When your swimming pool springs a leak, do you try to plug the hole with an ice cube? When the local river floods, do you attempt to protect your home with blocks of ice? Despite the obvious answers to these questions, the Japanese government is going ahead with plans to build a wall of ice around the Fukushima nuclear plant in an attempt to contain radioactive water that's been leaking since the tsunami and earthquake in March 2011. What could possibly go wrong? Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority gave $312 million to Kajima Corporation to build the wall of ice around the perimeter of the plant. The project, a year behind schedule, started with digging a 1.5-km (0.9 mile) trench 30 meters (100 feet) deep around the facility. The trench will be lined with refrigeration pipes that are supposed to freeze the soil around them all the way to the surface and deep enough to keep radioactive water from leaking out and clean water from flowing in and getting contaminated. We hear a lot about