Workers Battle Fukushima Nuclear Crisis at Personal Risk

Braving explosions and invisible hydrogen fires as well as bursts of radiation at least eight times higher than government hourly safety standards, a cohort of 50 or so workers has returned to the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The workers represent the last line of defense in cooling the overheating reactors and spent fuel pools, such as reactor No. 3, which is still billowing white smoke or steam--a possible indication of a breach in the thick steel and concrete that contains the nuclear core or of water boiling off its spent fuel pool. [More]

Read the whole article on Scientific American

More from Scientific American