From the various things that I've seen on the news - the idea of flooding the reactors with sea-water seems like a brilliant solution. It's actually such a good idea, that you almost wonder why the original design engineers for the power plants didn't include some sort of emergency sea water pump to perform that operation. But i do agree with you that the workers at the plants are at risk from radiation poisoning, and the news is now reporting that three of them have had exposure. I would think that they should have contamination suits as standard equipment at these power plants. But perhaps those suits are cumbersome or very hot to wear, and the workers can't use them for all their activities.

The Japanese Government doesn't seem to understand that they have fallen "behind the credibility gap" with their news relases. In general, politicians and the media never seem to really comprehend this. If you start issuing statements to the public saying that there is NOT a problem, and then subsequently your own nuclear power plant blows up - GUESS WHAT? You've got a major credibility gap. Once that happens, the general public is not going to put much faith in any subsequent statements that come out. Can you blame them?

The big thing that's missing here is some very simple data. What are the radiation levels in the vicinity of the damaged power plant? This is not rocket science. It's very easy data to gather, and they should be releasing the actual numbers. People will put much more faith in the data than they will in any general statements that risks have been contained.

Maybe part of what we are seeing here is that the Japanese people have a tradition of putting a lot of faith in their government to do the right thing. However, to me personally this incident has demonstrated that the government there is well behind the power curve - in terms of staying on top of the situation. OK, this was the biggest quake that Japan has ever experienced - so we should cut them some slack. But maybe the Japanese people also need to wake up and learn to be a bit more proactive about their own personal safety.

My own take-away from this ... is that I might actually purchase a personal radiation meter for my survival kit. In the past, I have avoided doing this because it just seemed like a waste of money. What are the chances that a "dirty bomb" incident would happen in my neighborhood. Vastly small. But the Japanese experience today has demonstrated that governments and politicians cannot be relied upon to release basic scientific data that is essential to the public good during an emergency. Since I live on the coastline, north of an operating nuclear reactor (in a major seismic zone), I can always just get a handheld device and measure my own data. Problem solved.

There's a really good argument that we need some sort of "Wikileaks Emergency" site on the Web that allows private citizens (who are located inside disaster zones) to rapidly publish information on what's actually happening in real-time.

other Pete