TOKYO — Japan's government said it would revise evacuation zones for three cities located around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Jiji press reported on Friday.
Japan introduced a 20-kilometre (12-mile) no-go zone around the facility at the centre of the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, after it was hit by the March 2011 tsunami and lost reactor cooling functions.
The evacuation zones currently in place for 11 municipalities will be revised for the cities of Tamura, Minamisoma and Kawauchi in April, the government said, according to Jiji.
The revised zones, based on radiation levels, will be introduced in Tamura and Kawauchi on Sunday and in Minamisoma on April 16, Jiji said.
In December, Japan announced it had achieved a state of cold shutdown at the Fukushima plant after months of clean-up operations.
Tens of thousands of people have moved to shelters from areas in and beyond the no-go zone, including some areas in a wider 30-kilometre radius where people were first told to stay indoors and later urged to leave.
The process of fully restoring the areas around the crippled Fukushima plant is expected to take decades.
The task of restoring towns and villages even in lightly contaminated zones is complicated, with high costs and logistical issues of where to store soil contaminated with radioactive caesium after it is removed.
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