"Suicide Mission"
Take it in.
Consider it.
Wrap your mind around it.
The need to take on a mission that you are told will end in death. Your death.
But there it is. Stark. Unavoidable. Beckoning.
"Suicide mission" is the prospect facing the Japanese at the Fukushima nuclear plant according to "unnamed" U.S. officials, presumably from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The full quote is completely chilling. Frightening. Blunt:
"They need to stop pulling out people -- and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission."
This is where the Japanese have wound up: They must organize unknown numbers of people who are willing to die so that they can try to get the on-going nuclear catastrophe under control, somehow, someway.
Failure to organize the suicide squads will result in devastation unknown in human history. Chernobyl unleashed about 40% of 6 million units of radiation. A cooling pond at Fukushima contains between 20 to 40 million units of radiation. There are six separate cooling ponds.
Not including the rods within the nuclear reacters.
Not including the fuel rods in reactor No. 3. Those are the rods that are made from "mixed-oxide" (MOX) fuel, which contains plutonium as well as uranium. Plutonium. Plutonium-239 that has a half-life of 24,000 years. Meaning that if it escapes in smoke from a burning reactor and contaminates the soil downwind, that soil will remain hazardous for tens of thousands of years.
188 square miles. That being one estimate of the area that would be contaminated -- a "no man's land" -- and "deadly for decades" into the future.
And so it all comes down to "suicide missions." Missions of death for too many men and women in a final attempt to avert impending disaster.
And the window of hope? 24 to 48 hours.
It all comes down to the next 24 to 48 hours.
I am not a person who prays. I wouldn't know who or what I would be praying to. But if you believe in the power of prayer, the Japanese, and those brave people who will sacrifice their lives to try to save the lives of others, undoubtedly need your prayers today.