French President Nicolas Sarkozy is welcomed by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan prior to their talks at Kan's official residence in Tokyo, March 31, 2011
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the world's nations to establish common nuclear safety standards to make sure there is never a repetition of the nuclear crisis that is shaking Japan.
Appearing alongside Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Tokyo Thursday, Sarkozy said the world has turned to nuclear power in order to avert carbon emissions that threaten to cause devastating climate change. He said there is no viable alternative to nuclear power at this time, but that improved safety standards must be negotiated by the end of this year.
The leaders spoke as radiation levels continue to rise in the ocean near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, raising fears of an undetected radiation leak into the sea.
Sarkozy expressed admiration for the Japanese people and brought promises of support from members of the G20 group of industrialized countries, whose leaders met earlier in the day in China. He said French nuclear experts will remain in Japan to advise on the crisis and offered additional technical support.
Kan said his priority at the moment is to stabilize the situation at the nuclear plant, which has been spewing various forms of radiation since its cooling systems were knocked out by a massive earthquake and tsunami almost three weeks ago. He said his government will then try to understand why the plant's systems failed so dramatically and take steps to see it never happens again.
Japanese authorities said earlier they will have to consider expanding the 20-kilometer evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant if elevated radiation levels detected in a village 40 kilometers from the plant persist. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that the levels - twice the international standard for evacuation - still do not pose an immediate threat to human health.
Operators of the plant reported some progress in pumping highly contaminated water out of the basements and adjacent utility tunnels at three of the plant's six reactors. The water must be removed before workers can complete repairs to the pumps that run the plant's vital cooling systems.
Elsewhere, the confirmed death toll from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami rose above 11,400 with more than 16,500 still missing. Japan's Kyodo news agency reported that authorities have been unable to collect up to 1,000 radiation-contaminated bodies from inside the evacuation zone.
Officials at Japan's nuclear safety agency said radiation in the latest sampling from the ocean near the Fukushima plant's discharge pipes was at 4,385 times the legal limit. That compares to the previous high of 3,355 times the legal limit, registered a day earlier.
Officials said Wednesday they had not determined where the radiation is coming from. However officials say their highest priority is to prevent radiation inside the reactors' cores from leaking into the ground water system, which would allow it to become widely distributed through the ground and into the ocean.
At his news conference Thursday, Edano responded to the previous day's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said it had found radiation at levels twice the recommended standard for evacuation in a single sample at the village of IItate far outside the evacuation zone.
Edano said the radiation level still was not considered threatening unless it persists over a period of time. In that case, he said, the government will have no choice but to consider a wider evacuation. He said monitoring will be intensified in the meantime.
About 70,000 people have already been evacuated from the 20-mile radius around the plant. Expanding the zone to 30 kilometers would require moving another 136,000, adding to pressures on a government that already has almost 200,000 earthquake victims living in temporary shelters.
A nuclear agency spokesman said most of the residents of IItate have already left, but about 100 refuse to leave their homes.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.