Dangerous work: officials wearing protective clothing and respirators head towards the Fukushima nuclear plantJapan was today rallying behind the anonymous nuclear emergency workers at the stricken Fukushima power plant - as heartbreaking details of their plight emerged.
The 180 workers face soaring radiation levels as they make ever more desperate attempts to stop over-heating reactors and spent fuel rods leaking more radiation into the atmosphere.
Some experts have speculated that they may be engaged in a suicide mission - or at least could suffer serious health problems for the rest of their lives - as helicopters and police riot control trucks are used to dump water on the reactors and exposed nuclear fuel storage pools.
National television has interviewed relatives of the workers, who the plant operators insist on keeping anonymous, with one woman saying her father had accepted his fate 'like a death sentence'.
A woman said her husband continued to work while fully aware he was being bombarded with radiation. He sent her an email saying: 'Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.' The workers are known as the Fukushima Fifty because they rotate into contaminated areas in teams of that number.
Desperate efforts: Steam billows from the over-heating reactor number three at the Fukushima nuclear plant todayAnother email shown by newsreaders said: 'My father is still working at the plant ... they are running out of food...we think conditions are really tough. He says he has accepted his fate much like a death sentence.'
One girl tweeted: 'My dad went to the nuclear plant, I 've never seen my mother cry so hard. People at the plant are struggling, sacrificing themselves to protect you. Please dad come back alive.'
One lone woman worker, Michiko Otsuki, this week spoke up for her 'silent' on a Japanese social networking site to insist that they were 'not running away' as the crisis intensified.
She wrote in a blog translated by The Straits Times: 'People have been flaming [plant operators] Tepco,' she said. 'But the staff of Tepco have refused to flee, and continue to work even at the peril of their own lives. Please stop attacking us.'
'As a worker at Tepco and a member of the Fukushima No. 2 reactor team, I was dealing with the crisis at the scene until yesterday (Monday).'
Preparing to go in: Fire engines and workers in white suits wait in a carpark near Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant today
Devastated: The badly damaged reactor four at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Green machinery can be seen through the ruined wall'In the midst of the tsunami alarm (last Friday), at 3am in the night when we couldn't even see where we going, we carried on working to restore the reactors from where we were, right by the sea, with the realisation that this could be certain death,' she said.
'The machine that cools the reactor is just by the ocean, and it was wrecked by the tsunami. Everyone worked desperately to try and restore it. Fighting fatigue and empty stomachs, we dragged ourselves back to work.'
'There are many who haven't gotten in touch with their family members, but are facing the present situation and working hard.'
source: dailymail