Tokyo (CNN) -- Engineers will need six to nine months to bring the damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to heel, the plant's owners said Sunday in their first public timetable for ending the crisis.

It will take three months to reduce the levels of radioactivity in the plant and restore normal cooling systems in the reactors and spent fuel pools, the Tokyo Electric Power Company announced. Another three to six months will be needed before the reactors are fully shut down and building new shells around their damaged housings, the company said.

Meanwhile, Japan's government said it would try to decontaminate "the widest possible area" in that period before deciding whether the tens of thousands who have been forced to flee their homes will be allowed to return, said Goshi Hosono, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

"We have to go step by step in order to resolve the problems one by one," Hosono said.

The timetable was released five days after Kan called for Tokyo Electric to show Japanese a pathway to ending the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A day earlier, the company would not comment on an industry group's estimate that restoring normal cooling would take two to three months -- a period comparable to the first stage of Sunday's plan.

Tokyo Electric spokesman Hiro Hasegawa acknowledged that public pressure helped speed the company's decision to release a plan and warned that the outline remained tentative -- "but we will do our best" to stick to it, he said.

Because of the still-unknown volume of highly irradiated water flooding the basements of units 1-3, where the normal cooling equipment is housed, the utility is working toward building a separate cooling system. That system would remove heat from the water being pumped through the reactors and decontaminate it before circulating it back through them.

Currently, engineers have improvised by pumping roughly 170 metric tons (45,000 gallons) of water a day into each reactor, an unknown portion of which is leaking out. The leaking water comes out full of particles like radioactive iodine and cesium, the byproducts of the reactors.

"Everything is a high-radiation area inside the reactor buildings," Hasegawa told reporters at a briefing for international news outlets -- another first for a company that has been sharply criticized for its handling of the crisis.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata fended off nearly a dozen questions from Japanese reporters about whether he or other top executives planned to resign as a result of the disaster.

"At this point, we do not have any decisions or discussions about resigning, as all our efforts is towards resolving the situation," Katsumata said. "We are not sure if resigning is the best way to take the responsibility or to stay in position to resolve the situation." Any decisions may wait until the company's general shareholders meeting in June, he said.

The 5-week-old crisis began March 11, when the plant was swamped by the tsunami that followed northern Japan's historic earthquake. The 14- to 15-meter (45- to 48-foot) wave knocked out the plant's coolant systems, causing the three reactors operating at the time to overheat.

The results included two spectacular explosions that blew apart the housings of the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors and the release of a massive amount of radioactivity that has shrunk considerably, but continued Sunday. Japan's government declared Fukushima Daiichi a top-scale nuclear disaster last week, warning residents of several towns outside the current 30-km (19-mile) danger zone around the plant to evacuate or prepare to leave their homes.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano visited the stricken area Sunday, including a brief trip into the 20-km radius from which all residents have been ordered out. Clad in a white protective suit and face mask, Edano got within about 15 km of the plant as he met with police who are still searching the area for victims of the March disaster.

Radiation levels recorded in both cities are not high enough to cause immediate health effects, but prolonged exposure could cause an increased risk of cancer, according to government data and reports from outside researchers.

Edano has been the government's top spokesman on the crisis. He also made stops in the towns of Iitate and Kawamata, where residents have been told they will soon be evacuated. Radiation levels in those towns pose no immediate danger to human health but could increase the risk of cancer in the long term, according to data released by the government and other surveys.

"Ensuring people's livelihoods and security is our foremost priority," Edano said after meeting with the governor of Fukushima Prefecture, Yuhei Sato.

Workers at the plant are trying to drain thousands of tons of highly radioactive water from the flooded basements of the three reactor units. At the same time, workers are trying to pour tons of fresh water into the reactors and pools of still-energetic spent fuel to keep them cool.

Workers stopped a severe leak of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean on April 6, but elevated levels of the short-lived nuclear waste iodine-131 recorded over the weekend could indicate a new problem, a Japanese safety official announced Saturday.

Iodine-131 has a radioactive half-life of eight days, and a more than fivefold increase in iodine concentrations in seawater behind the intake for the No. 2 reactor could be either from a fresh leak or from sediment stirred up while placing steel panels around the intakes, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the top spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

"They will continue to monitor this carefully," Nishiyama said. "At this point, they have not visually found any leakage of any water into the ocean, and it is hard to check the conditions around No. 2 due to high radiation levels."

The iodine concentrations found were more than 6,500 times Japan's legal standards, up from 1,100 times on Thursday. But that number is far below the levels recorded when the earlier leak was spewing radioactive iodine into the ocean at 7.5 million times the limit. Authorities have built a silt and placed steel plates around the intake fence to corral the contamination since April 6.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama's plan for a national high-speed rail network suffered a serious setback as a result of the fight over budget cuts. No money will be allocated for high-speed rail projects for the remainder of 2011.

Supporters have pointed to the plan as a job creator and economy booster, while critics have expressed doubts about whether spending billions of dollars on high-speed rail is the best use of federal funds.

The news came as a blow to high-speed rail advocates such as Petra Todorovich of the Regional Plan Association in New York. "Obviously, it's a disappointment for many of the states that were seeking funding from the high-speed rail program," Todorovich said, "and it's a loss of momentum as we scale up for the president's ambitious proposal."

As details of the budget compromise on Capitol Hill were made available to the public there was confusion over just how much money was being cut from the high-speed rail program. Some published reports put the figure at $2.9 billion, and at least one said it was as much as $4.4 billion.

But the U.S. Department of Transportation's figure is significantly lower. Federal Rail Administration officials claim that they lost what amounts to $1.4 billion in funds for high-speed rail.

The budget bill says the amount of money for "Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, Capital Assistance for High Speed Rail Corridors and Intercity Passenger Rail Service shall be $0" for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. Another section of the bill rescinds $400 million from the funds that were already budgeted for high-speed rail in 2010.

The cuts will not affect projects already under way across the United States, according to DOT officials. Projects that have been awarded grants will keep their funding. But that's not to say that there aren't concerns about future funding.

"It's always worrisome when an important infrastructure initiative becomes politicized," Todorovich said. "It's a big setback."

Proponents of California's high-speed rail project are concerned about the cuts and whether they can depend on future funding for a line that will ultimately link Los Angeles with San Francisco. The first phase is moving forward in the state's Central Valley.

Todorovich said that so far state officials have secured about $3 billion for a project that will cost about $50 billion. They were counting on federal dollars for the bulk of the remainder.

Obama's vision for a national high-speed rail network took some hits even before it became a part of budget negotiations in Congress. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood redirected high-speed rail funds away from Wisconsin and Ohio after both Republican governors said they would oppose projects in their states.

Most recently, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, rejected a plan to link Tampa and Orlando via a high-speed rail line that ultimately would have grown to include Miami and Jacksonville among its stops. As a result, Florida lost $2.4 billion in federal funding. Now, Scott is taking credit for inspiring Washington to cut the rail program, according to the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

Twenty-four states submitted requests to the DOT for a portion of Florida's high-speed rail funds. The department was in the process of reallocating the money when the budget cuts were announced.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama's plan for a national high-speed rail network suffered a serious setback as a result of the fight over budget cuts. No money will be allocated for high-speed rail projects for the remainder of 2011.

Supporters have pointed to the plan as a job creator and economy booster, while critics have expressed doubts about whether spending billions of dollars on high-speed rail is the best use of federal funds.

The news came as a blow to high-speed rail advocates such as Petra Todorovich of the Regional Plan Association in New York. "Obviously, it's a disappointment for many of the states that were seeking funding from the high-speed rail program," Todorovich said, "and it's a loss of momentum as we scale up for the president's ambitious proposal."

As details of the budget compromise on Capitol Hill were made available to the public there was confusion over just how much money was being cut from the high-speed rail program. Some published reports put the figure at $2.9 billion, and at least one said it was as much as $4.4 billion.

But the U.S. Department of Transportation's figure is significantly lower. Federal Rail Administration officials claim that they lost what amounts to $1.4 billion in funds for high-speed rail.

The budget bill says the amount of money for "Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, Capital Assistance for High Speed Rail Corridors and Intercity Passenger Rail Service shall be $0" for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. Another section of the bill rescinds $400 million from the funds that were already budgeted for high-speed rail in 2010.

The cuts will not affect projects already under way across the United States, according to DOT officials. Projects that have been awarded grants will keep their funding. But that's not to say that there aren't concerns about future funding.

"It's always worrisome when an important infrastructure initiative becomes politicized," Todorovich said. "It's a big setback."

Proponents of California's high-speed rail project are concerned about the cuts and whether they can depend on future funding for a line that will ultimately link Los Angeles with San Francisco. The first phase is moving forward in the state's Central Valley.

Todorovich said that so far state officials have secured about $3 billion for a project that will cost about $50 billion. They were counting on federal dollars for the bulk of the remainder.

Obama's vision for a national high-speed rail network took some hits even before it became a part of budget negotiations in Congress. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood redirected high-speed rail funds away from Wisconsin and Ohio after both Republican governors said they would oppose projects in their states.

Most recently, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, rejected a plan to link Tampa and Orlando via a high-speed rail line that ultimately would have grown to include Miami and Jacksonville among its stops. As a result, Florida lost $2.4 billion in federal funding. Now, Scott is taking credit for inspiring Washington to cut the rail program, according to the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

Twenty-four states submitted requests to the DOT for a portion of Florida's high-speed rail funds. The department was in the process of reallocating the money when the budget cuts were announced.