TOKYO – Japan on Monday expanded the evacuation zone around its crippled nuclear plant because of high levels of accumulated radiation, as a strong aftershock rattled the area one month after a quake and tsunami sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. A magnitude 6.6 tremor shook buildings in Tokyo and a wide swathe of eastern Japan on Monday evening, killing one man, knocking out power to 220,000 households and causing a brief halt to water pumping to cool 3 damaged nuclear reactors.
The epicentre of quake, the biggest of several sizable aftershocks on Monday, was 88 km (56 miles) east of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex at the centre of the crisis.
The biggest tremor forced engineers to postpone plans to remove highly contaminated water from one reactor, but nuclear safety officials said work had resumed by nightfall. The govt announced earlier that because of accumulated radiation contamination, it would encourage people to leave certain areas beyond its 20 km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant.
Children, pregnant women, and hospitalised patients should stay out of some areas 20-30 km from the nuclear complex, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.
“These new evacuation plans are meant to ensure safety against risks of living there for half a year or one year,” he said. There was no need to evacuate immediately, he added. The move comes amid international concern over radiation spreading from the six damaged reactors at Fukushima, which engineers are still struggling to bring under control after they were wrecked by the 15-metre tsunami on March 11. TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu visited the area on Monday for the first time the disaster. He had all but vanished from public view apart from a brief apology shortly after the crisis began and has spent some of the time since in hospital. “I would like to deeply apologise again for causing physical and psychological hardships to people of Fukushima prefecture and near the nuclear plant,” said a grim-faced Shimizu.
