Workers trying to keep the Fukushima nuclear power plant as manageable of a disaster as possible by all accounts are facing up the idea that the endeavor will kill them, either sooner or later from the massive amounts of radiation they are exposed to. In a remarkable act of self-sacrifice, a group called the Skilled Veterans Corps is volunteering to take over for the current group of workers:

For the past several weeks, a group of elderly pensioners, the Skilled Veterans Corps, have been promoting themselves as the "logical" workforce to be sent to Fukushima. In interviews with the AFP and BBC News, the roughly 200 engineers and former atomic plant workers have volunteered their services to take the place of the some of estimated 1,000 people stationed at the plant. "Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer," the groups organizer Yasuteru Yamada, told the BBC.