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Not if they used salt water to cool them. There is going to be scale all over everything in the reactor Bessel and nobody is going to crawl in there to scrape it off. Once you get salt water into a system like this it isn't coming back. And heck the things were due to be taken out of service in less than a year anyways. No reason to take the risk of restarting a possibly damaged reactor. Just finish the shutdown.

I'll note that both units 5 and 6 are several hundred meters to the north of units 1 through 4, and probably were added to the plant beyond its original design. They are also the newest of the 6, and may have benefitted from improved design and construction methods.

As far as I know, only unit 1 was destined to be removed from service this year. It is the oldest of the units, having gone commercial in 1971, whereas units 5 and 6 went commercial in 1978 and 1979 respectively. Also, while 5 is similar to 2, 3, and 4 (BWR-4), unit 6 is a BWR-5.

They have not, as far as I know, used salt water on 5 and 6. The backup diesel for unit 6 either survived the tsunami or was brought back on line shortly after so they were able to maintain normal circulation of cooling water on those units, at least at a modest level. Also, while the fuel storage pools got up to 65-70 C., once they got the backup generator for unit 5 back on line, they were able to provide full cooling capacity for both units and their spent fuel ponds.

Can you confirm that? If they had power on 5 & 6 why take a week to route power all the way from the outside world. Just rotate the power form plant to plant and use the batteries to keep the pumps going between hits off the diesel. I just can't see them letting things get as bad as they did last Tuesday, when the tops were actually being blown off the buildings, if they had power that close to hand.