Many Fukushima residents are still not allowed back into areas of high radiation, but now Japanese environment ministry personnel are planning a trial cleanup. Government officials designated certain areas in seven Fukushima municipalities as no go zones. They previously delayed major cleanup operations for fear of radiation exposure. But in August, they'll start cleaning up the town of Namiye, the work on residential areas, roads and fields. And in September, they'll start work at kindergarten and hospitals in Skaba town. The officials plan to evaluate the effectiveness of their cleanup procedures and publish the results. Regulators have been checking into the safety of the only operating nuclear plant in Japan. They've endorsed a risk assessment by the operator of the OE Complex before stricter guidelines come into effect in July. The regulators asked the people at Concy Electric to study what might happen if three active faults near the plant move simultaneously. Executives from the utility initially argued that such a scenario was unlikely, but they later agreed to assess the risks. Engineers calculated how much the reactor buildings would shake and what kind of tsunami they could expect. They said the reactors are almost six meters higher than any waves would be. Officials have endorsed most of Concy Electric's assessments. They plan to carry out on-site inspections before deciding whether the plant can stay online. Now, officials have been facing very challenging situations. In September, a crane operator accidentally knocked a steel beam into a spent fuel pool in the building of reactor three. The worker was removing debris at the time. A power blackout in March caused a suspension of cooling systems for a spent fuel over the course of nearly 30 hours. Officials believe a rat caused a short circuit in an electric switchboard. Contaminated water leaks are another problem. Utility officials say groundwater is seeping into the buildings at a rate of 400 tons per day. The more time it takes to decommission the reactors, the more risks engineers will be exposed to. They need to revise the roadmap as they go to deal with the specific difficulties they encounter and prepare backup plans. The biggest challenge will be to remove melted fuel from the crippled reactors. A meltdown occurred in 1979 at the Threema-Unlinth nuclear plant in the United States, but the melted fuel remained within the reactor's core. The meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi caused the fuel to eat through the core of the reactors. Engineers still don't know the exact location of the melted fuel. All 6,000 residents of Eta-Devilage in Fukushima Prefecture were forced to evacuate their homes two years ago after the nuclear crisis. They still can't move back because of high radiation levels. Many are working to resume their work as farmers after the levels drop. Some have planted rice-lead links in a decontaminated paddy to see if the prop will be affected. The paddy is in the Nakadoro district, which has the highest radiation levels in the village. In August, workers removed 5 cm of top soil from the paddy. Levels of radioactive seasium in the remaining soil reportedly fell more than 90%. Village officials plan to harvest rice in September. They will dispose of it after analyzing how much seasium it contains. It is tough and sad for us to throw our crops away. But we are looking forward to posting results from the test, as that will help bring us a bright future. Anita Taufusho-san, he hopes the result of the test planting will lead to an early return of the villagers. Japanese engineers may be able to start removing fuel from the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant earlier than previously expected. Officials of the government and the plant's operator say they want to speed up the process. They have drafted a new roadmap for getting the work done. The officials jointly released a revised timetable for deconitioning the four reactors damaged in the earthquake and tsunami two years ago. The plan covers various scenarios for removing the melted nuclear fuel from three of them. It calls for work to begin on separate dates for each of the reactors. Engineers will start with the number one and two reactors in the year 2020 at the earliest. That's 18 months sooner than the previous plan. But work on reactor number two could be delayed until 2024. It will depend on how quickly engineers can decontaminate the reactor building. Radiation levels remain high at the plant. Engineers now depend on remote controlled robots to work inside the reactors. The timetable is subject to change depending on whether they can develop new technology. Schools all around the plant were contaminated with radiation after the nuclear accident two years ago. Officials with Japan's Environment Ministry say many of them have now been decontaminated. Government officials conducted a survey in 58 municipalities in eastern Japan. They did not include areas in Fukushima prefecture. Almost 1,600 schools were included in the survey. Municipal officials report 98% of them have been cleaned up. The survey also covered housing in the region. Respondents reported that only 25% of housing units have been decontaminated. That's almost unchanged since the survey conducted last December. But Ministry officials say more houses have been added to the list of those that needed to be cleaned up. They intend to speed up the decontamination operation. Workers at Fukushima Daiichi have completed another project in their long-running effort to deal with decontaminated water. In April, they found a number of leaks in the underground pools at the nuclear plant. But they finished transferring the water from those pools to tanks above ground. Officials at Tokyo Electric Power Company decided to stop using all seven pools after learning of the leaks. They decided to move about 24,000 tons of water to tanks above ground. Crews started transferring it in mid-April. Tepco officials plan to store all of the water above ground. But they have to deal with more and more contaminated water every day. Officials plan to install more tanks. But spaces limited. They had hoped to release groundwater into the ocean before it seeps into the reactor buildings. But they're finding it difficult to reach an agreement with local fishermen who fear what that might do to the waters of shore.