AP INTERVIEW: JAPAN NUKE PLANT WATER WORRIES RISE

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FILE - This Saturday May 7, 2011 file image from video footage released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) shows spent fuel storage pool of the Unit 4 reactor building at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool its broken reactors. Up to 200,000 tons of radioactive water - enough to fill more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools - are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. The amount is expected to more than triple within three years, mainly because ground water is leaking into damaged reactor buildings. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co., File) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's crippled nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors, the manager of the water treatment team said.

About 200,000 tons of radioactive water - enough to fill more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools - are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume of water will more than triple within three years.

"It's a pressing issue because our land is limited and we would eventually run out of storage space," the water-treatment manager, Yuichi Okamura, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview this week.