These are the headlines at The Drudge Report this morning:
But when you click on “BAIL: LAST WORKERS ABANDON NUKE PLANT” this is the story you get — Japan Prepares To Restart Work At Nuclear Plant:
FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Japan ordered emergency workers to withdraw from
its stricken nuclear complex Wednesday amid a surge in radiation,
temporarily suspending efforts to cool the overheating reactors. Hours
later, officials said they were preparing to send the team back in.Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the
workers, who had been dousing the reactors with seawater in a frantic
effort to stabilize their temperatures, had no choice but to pull back
from the most dangerous areas.“The workers cannot carry out even minimal
work at the plant now,” he said Wednesday morning, as smoke billowed
above the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex. “Because of the
radiation risk we are on standby.”Later, an official with Tokyo Electric Power,
which operates the plant, said the team had withdrawn about 500 yards
(meters) from the complex, but were getting ready to go back in.… Radiation levels had gone down by later Wednesday, but it was not
immediately clear if the workers had been allowed back in, or how far
away they had withdrawn. The workers at the forefront of the fight — a
core team of about 180 — had been regularly rotated in and out of the
danger zone to minimize their radiation exposure.Meanwhile, officials in Ibaraki prefecture,
just south of Fukushima, said radiation levels were about 300 times
normal levels by late morning. While those levels are unhealthy for
prolonged periods, they are far from fatal.
So instead of a scene reminiscent of the end of a James Bond movie, where workers frantically flee as the nuclear reactor hidden in Dr. No’s bauxite mine explodes (gosh, who cleaned up the mess after that ???), we simply have a routine safety precaution where workers were withdrawn when the dosimeters start getting a little warm.
I know, I know — it’s the job of the news media to sell hype. But really Matt, you can do a lot better than this.
