[...Decommissioning nuclear power stations is the ideal job for old people with insufficient pensions. Highly paid, slow and methodical work, and no need to worry about radiation triggering cancer in 20 or 30 years if you're already in your '70s
Su-bloody-perb Tim !!
And it's proactive thinking like that that'll get us out of the mire !
This is almost exactly a proposal that was made at Fukushima after the tsunami damage in 2011. A group of retired engineers, mostly in their 60s and 70s, volunteered to manage some of the more radiation-hazardous tasks in the shut-down of the nuclear plant. THe instigator of the plan, 72-year-old Yasuteru Yamada, commented that he had maybe 10 or 15 years left to live so with a nominal 20-year cycle before any radiation-induced cancer, he would already be dead of something else by then.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13598607 As it happens, their offer was not taken up by the authorities. But it was a genuine offer, made by the older generation to protect the younger. Bear in mind that many of these retirees would have been only too aware of the after effects of radiation exposure, as they'd have been youngsters in the years immediately after the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and have seen national news reports of the suffering. Knowing that, and volunteering to shield others from exposure to such risks, was quite the altruistic gesture, IMO.
