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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.

I’m pretty sure they managed to get one diesel generator running at 5 or 6, and have used it to keep active cooling going at those two plants. They did not have enough power from that genset to feed the other plants, which is why they’ve been working so hard to get grid power to the site. Once they had grid power, they took the 5/6 diesel gensets off line for all the obvious reasons.

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.

The information is from older TEPCO press releases (they are publishing information a few times a day). The problem is that while the switchgear and substation equipment for 5 and 6 remained somewhat intact, the electrical gear for units 1 through 4 did not.

Also, one backup generator was inadequate to maintain both 5 and 6 along with their spent fuel ponds at an adequately cool level. They would have endangered those two units to provide an inadequate supply to the other 4 generators. Essentially, if they could have made the hookup, they'd probably have had the roofs blowing off 2 more units and would have 6 scuttled nuclear reactors instead of (probably) 4.

They needed to wait for off-site power to provide adequate supply to run pumps and cooling equipment on 1-4 (some of which is now damaged due to the explosions, earthquake, and tsunami). And even with that hooked up, they still need to adequately test each piece of equipment and circuit to be relatively sure that the are operational and are not faulted (short-circuited).