disaster and impending nuclear doom, 130 million Japanese people are still unaffected.  


Yesterday, little children attended school, like they always do. The trains were crowded with business people going to and from work, like they always do and the department stores were packed with shoppers buying gifts, like they always do, to take as presents when visiting relatives.


All in all, it is the same as it's always been.

There are no power outages. The stores have no shortages. The restaurants are slowly becoming filled with customers. There is no invisible radioactive monster stalking the streets.


Despite all the fear mongering and outlandish claims of certain death, we're still here. Nothing has happened. Today's radiation level is basically in line with the radiation level in Tokyo on March 1, 2011;  ten days before the earthquake and tsunami which caused the nuclear accident.

Radiation levels in Tokyo are roughly 3/100th 

Microgray highernow than they were ten days 

before the earthquake. And still at 1/4th the 

daily levels seen in Rome, Italy.

Of course, nothing has happened to us in Tokyo. We are hundreds of miles away from Fukushima. Ignorant pundits claimed that we were all going to get dangerous levels of radiation poisoning, but it didn't happen. Of course it didn't happen. It cannot happen. Radiation levels in Tokyo have been and are still today - and will be tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that - roughly 3/100th Microgray higher  than they were ten days before the earthquake. And still at 1/4th the daily levels seen in Rome, Italy.


It was predictable. I predicted it. It was an easy call. 


Why was it an easy call? Because I am an experienced news person with decades of experience in the mass media and now I am a blogger. 


Why do people like me want to write the truth? Because a blogger should be more interested in the truth than a fast buck. That is also why, in my case, there is no advertising on this blog whatsoever.


It is the nature of the beast.


Have a wonderful Golden Week.   

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Couple that with the ongoing problems at Fukushima and we are looking into a future of disastrous consequences. 

Photoshop makes some great propaganda, but the truth is quite different. What is appalling is that some people see this stuff and believe it to be true!

The online technology and culture publication, Spiked, has a brilliant essay about Chernobyl on the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.


Here are some selected parts:


Yesterday was the twenty-fourth anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. That incident has become one of the main obstacles to the expansion of nuclear power, with environmental groups like Greenpeace demanding that we ‘Remember Chernobyl’. Indeed, we should – but we should remember what actually happened, not the nightmarish spectre summoned up by so many greens.


Just before 1.24am, a series of explosions blew the huge metal and concrete safety lid off the reactor, exposing the core. Enormous quantities of radiation poured out. In the next few days, a number of the plant operators and firemen fought heroically to seal the reactor, and many of them died horribly from radiation sickness as a result. 

Radioactive material was scattered far and wide, most notably in the surrounding parts of Ukraine and Belarus, but thousands of miles away, too. In the UK, for example, many sheep are still tested (almost certainly pointlessly) to ensure that no dangerous radioactivity enters the food chain.

Chernobyl was by far the world’s worst nuclear accident. However, official studies suggest that the accident was not as apocalyptic as we have often been led to believe over the past 24 years. According to a report in 2005, produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant…" 

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.’

Others claim that the WHO-IAEA report is a gross underestimate. Not surprisingly, considering it is a stalwartly anti-nuclear campaign group, Greenpeace published a report in 2006 claiming that ‘the full consequences of the Chernobyl disaster could top a quarter of a million cancer cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers’, with tens of thousands of premature deaths from other causes. However, there is good reason to believe that the WHO-IAEA claims of 50 deaths so far is nearer the mark. Apart from the poor souls who fought to deal with the accident directly, the actual radiation dose received by the population in the countries around the plant was quite small. 

The picture of Chernobyl in many people’s minds is of a nuclear wasteland for miles around. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Injecting some balance into the discussion of the accident and death toll at Chernobyl is not to suggest that this incident was an irrelevance. It was a very serious accident. But the lesson to be learned is not that nuclear power is inherently dangerous. In fact, Chernobyl aside, nuclear power has an astonishingly good safety record. The only other nuclear incidents that any member of the general public can ever remember were an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, USA in 1979 - which resulted in no deaths at the time and produced an average exposure to radiation for the local population equivalent to a single chest x-ray - and a fire at the Windscale nuclear plant (now called Sellafield) in northern England in 1957, which again passed without immediate casualties (though about 200 cases of cancer were estimated to have been caused as a result in subsequent years).

This all sounds very good and promising for the nuclear power industry. But what is even more shocking is that many leaders of the Green Parties - who were adamantly anti-nuclear - have come out as pro-nuclear one they bothered to research the facts. The article continues:

Ironically, many leading greens have recently come out in support of expanding nuclear power, including James Lovelock, Mark Lynas and former Greenpeace UK director, Stephen Tindale. Another veteran green, Stewart Brand, in his book Whole Earth Discipline, offers a mea culpa for opposing nuclear power for so long. ‘My opinion on nuclear has flipped from anti to pro. The question I ask myself now is, “What took me so long?” I could have looked into the realities of nuclear power many years earlier, if I weren’t so lazy.’

Finally, Spiked says it better than I ever could with their closing arguments:

Nuclear power is a safe, reliable and developing technology. We should be building new nuclear plants as soon as possible. And the fact that we have rejected nuclear for so long, and are still dithering about it today, has a lot to do with the myth of Chernobyl, its exploitation by anti-modern greens, and its impact on the increasingly risk-averse, investment-shirking governments that rule over us.

What people who want to stop nuclear energy fail to realize is that the economy is bad enough now as it is. The oil and coal industries have raped the environment and have caused untold misery in wars to control those resources. 

The way the current economy is - and will be for the foreseeable future - we cannot afford a world without cheap, clean nuclear power.  To think other wise is just plain foolish.

Can you imagine a near future of gasoline and oil prices hitting new world records - at prices three or four times higher than they are now - not to mention how skyrocketing oil prices will exponentially increase our grocery bills? What are our realistic options? 

Solar, wind and power from things like ethanol and bio-fuels that must be subsidized by you, the taxpayer, are generations away from being efficient and generating more energy per unit than they cost to produce.

The facts should be as plain as day to even the most vehement green. It has been to the leaders of the Green Parties:  T

he very worst thing that could happen to us, the little guy, (that's you and me) is for our gas and electricity costs to skyrocket in the middle of this recession. For the betterment of the environment and for our children's future and for our economic well-being, we need cheap, clean renewable energy.

All of our current alternative energy sources are dirty, destroy the environment and are not cost efficient. The only choice we have is nuclear power. We must continue to develop it and make it into the ultimate safe energy source. We have no other choice. 

Thanks to Michael Distacio of Rock Challenge Japan

Fukushima Nuclear Radiation at the Site is Extremely Dangerous! But How Dangerous is It to You?

I received a good email from a friend warning me about "massive radiation leaking" from  Fukushima. 

LEE DORSEY - WORKING IN A COAL MINE

I think my friend's mail confuses the issues again. They confuse the real danger faced by those working near the power plant with imagined dangers to us living hundreds of kilometers away.

The letter read:


Mike,


The situation here at Fukushima is still quite unstable. 

I'd be very worried about the news coming out, if I were you. 
The boys at Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) held a meeting and they announced that there's a huge amount of radioactive material still pouring out of Fukushima.

Several weeks ago, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara even said that the government should think about moving the seat of power to Osaka.


Based on the information that the NISA released yesterday, there's a high risk that a
large amount amount of radiation could make its way to Tokyo in another couple of months.
- A friend


Thanks Friend,

If and when the radiation readings here in Tokyo (at non-governmental organizations and universities) see: http://bit.ly/erHm9p start to go high, then I will worry. 

Japan's prevailing winds have Tokyo upwind (the prevailing winds blow from the west or south)... It's been that way for a million years... Don't see why that should change anytime soon.

Monsoon season (that starts in about a month) always blows from the Philippines.

Japan has been talking about setting up a shadow government in Osaka since 9/11. This is not news at all.

If you want to read the official NISA press releases. They are always here: http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/press/index.html

But don't be mistaken, my friend. Things are VERY bad at that nuclear reactor.... The people around there and working there are taking huge risks. But that's the people working there on the site and living around the plant.


Also, at one of my very favorite blogs, Searching for Accurate Maps, which often holds an intelligent and  healthy contrarian view from this blog, I found an interesting article that I thought showed a very leftist idea and misunderstanding of how private businesses work. It complained of the work conditions of those TEPCO employees who are risking their lives and battling it out in a sort of man vs. technology vs. nature real-life drama.


The article quoted Takeshi Tanigawa a professor at Ehime University School of Medicine. The article entitled Nuke workers at risk of overwork death said: 

The workers are also on a poor diet, centering on canned and retort-packed foods, although they can now have three meals a day, up from the initial one daily.

Workers other than senior officials work in shifts of four days on and two days off, but cannot even take a bath during the four workdays despite sweating heavily in impervious radiation-protective gear, Tanigawa said.

“Being unable to feel refreshed, they are not only vulnerable to various diseases and skin disorders but also may commit errors in their work,” Tanigawa warned.

Through interviews with about 30 of them, Tanigawa found that they are heavily stressed not only as a result of the pressure of their jobs but also by being asked by family members not to go to work.

One worker whose home was lost in the disaster felt exposed to negative perceptions in a shelter where the worker spent days off, the doctor said.

“More than 80 percent of the on-site employees have their homes within a 20-km radius of the nuclear plant and some of them have lost family members,” he said, adding that concerns about their houses and lives will likely continue to distress them.”It was also stressful for some workers who were unable to confirm the safety of families for as long as a week to continue working,” he said. “On the other hand, they tend to feel indebted for working for an offending company and so cannot raise their voices.”

About 50 of the workers were diagnosed with illnesses such as high blood pressure and colds, cluding one worker whom he instructed Tepco to replace due to a high fever, he said.

As the crisis continues, with Tepco aiming to stabilize damaged reactors in about six to nine months under a road map released Sunday, the utility must allow workers engaged in the crisis control efforts thus far to take a rest by mobilizing all its employees and asking other power utilities to dispatch workers if its workforce is insufficient, Tanigawa said.

There are so many things that I question about this good doctor's ideas. Since he is a university professor, I would expect him to hold leftist and Socialist ideas. The good doctor was quoted as saying;

 “….and asking other power utilities to dispatch workers if its workforce is insufficient.” I think this is a totally absurd idea and shows that the doctor doesn't understand anything about business. Why in the world would a competing privately-owned company ask its employees to go out and help a competitor? Why would an employee of company "A" risk his life to go help company B, his companies arch-enemy competitor? Not just any competitor: TEPCO the #4 energy related company in the world and the largest in Asia.

Working at a nuclear power plant doesn't even rank in Top 20 Most Dangerous Jobs in America. See below.

When General Motors was near bankruptcy, did anyone float the idea that Toyota should send her engineers over to help out? Of course not. 

The situation is bad for those workers at Fukushima, I’m sure. They are having to eat poor and canned food – just like the people who live in the tsunami destroyed areas. Yes, things are bad all around that area… (To see a short video documentary of the aftermath of the tsunami, the city and the people, see Ishinomaki - Black Water. If that link doesn't work, try this: http://bit.ly/ibiaMP)

This is not an article disrespecting those brave men who are risking their lives now fighting the disaster at Fukushima, but let us consider the source. They knew what they were getting into when they took their job at their employer. Let us not use their unfortunate situation now as just another tool in our anti-nuclear crusade. Yes, things are bad for them. 

But they are fighting for their lives and their families and their livelihoods. They took the job at TEPCO. No one forced them to go work for that company. It's just like the brave men who gave their lives and died when, say the Empire State Building was built. Or the men who risk their lives everyday in coal mines that go miles underground, or men who work on extremely dangerous oil rigging far out over the ocean.

It takes a certain type of person to accept these types of jobs. They get paid accordingly. Complaining about their work conditions as a round-about ruse to attack nuclear power is dishonest. 

These are not the only employees in Japan who overwork themselves to death. Karoshi (deaths from overwork) claims untold numbers of Japanese businessmen every year.

… If they don’t like their job they should quit. I would in a heart beat.

Of course these people cannot raise their voices against the company that they work for. This company, that they chose to work at freely, gave them their livelihoods and helped them pay for their homes. It has helped them to raise families and buy the things that small children want and need… Even people who did not work directly for TEPCO had TEPCO employees as customers, neighbors and friends. In that sense, it is a testament to the pride and stoic nature of the Japanese that these great employees do remain diligent.

It is most unfortunate that a so-called "Act of God" has turned their lives upside down and, in many cases,  wrecked their livelihoods and their families. But now they are fighting to get those lives and families back. Let them do that to the best of their ability. Do not use their current suffering and struggles as an excuse to end it all once the situation - through the strife and toil of their efforts - is contained. 

Here is a list from the Daily Beast of the Top 20 Most Dangerous Jobs in America. See if you can find nuclear plant worker:

Top 20 Most Dangerous Jobs in America:

#1 Fisherman

#2 Logger

#3 Farmer / Rancher

#4 Structural construction worker

#5 Sanitation Worker

#6 Airline pilot

#7 Roofer

#8  Coal Miner

#9  Merchant mariner

#10 Miller

#11 Power line installer

#12 Police officer

#13 Firefighter

#14 Oil & gas driller

#15 Cement manufacturer

#16 Taxi & limousine driver

#17 Truck driver

#18 Construction equipment operator

#19 Animal slaughterers

#20 Security guard


The point? Keeping a firm grip on reality, facts and relative dangers is the best way to judge a situation for merits and demerits. Using these men's poor current situation as a tool in ulterior motives to attack their livelihood is disingenuous. 




Read more? Is Nuclear Engineer the Most Dangerous Job?




Thanks to Searching for Accurate Maps. Check it out everyday for intelligent and well written discourse.