IAEA raises alarm over Japan evacuations

SENDAI (Japan), March 30: The UN atomic watchdog said on Wednesday radiation in a village outside the evacuation zone around a stricken Japanese nuclear plant was above safe levels, urging that Japan reassess the situation. In its first such call, the International Atomic Energy Agency added its voice to that of Greenpeace in warning over radioactivity in Iitate village, where the government has already told residents not to drink tap water. Japan has struggled to contain its nuclear emergency since a 14-metre tsunami hit the Fukushima plant after a huge quake on March 11, with radioactive substances entering the air, sea and foodstuffs from the region. Iitate village is 40 kilometres northwest of the crisis-hit plant — outside both the government-imposed 20 kilometre exclusion zone and the 30-kilometre "stay indoors" zone. "The first assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded in Iitate village," the IAEA's head of nuclear safety and security, Denis Flory, told reporters in Vienna on Wednesday. The watchdog advised Japanese authorities to "carefully assess the situation and they have indicated that it is already under assessment," Flory said. But he added the IAEA, which does not have the mandate to order national authorities to act, was not calling for a general widening of the exclusion zone. Amid public fears over contamination from the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, campaign group Greenpeace called earlier Wednesday for the zone to be expanded to evacuate everyone within 30 kilometres of the plant. It said the government should consider moving children and pregnant women beyond that, after urging on Tuesday that residents of Iitate be moved. Radiation expert Jan van der Putte said "remaining in Iitate for just a few days could mean receiving the maximum permissible annual dose of radiation". On Wednesday he added: "Exposing a large number of people to this level of radiation creates a collective risk which is very significant over a long term, in terms of years. Our main concern is an increased incidence of cancer." The reading in Iitate village was 2 megabecquerels per square metre, a "ratio about two times higher than levels" at which the IAEA recommends evacuations, said the head of its Incident and Emergency Centre, Elena Buglova. The government on Monday told residents of Iitate not to drink tap water, with media reports saying 4,000 residents would be given bottled water. Radiation worries in the area worsened on Wednesday when iodine-131 detected in the Pacific Ocean water near Fukushima surged to a new high of 3,355 times the legal limit, officials said, against a previous high of 1,850 times the limit. "The figures are rising further," said nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama. "We need to find out as quickly as possible the cause and stop them from rising any higher." Japan has halted vegetable and dairy shipments from four prefectures around the plant and briefly said tap water in Tokyo should not be drunk by infants, but called for calm and said it was taking these measures as a precaution. However pressure to come up with fresh ideas intensified on Wednesday, as Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operates the stricken plant, admitted it had no idea when the situation would be under control. "Key factors are still unknown, such as how the nuclear incident will come to an end… In a word, the very difficult situation is expected to continue," TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata told reporters. With crucial control room functions still disabled, experts are not sure what exactly is happening inside the stricken reactors — and some international experts warned that a meltdown may already be in progress. One of them is Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when it installed the Fukushima units, and who was quoted by Britain's Guardian newspaper. Available reactor and radiation data from the troubled unit two "suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel" and onto the concrete floor, he was quoted as saying by the daily. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards." Japan faces a dilemma in containing the crisis: it must pump water into reactors to stop them from overheating, even as highly radioactive runoff leaks out, halting crucial repair work and threatening the environment.—AFP