International Law

Jumpers

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

“are people who rush into a highly radioactive area, do one job, and then jump out within minutes. Some in the industry even refer to them as “gamma sponges” or “glow boys” because they can absorb a year’s worth of radiation in those few minutes.”

Says Reuters.

It obviously makes sense to employ such people. Instead, the operators just leave jobs suited for “jumpers” undone right now.

The Chernobyl liquidators called people like this “bio-robots”. From Wikipedia:

“The worst of the radioactive debris was collected inside what was left of the reactor, much of it shoveled in by liquidators wearing heavy protective gear (dubbed “bio-robots” by the military); these workers could only spend a maximum of 40 seconds at a time working on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings because of the extremely high doses of radiation given off by the blocks of graphite and other debris. “

I wonder if they even have “heavy protective gear” at the Fukushima site right now.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).