Fukushima Reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4 Now Venting Steam; Reactor 5 Cooling Fails

03-23-2011 • ZeroHedge.com

Just out from NHK: all four broken reactors are now smoking. While 2, 3 and 4 have all issued smoke or steam at some point in the past, it is now Reactor 1's turn. From NHK: "An NHK helicopter crew has confirmed what appears to be steam rising from No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 reactor buildings at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This is the first time that steam has been seen coming out of the No.1 reactor. The helicopter crew was filming from a location more than 30 kilometers from the plant shortly before 7:00 AM on Thursday." It was not all bad news: "The Tokyo Electric Power Company says that black smoke seen rising from the No.3 reactor building on Wednesday was no longer visible as of 6:00 AM Thursday." It is unclear if the radiation level had dropped enough to where workers could resume their attempt to reactive the cooling stations at Fukushima. And more bad news, this time from Reactor 5, which was previously considered safe, via the NYT: The cooling system at Reactor No. 5, which was shut down at the time of the earthquake and has shown few problems since, also abruptly stopped working on Wednesday afternoon, said Hiro Hasegawa, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric....“When we switched from the temporary pump, it automatically switched off,” he said. “We’ll try again with a new pump in the morning.”