Smoke at Japan Nuclear Plant, Workers Evacuated

Workers were temporarily evacuated from part of the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant in northeast Japan Monday when smoke rose from one of the reactors, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said.

At 3:55 pm (0655 GMT), a "light grey plume of smoke" rose from reactor number three, a TEPCO spokesman told reporters.

"Due to this problem, the operator temporarily pulled out the workers, while checking on the condition of the site," the spokesman said.

Another TEPCO official told Agence France Presse: "We have evacuated workers near the number three reactor, not the whole Fukushima No. 1 plant."

A small quantity of smoke was still coming out nearly two hours later, but was not believed to have been caused by efforts to restore power to the reactor, a nuclear safety official told reporters.

Engineers at the stricken facility, located 250 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, are racing to fix disabled cooling systems and bring them on stream, as fire trucks spray water to help cool reactor fuel-rod pools.

The cooling systems -- designed to protect the plant's six reactors from a potentially disastrous meltdown -- were knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan's northeast Pacific coast on March 11.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said earlier that the country was making "slow but steady progress" in its battle to bring the situation under control, according to a government spokesman.