SENDAI: Japan said Thursday its crisis-hit nuclear plant must be scrapped, but currently had no plans to evacuate more people, despite calls for a larger exclusion zone around the crippled facility. Grappling with the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami, Japan's government hosted French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who called for clear international standards on nuclear safety. Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, in talks with the Japanese Communist Party leader, that the facility at the center of the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986 must be decommissioned, Kyodo News reported. Iodine-131 in the Pacific Ocean near the plant has risen to a new high of 4,385 times the legal level, the plant's operator said. However, there were no plans to widen a 20-km exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant despite the UN atomic watchdog saying radiation at Iitate village 40 km away had reached evacuation levels. Japan's top government spokesman Yukio Edano also said further evacuations were not imminent. The comments came after the IAEA added its voice to that of Greenpeace, which has warned for several days that residents, especially children and pregnant women, should leave Iitate village. – Agence France
