Radiation evacuation zone to be extended beyond 20 km

2011/04/12

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano at a news conference Monday (The Asahi Shimbun)

The government said Monday it will issue new evacuation orders for areas with high levels of accumulated radiation that lie beyond the 20-kilometer radius of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, despite complaints from two local mayors.

The orders will cover certain areas within the 20- to 30-kilometer radius in which residents have been instructed to remain indoors. It will also include some areas that lie beyond the 30-km radius.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the new orders will apply to the villages of Iitate and Katsurao, the town of Namie and parts of the town of Kawamata and the city of Minami-Soma, all in Fukushima Prefecture.

Edano said at a news conference Monday afternoon the government will ask residents to evacuate in about a month.

"We will not ask residents to evacuate immediately," he said. "But we have decided on the policy, taking long-term risks into consideration."

The chief Cabinet secretary had said earlier Monday that, "a measure of new dimension is necessary to secure safety from the viewpoint of dealing with accumulated radioactive materials."

Edano explained the new evacuation orders will apply to dispersed areas, unlike the current concentric zone extending from the Fukushima No. 1 plant.

The new evacuation zone, called a planned evacuation area, covers areas projected to suffer an accumulated radiation of 20 millisieverts or more annually.

Residents, after a certain preparation period, will evacuate these areas using buses or other transportation means.

Iitate Mayor Norio Kanno said Monday that government officials asked Iitate authorities the previous day to evacuate residents within a month.

"We resisted, but the government would not listen," Kanno said.

Kawamata Mayor Michio Furukawa said Sunday that Tadahiro Matsushita, senior vice industry minister, and Tetsuro Fukuyama, deputy chief Cabinet secretary, explained the government's plan.

"The area to be covered is too wide. We asked (the government) to reconsider and narrow the area," Furukawa said.

Most of Iitate and Kawamata are outside the 30-kilometer radius.

Speaking about the new evacuation zone, Fukuyama said on a Fuji Television Network Inc. program on Sunday that Prime Minister Naoto Kan has told government officials to put the safety of residents above anything else.

The amounts of accumulated radiation have been rising in northern Fukushima Prefecture and other places due to the wind direction.

The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan had told the government that residents should be evacuated from areas with more than 20 millisieverts of accumulated radiation.

The proposal was based on the International Commission on Radiological Protection's recommendation that measures be taken in emergencies in which people are exposed to 20 to 100 millisieverts of radiation annually.

Meanwhile, the government will prohibit people from entering the initial evacuation area, which is within a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, by designating it an "alert zone" under the basic law on disaster control measures.

At the same time, the government plans to allow residents to go back home temporarily in the zone under certain conditions.

In a rare piece of good news, the Science Ministry reported Sunday that airborne radiation levels that surged sharply following the explosions at the Fukushima No. 1 plant are declining over broad areas after peaking March 15-16. Radiation levels have dropped throughout Fukushima Prefecture and are at, or are approaching, normal levels in the Kanto region and elsewhere, according to results released by the science ministry.

Radiation levels have fallen below normal levels in Gumma Prefecture. In seven prefectures, including Fukushima, they still exceed normal levels, but are approaching normal values in Saitama Prefecture and Tokyo. The March 14-15 explosions at the plant had pushed up radiation levels above normal ranges in 10 prefectures on March 15-16.

In Fukushima Prefecture, the level in the town of Namie, which peaked at 170 microsieverts per hour at 2 p.m. on March 17, has fallen to 25.2 microsieverts per hour as of Sunday. The accumulated radiation for the March 23 to April 9 period was 13.95 millisieverts. Radiation levels have also fallen to 1.8 microsieverts per hour (24.24 at peak time) in Fukushima city and to 5.68 microsieverts per hour (44.7 at peak time) in Iitate.

The radiation level in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, which peaked at 0.496 microsieverts per hour, six times in excess of the normal value, stood at 0.083 microsieverts per hour at maximum Sunday, close to the normal value (0.079).

A peak waterborne cesium-137 concentration of 44.2 becquerels per liter was detected Sunday about 35 kilometers to the northeast of Fukushima No. 1, although this was still below the safety standard level. The iodine-131 concentration was 77.4 becquerels per liter at the same location, which exceeded safety standards.

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