Highly contaminated water level falls slightly

Tokyo Electric Power Company says the amount of highly radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is slightly lower now. TEPCO began moving the water to an on-site waste processing facility one day ago.

The utility company says the level of contaminated water in a tunnel linked to the No.2 reactor is one centimeter lower than the previous day as of 7 AM on Wednesday.

That amounts to a reduction of 210 tons of the water in the tunnel, pumped out at a rate of 10 tons per hour.

TEPCO is aiming to remove a total of 25,000 tons of the contaminated water out of the No. 2 turbine building basement and connecting tunnel to the nearby processing facility.

The utility says it will monitor the current pumping rate for 10 days or more and then add more pumps, to move 10,000 tons of the radiated water by mid-May.

TEPCO says contaminated water levels are also rising in the basements of reactors No.5 and 6, and in tunnels connected to reactors No.3 and 4.

It says it will transfer about 100 tons of contaminated water from the No.5 and No.6 reactors to condensers, to assess how much water is accumulating. It says groundwater may have been seeping into the reactors' turbine buildings.

TEPCO estimates a total of 67,500 tons of radioactive water has accumulated at the nuclear plant, which is hampering efforts to restore cooling systems