Japan said on Thursday that it had no immediate plans to widen the 20-kilometer evacuation zone around the quake-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, ignoring a recommendation made earlier by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had recommended expanding the evacuation zone, pointing out that it had detected radiation levels exceeding the evacuation criteria in a village located some 40 kilometers northwest of the plant.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano admitted while talking to reporters on Thursday that the IAEA had advised Japan to "carefully assess the situation on the basis of this report."
"I don't think that this is something of a nature which immediately requires such action," Edano said. "But the fact that the level of radiation is high in the soil is inevitably pointing to the possibility that the accumulation over the long term may affect human health.
"Therefore, we will continue monitoring the level of radiation with heightened vigilance and we intend to take action if necessary," he added.
Tens of thousands of people have already been evacuated from a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima plant. The Japanese government had recently urged those remaining within 30 kilometers also to leave or remain indoors as much as possible.
A day earlier, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the plant, announced that it had decided to scrap four of the six reactors at the facility in the wake of radiation leak and failure of efforts to stabilize them.
The company said the remaining two reactors at the plant were operational, but stressed that any decision on their future would be taken only after consultations with the Japanese government and the local population.
Seperately, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency revealed that the level of radioactive iodine in the sea near the Fukushima plant is now 4,385 times more than 1,850 times the legal maximum reported on Sunday.
Japanese authorities believe that the contaminated seawater is unlikely to have a major impact on human health as the radioactive iodine would have deteriorated considerably by the time it reached the people, pointing out that residents living near the plant have already been evacuated.
Japan is currently struggling to avert a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima plant, located some 140 miles north of Tokyo. The cooling systems at the plant collapsed after a magnitude- 9 earthquake and an ensuing tsunami slammed the region on March 11, causing the reactors to overheat. The plant has already been rocked by a series of explosions and fires after the disaster.
Japanese government estimates that it would cost up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion) to reconstruct the country ravaged by the massive earthquake and tsunami that left more than 27,000 people dead or missing across northeast Japan.
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December 26, 2025 08:42 ET Third quarter economic growth data from some major economies including the U.S. were the main news in this holiday shortened week. GDP growth and industrial production data from the U.S. helped to boost morale, while the consumer confidence survey results were less upbeat. In Europe, the quarterly economic growth data from the U.K. drew attention, while the minutes of the Australian central bank’s latest policy session was in focus in Asia.