Submission + - Heroism is Part of a Nuclear Worker's Job
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Michael Friedlander writes in the NY Times that in 1988 he was a newly minted shift technical adviser at a nuclear power plant near the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Gilbert, a Category 5 storm, was bearing down on the plant and received word that all workers should leave except for critical plant personnel and there was never a question: my team and I would stay, regardless of what happened (reg. may be required). "The situation facing the 50 workers left at Fukushima is a nuclear operator’s worst nightmare," writes Friedlander. "But the knowledge that a nuclear crisis could occur, and that we might be the only people standing in the way of a meltdown, defines every aspect of an operator’s life." The field attracts a very particular kind of person, says Friedlander, and the typical employee is more like a cross between a jet pilot and a firefighter: highly trained to keep a technically complex system running, but also prepared to be the first and usually only line of defense in an emergency. "We will likely hear numerous stories of heroism over the next several days, of plant operators struggling to keep water flowing into the reactors, breathing hard against their respirators under the dim rays of a handheld flashlight in the cold, dark recesses of a critically damaged nuclear plant, knowing that at any moment another hydrogen explosion could occur," writes Friedlander. "These operators will be hailed as heroes, and deservedly so. But if they are like the rest of the tightly knit community of nuclear workers, they will simply say they were doing their job.""
