Japan yesterday expanded the evacuation zone around its crippled nuclear plant because of high levels of accumulated radiation.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said villages and towns outside the 20km evacuation zone that have had more accumulated radiation would be evacuated. Children, pregnant women, and hospitalized patients should stay out of some areas 20km to 30km from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, he added.
The decision to widen the evacuation band around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was “based on data analysis of accumulated radiation exposure information,” Edano told a news conference.
“These new evacuation plans are meant to ensure safety against risks of living there for half a year or one year,” he said.
There was no need to evacuate immediately, he added.
Japan had resisted extending the zone despite international concerns about radiation spreading from the six damaged reactors at the plant, which engineers are still struggling to bring under control after they were wrecked by the 15m tsunami.
Residents of one village, Iitate, which is 40km from the plant, have been told to prepare for evacuation because of prolonged exposure to radiation, a local official said by telephone. It has a population of 5,000.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has urged Japan to extend the zone and some countries, including the US, have advised their citizens to stay 80km away from the plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) president Masataka Shimizu visited the area yesterday for the first time since the March 11 disaster. He had all but vanished from public view apart from a brief apology shortly after the crisis began and has spent some of the time since in hospital.
“I would like to deeply apologize again for causing physical and psychological hardships to people of Fukushima Prefecture and near the nuclear plant,” Shimizu said.
Dressed in a blue work jacket, he bowed his head for a moment of silence with other TEPCO officials at 2:46pm, exactly a month after the earthquake hit.
Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato refused to meet Shimizu during his visit, but the TEPCO boss left a business card at the government office.
Sato has criticized the evacuation policy, saying residents in a 20km to 30km radius were initially told to stay indoors and then advised to evacuate voluntarily.
Engineers at the damaged plant north of Tokyo said they were no closer to restoring the plant’s cooling system, which is critical if overheated fuel rods are to be cooled and the six reactors brought under control.
In a desperate move to cool highly radioactive fuel rods, operator TEPCO has pumped water onto reactors, some of which have experienced partial meltdown.
However, the strategy has hindered moves to restore the plant’s internal cooling system, critical to end the crisis, as engineers have had to focus how to store 60,000 tonnes of contaminated water.
Engineers have been forced to pump low-level radioactive water, left by the tsunami, back into the sea in order to free up storage capacity for highly contaminated water from reactors.
China and South Korea have both criticized Japan for pumping radioactive water into the sea, with Seoul calling it incompetent, reflecting growing international unease over the month-long atomic disaster and the spread of radiation.
TEPCO was hoping to stop pumping radioactive water into the ocean yesterday, days later than planned.
Engineers are also pumping nitrogen into reactors to counter a build-up of hydrogen and prevent another explosion sending more radiation into the air, but they say the risk of such a dramatic event has lowered significantly since March 11.
Concern at Japan’s inability contain its nuclear crisis is mounting with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s ruling party suffering embarrassing losses in local elections on Sunday.
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