Raise the Hammer

"Venting the air and draining the water requires a technician to reach a dozen valves, sometimes using a ladder. ..." Heh, now probably a bulldozer and a lead lined jockstrap as well.

Thursday updates:
Electrical power has been restored to the control room of the #1 reactor.
High radiation levels on site continue to interfere with workers ability to access much of the facility.
Two Electricians taking part in efforts to restore electric power to the damaged reactors were taken to hospital today after suffering prompt beta particle radiation burns to their feet and lower legs. The injuries apparently occurred when the workers stepped in puddles of highly contaminated water on the site.
Beams of Neutron radiation of unknown origin are periodically being detected at the site. Significant levels of Neutron radiation are produced by fission chain reactions, not by decay of fission products. This would thus suggest that fission is occurring in the supposedly shut down reactor cores and that the primary containment of those cores is breached, and / or that a chain reaction is occurring outside of the reactors, for instance in the spent fuel pools or in the radioactive soup in the lower levels of the damaged reactor buildings. This is really not good news for repair efforts should it persist. Being in the vicinity of an unshielded chain reaction can impart a fatal radiation dose in a matter of seconds.
White smoke or steam is now escaping from reactors 1 through 4.
Problems are now developing at the #5 and #6 reactors, which up until now have been in a "stable" cold shutdown state. Cooling to the #5 reactor was lost yesterday during a swap out of cooling pumps. Efforts to restore cooling to #5 are continuing today. Radioactive Iodine and Cesium are now present in drainage from both #5 and #6 reactors, indicating failure of containment either in the reactor or the spent fuel pools.