Frightening photos, especially in the black and white versions here. They gave me a very sad deja-vu about pictures of Hiroshima bomb sufferers I saw as a child. There really is not a very thick veneer between "civilized" life and the chaos of horrors like this. Just a thickness of metal in a containment vessel. No more.

I am again reminded of my training from the military. NBCD, Nuclear, biological chemical defence. Of course of the three biggie WMDs the training for the nuclear part was the quickest. I quote "if the idiots ever do launch those fucking things, you will bend over, apply your lips to your arse, kiss it goodbye."

In the States, we call the workers who do this kind of thing "jumpers." They are subcontracted so as not to be able to sue the plant designers, implementers, owners, or regulators when they get sick.

Part of what you don't see is the tears in the rad suits from jumping in and out of tight hatches and the multiple radiation badges ("Stay in until the last one goes off.") I also don't see the hastily abandoned radioactive junk that so often clogs the catwalks and passages.

Of course the engineers do not do this kind of work. Maybe there are some deliberate heroes in these photos. They exist. But I suppose the beach off Fukushima has its share of drunks and desperate people who cannot guard their futures too.