I was hoping to put up a technical diary of the techniques that would be used in a plan of using helicopters to drop water onto, or into the reactor buildings and more importantly, the fuel rod containment pool that is becoming ever so much more dire as you are reading this.
As I am writing this, I am watching the Ed Show and the latest reports are that they are pulling the last workers away from the damaged reactor site simply because radiation levels have become too high to continue working. Helicopters may be their only hope now. Containment from the ground is no longer possible it seems, so the only hope is help from the air.
Japan has 68 CH-47 Chinook helicopters in their military.
Built by Kawasaki under license from Boeing. They are all built at least as good as, and capable as US Army Chinook helicopters (CH-47D) of which I am VERY familiar.
I have been involved in US military rotor wing aviation for 30 years, and have 4 years as Chinook flight engineer (A term usually abbreviated as FE).
The Chinook is not the only helicopter capable of making a drop of cooling water onto the damaged reactors or overheating spent fuel rods, but it seems it is the only helicopter on hand in Japan and in serious enough numbers to help.
The problems of using helicopters:
1. The crew is going to get a serious dose of whatever bad stuff is in the air / steam / smoke being put out by the nuclear reactor or more importantly - the overheating spent fuel rods. Since the spent fuel rods are located on top of the reactor buildings and from reports are open to the sky, and spewing radioactive steam and or smoke from burning fuel rods. Whatever is happening on the ground, it is worse in the sky above.
You CANNOT seal up a modern helicopter and make it hermetically sealed like the space shuttle, or even fairly well sealed like an airliner is... they are not designed for use above 10,000 feet except for very limited flight times so they are not designed nor intended to be pressurized, electrical cables pass through the airframe all over and cannot easily be sealed. The transmissions and drive shafts of a Chinook are open to the interior, and airflow from the outside air passes thru the cabin.
Now using military crews that are trained in using and or flying in chemical / nuclear suits would be best, but at this time and set of current events anyone you can get to volunteer and fly would be helpful, regardless of if they get a moon suit to use.
The Chinook can carry enough weight beyond the water/ bucket weight that some shielding for the crew could be put in place, you could even put a few thousand pounds of lead on a CH-47 and it still could do the mission, no problem.
The one sticky problem for the mission and one crew member is this will not be an area drop, they will need to control the water as to how much and where it is let out of the bucket. The pilots cannot see anything below the center of the helicopter, only the Flight Engineer can. So that person is exposed to whatever radiation is currently venting upward from the drop zone.
I suppose they could rig up a lead shield of some kind to cover the hole that the FE looks out of, making that person use a peep hole of some kind to minimize the exposure, that is exactly what I would ask for. Any kind of shielding at all would be better than none.
The Chinook is capable of carrying 25,000 lbs on the center cargo hook (it has three)
and can carry a water drop bucket of 2000 gallons of water, which weighs roughly
17,000 lbs ( water weight is 8 lbs per gallons - 16,000 lbs, the bucket and long line empty weigh 1000 lbs).
So at sea level there is plenty of power to add some weight to a Chinook as to crew shielding.
2. Doing water drops: First off it is not easy to hit a fire with a bucket of water form the air. It takes coordination from a controller either on the ground nearby, or in the air overhead acting as spotters.
Fire drops are usually done as an area drop with a Chinook. Spots drops on hot spots are done with smaller helicopters such as the UH-60 Black hawk, a Huey or other models such as the Civilian KMAX.
To drop water precisely in one spot, the helicopter has to slow down and come to a hover, and the FE has to call the drop exactly on the spot where it is needed. Then accelerate away from the drop area, this all takes time and accumulated Radiation dose can become a serious issue with each sortie, and the total time spent above the toxic drop zone.
3. Decontaminating crews and helicopters.... I believe (please tell me if I am wrong) that most of the bad stuff, such as strontium, cesium,etc, could be simply washed away with a serious bath after a flight. The bucket and long line itself will probably receive the highest dose of rads and will need to be treated as radioactive waste.
If the helicopter itself is too contaminated, the cost would become in the millions (Roughly 20 Million per CH-47) but considering the alternative - uncontrolled nuclear fires spewing toxins towards more of Japan and especially Tokyo, that is a palatable cost considering the alternative.
4. Being able to do water drops at all.
The US and most likely the Japanese active military have very little to no experience doing water drops on anything. The experts in this field is the US Army National Guard which has been performing this type of mission in those exact helicopters for many years. The US Army does not do this type of mission, nor do they train for it.
Civilian contractors that fight wildfires do and State agencies such as the California CAL FIRE do, but quite frankly none of them have the resources anywhere nearby to help in time.
5. Blowing stuff around.
A Ch-47 has a seriously strong rotor wash when the aircraft is less than 200 feet from the ground. In aviation terms this is called "In ground effect" which means the strength of the wind being put out by the rotating rotors is pushing directly off the ground making it more efficient (Yes this a simplification, but still true).
So as a helicopter hovers over the drop site, it is going to blow debris around, dust will swirl, and smaller objects may shift or fall.
The US military learned this lesson at the Katrina disaster. Using CH-47's for rescuing people
from roof tops involves the helicopter being less than 150 feet from the level of the person being rescued. Because the rescue hoist cable is only that long.
(Usable length of that cable is probably closer to 120 feet, when it is actually played out) And at that height the helicopter blows debris around in a very high wind, sending storm debris flying like missiles, which does no survivor any good,regardless
of good intentions.
This is exactly why my sister unit was there in New Orleans rescuing people from roof tops with their UH-60 Black hawks. And the Chinooks were dong duty hauling relief supplies in bulk, passengers, and dropping sand bags into the levy breaches instead.
In this situation, blowing stuff around may or may not be an issue since the entire area has already been subject to massive radiation leaks or fall out.
Still, the helicopters should and will probably use a VERY long line to keep the aircraft and crew as far from the danger area as possible, while still being able to properly drop water where needed. We drop water all the time using a 150 foot long line. Making one even longer for this specific use would not be hard at all.
300 foot or even a 500 foot would be very doable.
Ready made polymer plasma lines are sold in many different lengths, but in a pinch a simple steel cable can be used with clamps at each end to form the loop for the attaching points.
(They did this at Katrina and Gustav, so the cables could be dropped with the sand bag loads and basically left in the water and written off).
OK now for some pictures...
This is a Chinook, with some friends of mine in front to show the size in scale.
This shows my aircraft lifting off with a water bucket on a long line at a wild fire in Valentine Nebraska in 2006.... the bottom of the bucket is 175 feet below the aircraft.
The Flight engineer lays down on the floor and watches the bucket by looking out the cargo hook hole, and controls it with an electrical control grip. This photo is from the Chadron Nebraska Wild fire in 2006
This is what the FE see's (looking from behind him). In this picture the bucket is just hitting the water so they can fill it.
This is the 2000 gallon bucket most units use here in the US, the soft sided buckets are pretty tough, and will take a beating being picked up and down, scraped along the ground, even hitting trees and stumps sometimes when working fires. This picture was taken of the crew when we were working the wildfires in California in 2008.
I am third from right.
Finally, here is our "Bucket list".. we kept track of the number of drops we made on the side of "High Roller"..
Anyway, if the radiation becomes too much for crews on the ground to get cooling water to the overheating fuel rods / reactors helicopters or robotic machines may be all they can use to bring this disaster under control, I hope things get better and I pray for the men and women working in Japan in such terrible conditions.
UPDATE - I watched the Japanese (Military)?, do a water drop on the reactor building today and while I salute the people involved, and the crews that carried it out for their sheer courage and determination.
But from my perspective what I saw them do was doomed to fail from the start.
They were using short lines, the buckets were hanging not much more than 75 feet below the aircraft, and the drops were made with the bucket still at least a hundred feet above the building roof.
And they dropped the water as they flew by.
Which means what water did actually hit the building was more like a very hard rain than a deluge, which is what they need.
It is entirely doable to use a much longer line where the crew could at least hover briefly over the building and drop the water as a deluge on one spot.
I have no idea if being 500 feet away from the reactor building is better than being 100 feet away, the radiation level may be so bad that even 500 feet is severely bad... but all things being equal I would always want more distance for myself and the helicopter.
I do not believe the Japanese have much experience doing water drops on wild fires, let alone something like this.
I really, really wish they would ask the best people in the world to coordinate with them on how to do this...
They should be talking to the Chinook aircrews in the National Guard in California or Oregon, or Washington, or Nebraska.... these are THE experts.. These are the folks that do drops every year.
I sent a message to the White house telling them so yesterday... got no response back.
The drops today could have gone much better, and could be done a bit safer as well...
Just my opinion.
Paul
UPDATE - a follow on diary. Helicopters to the rescue - part 2