19 March 2013/07 Jumada l-Ula 1434/29 Esfand 1391/08 Yi-Mao (2nd month) 4711

For the second day now, cooling of spent fuel pools on the General Electric designed reactors 1, 3 and 4 is not taking place (1, 3 and 4 are the ones that exploded).   Another spent fuel rod pool and a water decontamination system are also affected.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says they’ve found the reason why they lost power yesterday; three high voltage distribution systems failed.

TEPCo says two were fixed but they can’t figure out the problem with the third, they suspect a switchboard.  TEPCo officials said something shorted out the switchboards, but they don’t know what. Apparently all three systems must be working in order to cool the fuel rod pools.

TEPCo has two more days to fix the problem before temps in fuel pools exceed safety limits.  If not they will resort to fire engines to pump water into the pools.