Unsafe area around Japan nuclear plant widens

Published 7:10 pm Friday, March 25, 2011

TOKYO — Japan’s government urged residents within 18 miles of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant to leave their homes as new information suggested that the core of reactor No. 3 may have been breached.

Although people living within 12 miles of the plant were evacuated early in the crisis, those living between 12 and 18 miles of the facility had been told it was safe to remain as long as they stayed indoors to avoid radiation. But authorities have suggested they could expand the mandatory evacuation zone.

“It has become increasingly difficult for goods to arrive, and life has become harder,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a news conference Friday. He called upon local governments in the zone near the plant to encourage people to leave.

It was not immediately clear how many people remained within 18 miles of the plant, and Edano’s comments sowed confusion among residents and local officials. With more than 200,000 victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in emergency shelters, many of them elderly, evacuations of thousands more could strain resources.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan addressed the nation Friday evening, urging victims to “summon the courage to keep moving forward” and pledging the “utmost” efforts to rebuild the country.

Under pointed questioning from reporters, Kan said the situation at the Fukushima complex remained “grave and serious.”

“We are not in a position where we can be optimistic,” Kan said. “We must treat every development with the utmost care.”

Dressed in a blue jumpsuit that has become a trademark during the disaster, Kan apologized to farmers and business owners around the plant for the radioactive contamination, and sought to rebut criticism that his government has failed to communicate in a clear and timely fashion with the public and foreign governments about the situation at the Fukushima complex.

The U.S. government has advised residents to stay 50 miles away from the facility, raising questions among some Japanese about whether officials here have minimized the danger from Fukushima. Foreign recommendations on some other issues, such as the safety of tap water in Tokyo, have also been more stringent than Japan’s.

“Each country has unique standards,” Kan said.

Kan’s remarks came after nuclear safety officials said that they suspected a breach in the reactor core of reactor No. 3, which contains highly carcinogenic plutonium.

Their suspicion stems from measurements of radiation in water that contaminated two workers Thursday — levels were 10,000 times what would be expected inside an operating reactor. That could indicate there was damage to the core and a leak through the containment vessel, the agency acknowledged Friday.

“The source of the radiation seems to be the reactor core,” said Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama. It is “more likely” that the radiation was from the core than from the spent fuel pool, he said.

U.S. nuclear experts said information from Japanese officials about reactor No. 3 was inconclusive — pipes, valves or fittings could be leaking, instead of the containment vessel.

David Lochbaum, a commercial reactor expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said pressure readings inside the reactor also cast doubt on the possibility that the reactor vessel has been breached

“It’s contradictory data,” he said.

Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the union, said the amount of radioactive iodine released so far indicates “limited damage” to the fuel.

But if the reactor core was breached by uranium fuel that melted through the bottom of the vessel, it would create the potential for vastly greater releases of iodine and radioactive cesium.

Separately, the Department of Energy Friday released new radioactivity measurements from around the Fukushima plant, indicating that they have declined from the levels of two days ago.

The department data indicated that a hot spot in the range of 13 to 25 miles from the plant that recorded 12.5 millirem per hour on March 19 had dropped to no more than 2.17 millirem per hour. Even the lower levels, however, are about 31 times the average background dose Americans receive annually.

Japan has been cooling the reactors and spent-fuel pools with seawater, which American officials warned causes equipment to seize up and corrode, complicating the task of stabilizing the reactors.

Japanese officials said the U.S. was dispatching a vessel from Yokosuka naval base to bring fresh water the Fukushima site.

The death toll from the March 11 quake rose to 10,102, with 17,053 missing, the National Police Agency said.