WarrenS has taken on an admirable resolution: to send a letter to the editor (LTE) (or, well, a major politician) every single day, on the critical issues of climate change and energy. This discusses his approach and here is an amusing ‘template’ to for rapid letter writing.
Now, I have always written letters and even had many published — just not one every day. WarrenS inspires me to do better.
Many newspapers state that they will reject letters that have been published elsewhere, thus I have not been blogging letters … perhaps that should change. Thus, on a delay from ‘rejection’ (or lack of publication), here is an installment of the “unpublished letters” series publishing those LTEs that don’t get picked up by the editors.
In “Public offers offers ideas for fixing Japan nuclear disaster,” The Washington Post‘s Lena Sun examined ideas for how to help deal with the nuclear disaster in Japan and explained why these ideas didn’t have merit. This was the first debunked item:
Drones
Japanese officials have used manned helicopters and water cannons to dump tons of water on the most troubled reactors, but there is a risk of radiation exposure to humans operating the equipment. Some experts have wondered whether drones could do the job.
The problem is that the U.S. Air Force’s Predator and Reaper drones are high-speed aircraft designed to fly at high altitudes, not low altitudes.
Nor do the planes have the ability to hover like helicopters or carry heavy loads.
In fact, the U.S. Navy has an unmanned helicopter, the MQ-8 Firescout. 
Two of these are actually currently deployed aboard USS Halyburton. The Firescout could easily be outfitted with radiation sensors to augment their surveillance equipment to provide extended (many hours at a time) close observation of the reactors’ situation without putting pilots at risk to radiation exposure.
Outfitting these small helicopters to support cooling operations by dropping water is less likely an overnight option and the limited (with a 600 pounds) payload capacity makes this a questionable path to pursue.