Nuclear reactors by design usually have to be built near the coast as they require a lot of water for cooling.
Japan is unfortunately not blessed with natural resources like coal, gas and oil or even uranium and to prevent on being overly dependent on any one source of energy, made a decision to diversify it's source of energy. As there are really limited alternatives for base load energy, nuclear was included in the mix as well.
Why then did they build nuclear reactors close to or on earthquake fault lines? Because they had no choice. The entire east coast of Japan is located along the earthquake faultline. They had little choice if they wanted to ensure security of energy supply to the East Coast of Japan.
Anyways, back to my question. What should Japan do?
If they stop pouring water into the reactors, the reactors will overheat and melt down.
If they keep pouring water, the water gets contaminated and they can't get close enough to repair the cooling systems so then they are back to square one and have to keep pouring water.
Maybe they need some Kamikaze engineers willing to sacrifice themselves to repair the cooling systems. Announcement out today states that this problem could continue until June 2011. Not sure how they are planning to fix the problem in June.
