Official: Tens of thousands of evacuees can't head home for months

By the CNN Wire Staff

A family group from Fukushima at a makeshift shelter in Yokote city, Akita prefecture.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of people who evacuated an area around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant may not be allowed home for months, a Japanese minister said Friday.

There is no end in sight for the nuclear crisis amid fresh concerns about alarming radiation levels in beef, seawater and groundwater.

While he didn't set a firm timetable, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said people who'd lived within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the nuclear plans would not return home permanently in "a matter of days or weeks. It will be longer than that.

"The evacuation period is going to be longer than we wanted it to be," Edano said. "We first need to regain control of the nuclear power plant."

About 78,000 people lived in the evacuation zone in northeast Japan. Another 62,000 lived within a 20-to-30 kilometer (12-to-19 mile) radius -- the so-called exclusion zone, where people have been told to stay indoors -- an official from Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office said.

The evacuees' plight is one of many storylines still playing out in relation to the crisis. At the embattled power plant, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Tokyo, dozens of workers, soldiers and others are rushing to prevent the disaster from worsening. Meanwhile, farmers, citizens and officials are dealing with the effects of already released radiation.

On Friday, Edano said more tests would be conducted on radiation levels in beef, as well as chicken and pork that came from the most affected areas.

Japan's health ministry reported the previous day that radiation higher than the regulatory limit has been found in beef from Fukushima prefecture, the same province as the embattled nuclear plant. Radiation likely would enter a cow -- or, similarly, a pig or chicken -- indirectly, after it ate grass and other feed that has been contaminated.

The radiation levels, detected in a single cow, were slightly above the guidelines set by Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission -- 510 becquerels (a measurement of radioactivity by weight), compared to the official limit of 500 becquerels.

The meat will not be sold and will be retested, the health ministry said.

This radiation finding is the first one involving beef, although authorities have banned the sale and transport of numerous vegetables grown in the area after tests detected radiation.

The radioactive isotope cesium, meanwhile, has been found in the sea at levels 527 times the regulatory limit. Questions remain about how it got there.

Radioactive iodine-131 also reached the ocean. Samples taken Wednesday 330 meters (361 yards) into the Pacific Ocean showed levels 4,385 times above the regulatory limit. This exceeded the previous day's reading of 3,355 times over the standard -- and was an exponential spike over the 104-times increase seen just last Friday.

Officials have downplayed the potential perils posed by the radioactive iodine, since it loses half of its radiation every eight days. All fishing is banned within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the plant, and Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's nuclear safety agency adds that such waterborne radiation should dilute over time.

As efforts continued Friday to cool nuclear fuel in reactors and spent fuel pools -- using concrete pumping trucks and a new supply of fresh water from a U.S. Navy barge that docked in waters outside the plant Thursday -- concerns remained about other water sources that have shown high levels of radiation.

This includes water in exposed maintenance tunnels leading in and out of the Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 reactor buildings, one of which earlier had radiation levels 100,000 above the norm.

Authorities have been working in recent days to drain these tunnels, to prevent them from spilling over and sending tainted water into the ground. By Friday, an official with the Tokyo Electric Power Company -- which operates the plant and heads the recovery effort -- said water levels had dropped one or more meters, and that the issue was no longer urgent.

What has become more of a priority is testing, and finding the source of, an apparent spike in radiation in groundwater near the plant.

Just after midnight Friday, a Tokyo Electric official said that iodine-131 levels in ground water from a pipe near the No. 1 reactor had 10,000 times the standard limit. But the utility later backtracked, promising to get more clarity later.

Edano addressed this confusion in a press conference later Friday, noting that a "constant amount of radiation" appeared to be getting into the groundwater while noting that further tests are forthcoming.

"The numbers released ... looked strange, and that led to the recalculation," he said. "In either case, underground water seems to contain some level of radioactive substances, and this leads to an understanding that the ... soil in the vicinity needs to be monitored closely."

All this contamination -- both into the ground and, eventually, the sea -- is the result of a leak or some other sort of ground seepage from one of the nuclear plant's four most embattled reactors, a Tokyo Electric official said Thursday. The official noted that the high levels suggest the release of radiation into the atmosphere alone couldn't be the lone source.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said Friday that Tokyo Electric will pay a steep price for the nuclear crisis -- and that the government could end up footing some of that expense.

A report released this week by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated that compensation claims alone, with payouts going to those most adversely affected by the nuclear crisis, could rise to between 1 trillion Japanese yen ($12.13 billion) in compensation claims if the recovery effort lasts two months, or up to 10 trillion yen if it goes on for two years

"If the costs are beyond the means of Tokyo Electric, the government should take part," Kan said, before adding that as a "private institution, (the utility company) has to do their best."

Beyond dealing with the financial ramifications, Kan also promised to address long-term safety concerns as well. He said that, while Japan wouldn't necessarily abandon nuclear power, it will reevaluate its power plan once the situation stabilizes at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

"We will have strong risk management measures in place, in some cases even if they're considered too extreme," he told reporters. "We will (guard against) every possible scenario."