Japanese PM for scrapping crisis-hit N-plant

Japanese Premier Naoto Kan today favoured decommissioning the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant as radiation seeping into sea from the crippled facility tested 4,385 times higher than the legal limit, amid mounting pressure on the government to expand the evacuation zone.

As engineers struggled to contain Japan's worst atomic crisis in decades, Kan told the Japanese Communist Party leader Kazuo Shii that the entire six-reactor Fukushima nuclear power station at the centre of the crisis must be put out of service, Kyodo reported.

His remarks came a day after the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), said that it would scrap four stricken reactors at the facility, situated 220 km northeast of Tokyo.

The Prime Minister also said he would look into reviewing the existing plans to build at least 14 more nuclear reactors by 2030, in the wake of the ongoing atomic crisis triggered by the monster March 11 magnitude-9 quake and tsunami that ravaged Japan's northeast leaving nearly 30,000 people dead or unaccounted for.

In a sign that contamination was leaking continuously from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration of 4,385 times the maximum level permitted under law was detected in seawater around 330 metres south of the plant yesterday, according to the latest data.

It exceeded the previous high recorded the day before, which was 3,355 times the maximum legal limit.

In Vienna, Denis Flory, IAEA Deputy Director General and head of the agency's nuclear safety and security department, said that readings from soil samples collected from the village of Iitate, about 40 km from the plant, "indicate that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation has exceeded" there from the current 20-km limit.

To this, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said his government may implement the measures, if necessary, such as urging people living in the area to evacuate, if it is found that the contaminated soil will have a long-term effect on human health.

While denying that the situation posed an immediate threat to human health, the government said it plans to enhance radiation data monitoring around the plant on the Pacific coast.