Japan expands nuclear evacuation zone as new quake hits

(Reuters) - Japan on Monday expanded the evacuation zone around its crippled nuclear plant thanks to high levels of accumulated radiation, as a robust once shock rattled the realm one month after a quake and tsunami sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

A magnitude seven.1 tremor shook buildings in Tokyo and a good swathe of japanese Japan on Monday evening, triggering atiny low tsunami alert. NHK state TV said it caused the off-site power provide for 2 broken reactors to stop working.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the aftershock struck thirty eight km (24 miles) west of the town of Iwaki, at a depth of thirteen km (8 miles).

Tokyo electrical Power Co (TEPCO), that operates the plant, said employees had stopped pouring cooling water on reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. three at Fukushima.

Chief cupboard Secretary Yukio Edano said villages and cities outside the twenty km (12 mile) evacuation zone that have had additional accumulated radiation would be evacuated. Children, pregnant girls, and hospitalized patients ought to keep out of some areas 20-30 km from the Fukushima nuclear complicated, he added.

The decision to widen the evacuation band round the Fukushima plant was "based on knowledge analysis of accumulated radiation exposure information", Edano told a news conference.

"These new evacuation plans are meant to confirm safety against risks of living there for [*fr1] a year or one year," he said. There was no got to evacuate immediately, he added.

Japan had resisted extending the zone despite international considerations over radiation spreading from the six broken reactors at Fukushima that engineers are still struggling to bring underneath management when they were wrecked by the 15-meter tsunami.

Residents of 1 village, Iitate, that is forty km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, are told to organize for evacuation thanks to prolonged exposure to radiation, an area official told Reuters by phone. It’s a population of 5,000.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has urged Japan to increase the zone and a few countries, together with the u.  s., have suggested their voters to remain eighty km off from the plant.

TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu visited the world on Monday for the primary time the March eleven disaster. He had all however vanished from public read with the exception of a short apology shortly when the crisis began and has spent a number of the time since in hospital.

"I would really like to deeply apologize once more for inflicting physical and psychological hardships to folks of Fukushima prefecture and close to the nuclear plant," said a grim-faced Shimizu.

Dressed in a blue work jacket, he bowed his head for a flash of silence with alternative TEPCO officers at 2:46 p.m. (0546 GMT), specifically a month when the earthquake hit.

Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato refused to fulfill Shimizu throughout his visit; however the TEPCO boss left a business card at the govt. workplace.

Sato has criticized the evacuation policy, saying residents during a 20-30 km radius were initially told to remain indoors and then suggested to evacuate voluntarily.