Venting pressure from the plants is a good thing long term. Short term there may be a minimal release to the environment, but that means no permanent core damage(aka meltdown). I've been trying to find more info since I work at a nuclear power plant myself and I just can't find any.
Edit: Some news agencies are commenting that levels are 1000 times normal and that pressure in the reactor is 1.5 times "normal". That's really NOT that big of a deal so don't worry about that stuff. These systems are designed to handle some serious. Everything is overbuilt and with multiple redundancies. Of course, this is the 5th most powerful earthquake ever recorded. I guess we'll see who wins in this battle of man versus nature.
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