Asia-Pacific News

Japan says no plan to expand nuclear evacuation zone

Mar 31, 2011, 4:54 GMT

A 60m long pump of the German concrete pump manufacturer Putzmeister is brought to an Antonov 124 plane of the Volga-Dnepr airlines at the airport in Stuttgart, Germany, 31 March 2011. EPA/MARIJAN MURAT

Tokyo - The Japanese government said Thursday that it had no immediate plans to expand a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around a damaged nuclear power station that is leaking radiation despite a recommendation to do so by the global nuclear watchdog.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Tokyo would instead reinforce radiation monitoring of soil.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested overnight that the country consider evacuating Iitate village, about 40 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, after the agency found amounts of radioactive iodine in the soil there that exceeded its health limits.

The village is not only outside the evacuation zone around the plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but it is also beyond the 30-kilometre zone in which people have been advised to stay indoors.

In the soil contamination in Iitate, IAEA experts found radioactivity from iodine-131 at 25 megabecquerel per square metre of soil, more than double the agency's evacuation threshold of 10 megabecquerel, an unnamed IAEA source said.

'The first assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded,' senior IAEA official Denis Flory told reporters.

It was the highest level measured among nine communities located 25 to 60 kilometres away from the reactors, which are located 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo.

'They should really think about evacuating,' the source said of the village of 7,000 people.

Further contamination of seawater was also reported. The Japanese government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Thursday that radioactive iodine at 4,385 times the legal limit was found in a seawater sample taken near the plant on the previous day.

But Hidehiko Nishiyama, an agency spokesman, said the radiation-contaminated water posed no immediate threat to human health.

'We will do our utmost to stop it from rising,' he said.

The agency said Wednesday that radioactive iodine at 3,355 times the legal limit had been detected in a sample also taken a day earlier from the sea near the reactors.

Meanwhile, more international help was on the way while the power station operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has been struggling to contain the troubled plant. Its power was knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami and the key cooling functions failed, leading to fires, explosions and radiation leaks.

The United States military was to dispatch a 140-member radiation control team to join efforts in dealing with the ongoing crisis at the plant, Kyodo News reported, citing General Ryoichi Oriki, the chief of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces.

The specialists would travel to Japan 'soon,' the general said.

Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of French nuclear fuel firm Areva SA, told Industry Minister Banri Kaieda her company recognized the crisis at Fukushima as within its domain of expertise, Kyodo News reported, citing unnamed government officials.

At TEPCO's request, five Areva experts were to join its team in Japan to consider how to help stabilize the situation, the French company said.

The five are experts on radioactive effluent treatment and in the management of used fuel storage pools, and were scheduled to be followed by 20 more Areva personnel.

Areva, among other activities, manufactures the uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide fuel, known as MOX, as used at the Fukushima plant.

Areva's experience in the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States and the 1986 Chernobyl crisis in the Ukraine would be useful in the support to Tokyo in dealing with 'the unprecedented' disaster, Kaieda was quoted by Kyodo as saying.

Lauvergeon's trip to Japan coincided with a visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who arrived in Tokyo Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Naoto Kan amid the nuclear crisis.

'This situation is critical, very unstable and, unfortunately, long-lasting,' Sarkozy said at a press conference.

As France depends on nuclear power for 80 per cent of its electricity, Sarkozy offered support.

The French president also called for the Group of 20 nations to meet and discuss international nuclear safety standards.

Sarkozy and Kan agreed to cooperate in drawing up the standards by the end of this year. The two also said issues of atomic power would top the agenda at this year's meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations.

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