UN atomic watchdog raises alarm over Japan evacuations

The UN atomic watchdog said yesterday 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 yesterday.

The watchdog advised Japanese authorities to “carefully assess the situation and they have indicated that it is already under assessment,” Mr 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 yesterday 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 last 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”.

Yesterday 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 yesterday 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.