Workers at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant launched the key task of moving thousands of tonnes of highly toxic water from the basement of a reactor to a waste processing facility as govt mulled hiking consumption tax and power charges to raise funds for rebuilding the tsunami-hit northeast.

The operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), began removing 25,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water in and around the No.2 reactor’s turbine building, which has an extremely high level of radiation exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour, after sealing cracks in walls of the unit and ensuring that all measures were in place to prevent toxic liquid from leaking.

It said it plans to move about 480 tonnes of the water a day and it will take about 26 days to move about 10,000 tonnes to the waste facility near the No.4 reactor.

The toxic water in the basement of the turbine building and a tunnel connected to the No.2 reactor needs to be moved quickly as it could spread into the nearby sea.

The total amount of contaminated water accumulating in the plant’s premises is estimated to be a little less than 70,000 tonnes.

Facing its worst atomic crisis in decades following the March 11 magnitude-9 quake and tsunami that left nearly 30,000 people dead or missing, the DPJ-led government is considering hiking the current 5 per cent consumption tax to 8 per cent for about 3 years to raise money for reconstruction of the northeast, party lawmakers were quoted as saying by the news agency.

If it materialises, tax revenues will increase about 22.5 trillion yen and the amount will cover much of the extra expenditures for reconstruction expected in the current fiscal year, the senior lawmakers said.

The government has estimated that the damage from the natural calamities could amount to 25 trillion yen.

Besides, authorities are mulling increasing electricity charges to help cover damages payments to people who suffered losses due to the atomic crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, government sources were quoted as saying.

Such a hike could help in providing a portion of the compensation payments that TEPCO may not be able to shoulder, they said, amid concerns within government and the electric utility industry that it would effectively force all Japanese people to share the burden of damages payments.

Japanese officials also said the country would directly inform firms abroad, such as importers of Japanese products and shipping agents, of the crisis at the Fukushima plant, stepping up efforts to ease import restrictions overseas.

The Japanese diplomatic missions will hold briefings for firms in London, Beijing and Shanghai by the end of this month to explain about the Fukushima emergency and its impact on the safety of Japanese farm and industrial products, they said.

Tokyo also plans to organise similar events in the US, Hong Kong and Europe later.

To date, about 60 countries and regions have introduced import restrictions on Japanese products over radiation fears

TEPCO said it would also examine the seabed off the nuclear facility to ensure that no plutonium has leaked into the ocean.

It had earlier detected small quantities of plutonium, a radioactive substance which could cause lung cancer if inhaled, in the soil around the plant. But it said the amount was too small to harm human health.

So far, no plutonium has been found in the air and sea water samples from around the plant.

Senior TEPCO official Junichi Matsumoto was quoted as saying by national broadcaster NHK that there is little doubt that plutonium has leaked from the plant.

TEPCO yesterday also released radiation data and photos taken by the US-made remote-controlled robots, which have detected high levels of radiation inside the reactor buildings at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The company conducted the survey using the robots on Sunday and yesterday.

This was for the first time that the situation inside the buildings had been made public since the last month disaster.

The power company hopes to find locations where workers can go to carry out decontamination tasks so it can implement its schedule for bringing the troubled plant under control.

On Sunday, the utility presented a phased roadmap for cooling down the reactors and significantly reducing radiation leaks within 6 to 9 months.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said today that the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant would not have a total meltdown if the current cooling of its overheating reactors continues.

“… we have been able to do cooling to a certain degree. If we can continue this cooling, such a thing is unlikely,” Edano told reporters when asked about the possibility of a total meltdown of the plant.

His remarks came a day after the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency acknowledged that fuel rods in the Nos.1 to 3 reactors have partially melted.

Meanwhile, the National Police Agency said that more than 90 per cent victims of the March 11 quake-tsunami disaster in the most severely-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima died from drowning, while over 65 per cent of them were aged 60 or older.

As of April 11, out of 13,135 quake victims in the three prefectures on whom the police have completed autopsies, 12,143 or 92.5 per cent died from drowning, it was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Of the remainder, 148 or 1.1 per cent died of burns and 578 or 4.4 per cent either crushed to death or were killed from injuries, while the cause of death for 266 or 2 per cent could not be identified, the agency said.