27 March 2011, 13:30 UTC The IAEA reports that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi remains very serious.

Off-site power

Lighting is now available in the central control rooms of Units 1, 2 and 3.

Fresh water is now being injected into the Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPVs) of all three Units.

Radiation measurements in the containment vessels and suppression chambers of Units 1, 2 and 3 continued to decrease. White “smoke” continued to be emitted from Units 1 to 4.

Pressure in the RPV showed a slight increase at Unit 1 and was stable at Units 2 and 3, possibly indicating that there has been no major breach in the pressure vessels.

Unit 1

At Unit 1, the temperature measured at the bottom of the RPV fell slightly to 142 °C. At Unit 2, the temperature at the bottom of the RPV fell to 97 °C from 100 °C reported in the Update provided yesterday. Pumping of water from the turbine hall basement to the condenser is in progress with a view to allowing power restoration activities to continue.

  Unit 3

At Unit 3, plans are being made to pump water from the turbine building to the main condenser but the method has not yet been decided. This should reduce the radiation levels in the turbine building and reduce the risk of contamination of workers in the turbine building restoring equipment. 

No further information has been provided on the source of the contamination that resulted in three workers in hospital with high levels of radiation exposure.  JAIF reports that

“It is presumed that radioactive material inside the reactor vessel would have leaked outside the containment vessel at unit-1, 2 and unit-3, based on the investigation of the water sampled at turbine building.”

Spent fuel pools

Water is still being injected from trucks to the spent fuel pools of Units 1 to 4.

Units 5 and 6

Units 5 and 6 remain in cold shutdown.