From the ABC: Japan eyes water cannon to cool troubled reactor

Japan has asked its national police agency to send a water cannon to the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant after the military was forced to abandon an attempt to drop water from helicopters due to radiation fears.

The request comes as Japanese Emperor Akihito made a rare TV appearance saying he is “deeply concerned” about the unfolding nuclear crisis in his country and is praying for the safety of survivors of last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Broadcaster NHK says the National Police Agency has been asked to send a water cannon to cool a pool storing spent fuel rods at the troubled No. 4 reactor.

Workers at the plant have struggled to top up water levels as the rods have heated up the water, threatening to evaporate it and expose the rods to air, sending out radioactive material.

Earlier, Japan’s military abandoned a mission to use a helicopter to drop water into the overheating No.3 reactor because of radiation fears.

The majority of the radiation and hydrogen are coming from the open spent fuel rod pools, not from the reactors themselves. While dealing with the reactors, no one was watching the spent fuel rod storage and it started boiling off water and producing the hydrogen that has been causing the explosions and fires.

They have all of these “nuclear technicians” running around, and none of them seems to be able to see what is going on, or what is needed to stop it. Almost every volunteer fire department in the US has a ladder truck that can do what needs to be done. If you throw in a few wildfire aircraft and fill their tanks with a chilled boric acid – water solution, they would be a lot of help.

Don’t they have any emergency operations people in Japan? [I will ignore for the moment that the Japanese police have the water cannons, not the fire departments.]

As much as I would like to see Jodi Bailey (16) crown her Quest/Iditarod rookie run with winning the race here, Nicholas Petit (14) has a solid lead to be the first rookie in.

None of the former Iditarod winners could break into the top 15 this year, which may reflect a difference in racing conditions, as the strategies that made them winners may no longer work. The weather was good this year, without precipitation to mess up the trail for the leaders.

I’ll hang in until the Red Lantern is extinguished.

Update: Just after I posted, I glanced at the weather report for Kaltag and see that temperatures have returned to normal on the Yukon -20° with a windchill of -31° for the Red Lantern teams to start their day.

At Nome

7 Ray Redington, Jr (3)
8 Peter Kaiser (54)
9 Ken Anderson (43)
10 Jessie Royer (58)
11 Aliy Zirkle (18)
12 DeeDee Jonrowe (2)
13 Michael Williams, Jr. (41)
14 Sven Haltmann (45)
15 Sonny Lindner (52)
16 Lance Mackey (17)
17 Michelle Phillips (39) [Read more →]