Japan PM says crisis-hit nuclear plant to be scrapped

Japan said yesterday its crisis-hit nuclear plant must be scrapped, but currently had no plans to evacuate more people, despite calls for a larger exclusion zone around the crippled facility.

Grappling with the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami, its biggest post-war disaster, Japan’s government hosted French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who called for clear international standards on nuclear safety.

Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, in talks with the Japanese Communist Party leader, that the facility at the centre of the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986 must be decommissioned, Kyodo News reported.

Officials have previously hinted the plant would be retired once the situation there is stabilised, given the severe damage it has sustained including likely partial meltdowns and a series of hydrogen blasts.

Radioactive iodine-131 in groundwater 15 metres beneath the plant has reached a level 10,000 times the government safety standard, the plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) said late yesterday.

It cautioned the figure – showing radioactive runoff from efforts to cool the plant has entered the water table – might be revised. Tepco said yesterday iodine-131 in nearby seawater had hit a new high 4,385 times the legal level.

However, there were no plans to widen a 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant despite the UN atomic watchdog saying radiation at Iitate village 40 kilometres away had reached evacuation levels. “At the moment, we do not have the understanding that it is necessary to evacuate residents there. We think the residents can stay calm,” said Yoshihiro Sugiyama, an official at the nuclear safety agency.