Are they gonna bury it from helicopter? I haven't heard anything about that, except as noted in the story above. I'm just wondering.

Live streaming of the water drop onto the plant is here (from NHK World)

Why are they using crowd-control water cannons rather than fireboats? Too far back from the ocean? Fireboats have an unlimited supply of water; the cannons draw off a tank. Surely Japan has fireboats like those in New York Harbor.

Government & Military with Fireboats

* Japan Coast Guard - 9; 230 patrol boats with water cannons or fire fighting support systems.

Here's The Google depicting the plant's proximity to the coast, which you can zoom in to and also switch to satellite view as needed:

Google Map

Fears of ‘an apocalypse’ were raised by European officials as radiation levels soared. In another attack, French Industry Minister Eric Besson said: ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. They have visibly lost the essential of control (of the situation). That is our analysis, in any case, it’s not what they are saying.’

They most certainly do have fireboats.

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Maybe they don't have a lot of range or there is problems using them on the open sea or off that area of coast.

RT @AmbassadorRoos: We recommend that US citizens who live within 50 miles of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant evacuate the area or to take shelter indoors.

U.S. citizens in need of emergency assistance should send an e-mail to JapanEmergencyUSC@state.gov with detailed information. 17 minutes ago via HootSuite

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities.

While radiation levels at the plant have varied tremendously, Mr. Jaczko [YAZZ-koe] said that the peak levels reported there “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time.” He added that another spent fuel pool, at Reactor No. 3, might also be losing water and could soon be in the same condition.

With such strong government support and a culture that ordinarily frowns upon dissent, regulators tend not to push for rigorous safety, said Amory Lovins, an expert on energy policy and founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

"You add all that up and it's a recipe for people to cut corners in operation and regulation," Lovins said.

The United States, Japan's close ally, has also raised questions about the coziness between Japanese regulators and industry and implicitly questioned Tokyo's forthrightness over the Fukushima crisis. The director of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. ambassador this week issued bleaker assessments about the dangers at the plant than the Japanese government or Tepco.

Pls RT this EXCELLENT article!!! RT @Dbargen Coulter:Radiation may be GOOD for you! http://bit.ly/hmZVz0 #tcot #phnm #sgp #tpp #teaparty #p2

With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.

This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.

As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level -- much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government -- radiation is good for you. "They theorize," the Times said, that "these doses protect against cancer by activating cells' natural defense mechanisms."

Although reporters love to issue sensationalized reports about the danger from Japan's nuclear reactors, remember that, so far, thousands have died only because of Mother Nature. And the survivors may outlive all of us over here in hermetically sealed, radiation-free America.

Coulter is doing the "Radiation may be good for you" thing.

radiation can be GOOD for you

Nuclear engineers and academics who have worked in Japan’s atomic power industry spoke in interviews of a history of accidents, faked reports and inaction by a succession of Liberal Democratic Party governments that ran Japan for nearly all of the postwar period.

An examination by Reuters of Japan's effort to contain its escalating nuclear disaster reveals a series of missteps, bad luck and desperate improvisation. What also emerges is a country that has begun to question some of its oldest values. Japanese have long revered the country's bureaucratic competence, especially when it is contrasted with its political dysfunction. Japan has also proudly often chosen to go its own way and turn down outside assistance. But what happens when competence begins to break down? And what happens when a disaster is so overwhelming that outside help is vital?

UPDATE 10:52 AM, THURSDAY 3/17: NHK reports that 30 km (approximately) 19 miles to the northwest of Fukushima, radiation levels are still dangerously high: "Experts say exposure to those levels for 6 hours would result in absorption of the maximum level considered safe for 1 year." This is noteworthy because the Japanese government has thus far warned residents to stay indoors if they're within 30 km of the plant.

UPADATE 10:21 AM, THURSDAY 3/17: With the crisis in Japan still far from over, the debate in Washington is quickly shifting toward domestic policy: Specifically, what to do about nuclear power in the United States. On that note, the Union of Concerned Scientists is out with a new report today examining more than a dozen "near misses" at nuclear power plants in the United States in the last year, and the response by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal government's atomic watchdog. For instance, at Indian Point Energy Center in Westchester, New York, "the NRC discovered that the liner of a refueling cavity at Unit 2 has been leaking since at least 1993." The takeway: "The NRC is capable of functioning as a highly effective watchdog, but also makes clear that much work remains to be done before the agency can fulfill that role as consistently as the public has a right to expect." We'll have more on that in a little bit, but you can check out the report here.

I guess that's why FoxNews pulled all its reporters back to Tokyo.

A handful of "heroes" working to avert a total meltdown at Japan's crippled nuclear plant have told loved ones not to expect them to return home.
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The Japanese media have dubbed the elite squad of 180 technicians the "Samurai Warriors" and even the "Nuclear Ninjas" as they try to save their country.
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Nuclear experts have said the men are on a suicide mission and that not even their airtight suits can save them from contamination.

And if they survive, they will face a lifetime of health problems.

But the Fukushima Fifty, named as they are on a rotation of 50 at a time, are working around the clock to stop the plant's reactors from overheating by taking it in turns to cool them with water.

Indeed, at the request of the Japanese government, in 2009 the OECD carried out review of Japan’s risk management policies concerning large-scale floods and earthquakes. Among other recommendations, the report states that: “Industries that can trigger special harm in case of flood accidents, such as chemical and nuclear industries, should be required by law to move to safer areas”.

We have to pay attention to the combination of human factors, economic opportunism and political influences that characterise decision making in a practical context. Rather than deploring these exogenous influences, they could be integrated into the process – by assuming that operators will always look for ways to save time/money/effort or that industry will resist backtracking on a technology that has been adopted. We have to learn to factor the costs of catastrophe – environmental economic and social – into the decisions around prevention and maintenance.

Otherwise, we end up with grim advice such as that given by Yuli Andreyev, former head of the agency tasked with cleaning up after Chernobyl. Yesterday, he told the Guardian that the Japanese authorities “had to be willing to sacrifice nuclear response workers for the good of the greater public”.