New initiatives to contain damage at Fukushima

Fukushima, Tokyo: Japanese authorities are launching a series of new initiatives to avert full-scale meltdowns at a quake-battered nuclear park. These include dispatching helicopters to drop water on heated reactors and bringing water cannons from Tokyo to re-fill a spent-fuel pool that may now be responsible for emitting significant radiation.

Apart from despatching pumps to the affected site, the United States of America will also be despatching a high altitude UAV, the Global Hawk, to conduct infra-red assessment of the stricken nuclear reactors.

Japanese armed forces helicopters dropped water Thursday morning on the troubled No 3 reactor of the Fukushima nuclear park in an attempt to cool down its overheating fuel pool. A similar attempt had to be abandoned Wednesday due to high winds and radiation levels.

Later in the day Tokyo police will begin hauling water cannon trucks to spray water on the pools storing spent fuel rods at each of the plant's six reactors. These pools are located outside the steel containment vessels for enclosing toxic radioactive substances.

Along with the plant's three operating reactors the fuel pools also lost their cooling functions after Friday's killer earthquake and tsunami. Plant operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has so far been unable to monitor the water level and temperature, nor pour water at four of these pools. They are variously described as being overheated from lack of cooling liquids or even as being empty with all their water having boiled away.

The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has said the first priority would be to pour water into the pools at the No 3 and No 4 reactors, which may be boiling and are not fully covered by roofs that would reduce any radiation leaks, since they were blown off by apparent hydrogen blasts earlier this week.