Thursday, March 24, 2011 21:48 +0900 (JST) NHK...

The Defense Ministry says temperatures at 4 nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have fallen below 20 degrees Celsius.

The ministry has been using helicopters to take infrared surveys of the surface temperatures of facilities at the stricken plant since Saturday.

The 30-minute survey, which was done from around 7 AM on Thursday, also found that the storage pool for spent fuel at the No. 3 reactor has cooled to about 30 degrees.

The ministry says the surface temperature of the No. 1 reactor was 13 degrees Celsius, that of No. 2 stood at 13 degrees, No. 3 at 11 degrees, and No. 4 at 17 degrees.
All readings were down from a day earlier.

The ministry says the surface temperature of the storage pool at the No. 3 unit was 31 degrees Celsius, down 26 degrees from the day before. Self-Defense Force troops and firefighters have been spraying water onto the Number 3 reactor building.

Thursday, March 24, 2011 21:48 +0900 (JST)