Radioactive water removal starts

TOKYO, April 13 (UPI) -- Amid unrelenting aftershocks, workers at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant began removing its radioactive water even as the severity rating was increased.

As official and other apologies to residents of Fukushima prefecture continued for the atomic crisis at the Daiichi plant set off by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the task of ridding the plant's reactors of the highly radioactive water collecting in the basements remained a priority Wednesday to avert a major meltdown that could release more dangerous radioactive emissions.

The situation at the six-reactor plant, 140 miles north of Tokyo, was not helped by the government nuclear safety agency raising the severity level of the crisis at the plant to the maximum level 7 from the earlier level 5. The new rating put the plant's crisis on the same level as the world's worst nuclear disaster, which hit the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986. However, the saving grace at the Fukushima plant, as asserted by officials, is that emissions from it are only about 10 percent of what resulted from Chernobyl.

Besides a number of factors such as power breakdowns, failed cooling system, partially melted fuel rods and inadequate fresh water supply, what has been hampering stabilization work at Fukushima also have been constant aftershocks hitting the northeast region. So far those shocks have spared the Fukushima plant from further damage although workers have had to be evacuated or their work halted for safety checks.

Early Wednesday a 5.8-magnitude quake jolted Ibaraki prefecture and its vicinity but no tsunami warning was issued, Kyodo News reported. There were no immediate reports of damage.

While the immediate task is to remove the highly radioactive water from the basements of the reactors, workers must also keep injecting water into the troubled Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors to keep their spent fuel rod pools cool. The cooling systems were knocked out by the March 11 disaster. But without removing the more highly contaminated water, the workers cannot enter the area to restore the cooling functions.

The contaminated water is being pumped from an underground tunnel-like trench into a storage area near the No. 2 reactor turbine building by workers of Tokyo Electric Power, operator of the plant.

About 60,000 tons of the contaminated water have collected in the basements of the reactors. Some of that water had been leaking into the Pacific Ocean, raising concerns about contamination of seafood but that leak has since been sealed.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday the situation at the troubled reactors was "improving step by step" with falling levels in the release of radioactive particles, while other officials said much of the emissions occurred immediately after March 11 which also caused hydrogen explosions, Kyodo reported.

Since last week, Tokyo Electric Power workers have also been pumping nitrogen, an inert gas, to avert any such explosions. The utility has estimated 25 percent to 70 percent of the nuclear fuel rods in the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors have been damaged.

In the United States, Gregory Jackzo, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a Senate hearing Tuesday the Japanese nuclear reactor crisis is static but not yet stable, CNN reported.

"From the information we have, we believe the situation currently is static, namely we don't see significant changes on a day-to-day basis with the reactors," Jaczko said.

The New York Times quoted Jaczko as saying the risk of big additional releases gets smaller with each passing day.

He told the senators regular cooling of the reactors over the long term as well as setting up the routine taking of water into the spent-fuel pools still remain to be accomplished.

In other developments, the Japanese government Wednesday announced a ban on shipments of shiitake mushrooms grown outdoors in some areas near the crippled nuclear plant because of radioactivity, Kyodo News reported.

The ban would cover mushrooms grown in five cities, eight towns and three villages in Fukushima prefecture, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. But mushrooms grown indoors in the prefecture are safe.

Also on Wednesday, the government, citing the impact from the "Great East Japan Earthquake," downgraded its assessment of the economy, the first such in six months.

Earlier the International Monetary Fund cut its 2011 growth forecast for Japan to 1.4 percent from its 1.6 percent forecast in January. The IMF report forecast a 2.1 percent growth for Japan next year, up from its January forecast of 1.8 percent.