The Fukushima 50

Bless these brave human beings who are most likely giving their lives to try to advert a meltdown. God Bless you and thank you for your sacrifice.

Just seen a bit of info about them on Fox News, and sounds like they're the heroes Japan desperately needs.

Fox said that if they succeed, the situation would basically be under control finally and they could restore power in as little as a few hours, at the cost of the people doing this act being exposed to a career worth of radiation in such a short time...

Yea man god bless these men and women...

Bless their noble hearts. As tragic as this all is and has been and will be, it's always uplifting to hear about a rise of heroes in a sea of bad bad bad news. To whomever it applies, thank you.

Seems funny to me that we have space suits that can protect astronaughts from solar flares, yet we send a group of people into a radioactive area (thats less radioactive than a solar flare) without a suit.....

My thoughts are with the brave men and woman sacraficing themselfs for the rest of us and our planet.

"Funny" how the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is not into the Fukushima prefecture, huh ? O_O

Hopefully the news will focus on them long enough to stop fear mongering.

Sucks to soak up that that much radiation and no matter what will have some sort of negative impact... from not being able to work as a rad worker for a long time or ever again to actually getting cancer and/or radiation poisoning but kinda one of the risks of the job you sign up for. Though of course this is decently behind what can be legally asked or in the military ordered to do so it's not like they "have" to. But as Bruce willis In Die hard says you do it cause there is no one else or no one that will and that's what makes you that guy.

Different kind. Much much greater distance from the source. Also our space suits don't even fully protect astronauts from just general increase in background radiation from being in space.

No suit can provide enough protection from radiation to really make much of a difference.

To further explain we can measure a materials ability to attenuate radiation in terms of 1/10th thickness. Ie how thick does it have to be to reduce that type of radaiation by 1/10. We generally don't shield for alpha/beta

Alpha- relatively large particles so interact with everything alot and generally stopped by clothing. So though they are the highest energy generally harmless except in really high amounts or if you breath in/injest an alpha emitter

Beta - Goes thru a bit more by generally stopped skin. Again bigger danger in high amounts or injested.

Gammas- Bad. We will shield for because it can penetrate. 1/10th thickness for generally used materials are 2in for lead 4in for steel and 24in for water/poly... you can see why this is problematic for a suit to protect you from much. Those heavy bibs you put on for X-rays are only 1/4in so only about 12% decrease in radiation. And that ***is heavy.

Neutrons- Even more penetrating and therefore harder to shield. Generally only use water or borated poly since they work the best and iirc it's 10in for them.

That being said basic airtight suits will help from getting material on you or breathing it in. Which is useful

Distance I1/ I2 = D22/ D12
I1 = Intensity 1 at D1
I2 = Intensity 2 at D2
D1 = Distance 1 from source
D2 = Distance 2 from source