Photo by ippnw Deutschland

There are fifty people who are working to save Japan and for this reason are probably bound to die. They are the technicians who have been working near the reactors of Fukushima 1, trying to cool them.

Roberto Giovannini in the Italian daily La Stampa wrote: "Near reactor number 4 radioactivity measured have reached up to 400 millisieverts (mSv) per hour; according to the World Nuclear Association an exposure higher than 100 mSv over a whole year can lead to cancer development. Yesterday morning, therefore, Tepco decided to evacuate nearly 750 of the 800 workers active to contain emergency relating to the reactors and pools of "spent" (but highly dangerous) nuclear combustible. 50 of them, instead, remained at work [...]".

"An uranium miner is exposed to 20 mSv a year. The people evacuated from the Chernobyl area were exposed to 350, always over a year. 100 mSv a year potentially cause cancer. A single exposure to 1000 mSv can produce nausea and loss of hair. A single exposure of 5000 mSv will killed a half of the people exposed in one month. We don't know for sure about the exact situation in Fukushima, but surely the available protections - suits, masks, boots, washouts, continuos rotating shifts - are not enough. A tragic fate, similar to the one of the thousands martyrs who from 26 April to 10 May 1986, nearly 25 years ago, sacrificed themselves to try and contain the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe".

Japan's anonymous nuclear heroes, Euronews, 17 January 2011