JAPAN’S GOVERNMENT says it is widening the evacuation area around a stricken nuclear plant after fierce criticism that people living outside the 20km zone are being exposed to too much radiation.
The announcement was followed yesterday by one of the strongest aftershocks since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami that left 500km of the northeast coast in ruins and detonated the nuclear crisis.
The 7.0 magnitude quake, which struck just south of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, triggered a tsunami alert and forced engineers to pull out of the facility after electricity supplies were briefly cut off.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said last night that the plant, which has been leaking radiation since the twin disaster knocked out its cooling systems, suffered no further damage in the quake.
Tepco’s beleaguered president, Masataka Shimizu, paid his first visit yesterday to Fukushima’s local government offices since the crisis began, but angry local governor Yuhei Sato snubbed him.
“What [the president] should prioritise now is to settle the nuclear plant’s trouble,” said Mr Sato, who refused to meet Mr Shimizu or accept an apology. Mr Shimizu has been largely out of public sight for the past month and was hospitalised in March with stress-related symptoms.
Tepco workers have been struggling for nearly a month to bring the plant under control, spraying water on three overheating reactors and battling to contain a build-up of highly toxic water.
A string of explosions at the plant sprayed contamination over a wide area of the surrounding countryside and rain is thought to have also spread radiation to small villages as far as 40-50 km away.
Top government spokesman, Yukio Edano, explained that the expansion is aimed at protecting people near the plant from accumulated radiation.
“These new evacuation plans are meant to ensure safety against risks of living there for half a year or one year,” he said yesterday.
The government has set an exposure limit of 20 millisieverts a year, calculating average exposure at eight hours outside and 18 hours indoors.
The decision follows criticism that villages and towns outside the 20km zone are being contaminated by growing levels of long-life cesium and other toxic substances.
Environmental watchdog Greenpeace says that potential radiation exposure in the greater Fukushima area is over five millisieverts per year, “the threshold for evacuation at Chernobyl, following the 1986 disaster”.
Greenpeace warned that contamination levels in some areas “are high enough to expose people to the maximum yearly dose of radiation allowable in a matter of weeks”. Iidate, roughly 40km from the plant, is among a string of villages that will have to be evacuated. About 1,000 of the village’s 6,000 population have already been moved to temporary housing.
The evacuation order was preceded by a sometimes angry debate among small-business people, some of who said they cannot leave farms and shops.
Yesterday’s quake and the continuing nuclear crisis almost overshadowed events to mark the one-month anniversary of the magnitude-9.0 quake, which sparked Japan’s worst since the second World War.
Thousands of people bowed their heads and prayed and some wept for the nearly 28,000 people left dead or missing. Over 150,000 people are still homeless.
“All I want is for my kids to start school and for some return to normal life,” said Shigeko Oikawa, who is been sheltering in a makeshift refugee centre with her three children.
“When we see how some others are suffering, I often feel it is selfish to even want that.”