Radioactive Water Pumped out of Plant

The operator of Japan's crippled nuclear plant began pumping highly radioactive water on Tuesday from the basement of one of its buildings to a makeshift storage area in a crucial step toward easing the nuclear crisis.

Removing the 25,000 tons of contaminated water that has collected in the basement of a turbine building at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Daiichi plant will help allow access for workers trying to restore vital cooling systems that were knocked out in the March 11 tsunami.

It is but one of many steps in a lengthy process to resolve the crisis. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) projected in a roadmap released over the weekend that it would take up to nine months to reach a cold shutdown of the plant. But government officials acknowledge that setbacks could slow the timeline.

The water will be removed in stages, with the first third of it to be handled over the coming 20 days, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

In all, there are 70,000 tons of contaminated water to be removed from the plant's reactor and turbine buildings and nearby trenches, and the entire process could take months.

TEPCO is bringing the water to a storage building that was flooded during the tsunami with lightly contaminated water that was later pumped into the ocean to make room for the highly contaminated water.

The operator also is trying to develop a system to decontaminate the incoming water so that it can be reused to cool the plant's reactors, Nishiyama said.

"We hope to gradually reduce contaminated water through that process," he said, adding that it would take "several months" to ready this system.

Once the contaminated water in the plant buildings is safely removed and radioactivity levels decline, workers can begin repairing the cooling systems for the reactors of units 1, 2 and 3, which were in operation at the time of the tsunami.

Workers must also restore cooling functions at the plant's five spent fuel pools, one each for units 1-4 and a joint pool for units 5 and 6, which were in a cold shutdown on March 11.

Cold shutdown is when a reactor's core is stable at temperatures below 100 C.

With Japan's nuclear crisis dragging on, some residents who were evacuated from around the Fukushima plant, about 240 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, began moving out of school gymnasiums into temporary housing. Hundreds who have not found apartments or relatives to take them in began filling up inns at hot springs.

The Japanese government on Tuesday urged local authorities, businesses and citizens not to discriminate against evacuees from the area around the nuclear plant.

The call came after some evacuation centers demanded radiation-free certificates from people who lived near the plant, and following reports that hotels have turned them away and their children have been bullied.

"I cannot stress enough how regrettable it is that some heartless people have acted like that," said Koichiro Genba, a state minister for national policy, reacting to the instances of discrimination.

"I want industries and central offices and agencies to give instructions to prevent such incidents from occurring."