A Delta, B.C., company says it's trying to help correct mistakes being made in the Japanese efforts to control the growing heat at Japan's damaged nuclear reactors.
SEI Industries Ltd. manufactures the helicopter buckets that have been used to dump cooling water on nuclear power stations at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.
But the Japanese are not handling the buckets correctly, company founder Don Arney told CBC News.
Arney said the helicopters are using only seven-metre to ten-metre lines strung from their aircraft and are travelling too quickly over their targets.
"To be more effective is to use a [60-metre] line, as used in North America and to slow down to a hover," Arney said. "Get that bucket right over to the hole in the roof over the reactor and let the whole load go in."
He said one bucket holds five thousand liters of water.
"Those reactors are boiling off around [40,000 litres] of water a day and so 10 bucket loads would be getting it in there right on the spot would take care of one reactor for one full day," said Arney.
Arney said he has talked to his Japanese distributor who is trying to bring the errors to the government's attention.
SEI Industries developed the technology, known as a bambi bucket, in the 1980s.
The collapsible fabric bucket that can be stored in the rear seat of a helicopter is used in about 95 per cent of helicopter firefighting worldwide, said Arney.
