To think that the popular image of the nuclear plant worker has been Homer Simpson. The New York Times account of a band of 50 workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station trying to forestall disaster:

They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.The company continued to fight problems in several reactors on Wednesday, including a fire at the plant.The workers are being asked to make escalating and perhaps existential sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japans Health Ministry said Tuesday that it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation exposure to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for nuclear plant workers in the United States.The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said.

The writers compare their approach to that of firefighters, which seems right. Echoes of 9/11, and so many instances when a band of brothers (or sisters) risks it all.