Kenichi Matsumoto, a consultant to the prime minister's Cabinet Secretariat, initially told Japanese media that the remarks had been made by Kan when they met at his official residence earlier in the day.

But the 65-year-old academic, who has written many books on wide-ranging subjects including modern history and philosophy, said later the remarks were his own.

"You may not be able to live there for the time being," Matsumoto first quoted Kan as telling him about the areas from where residents have been evacuated, according to the Jiji and Kyodo news agencies and the TBS network.

"It would be something like 10 years and 20 years."

The government has set a 20-kilometre (12-mile) exclusion zone outside the plant.

It said on Monday it was to widen the evacuation area due to radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was crippled by a massive quake and tsunami on March 11.

Matsumoto later told media that he received a call from the prime minister about the comment.

"It was my own. The prime minister may share the perception but he did not say such a thing at all," Matsumoto said.

Prime Minister Kan also told reporters later he did not make such a comment.

Matsumoto said he had proposed to Kan the idea of building an ecologically-friendly town inland with space for 50,000 to 100,000 people to help resettle evacuees who may have to abandon their homes near the plant.

earlier related report
Russia nuclear chief says Japan exaggerates crisis
Sanya, China (AFP) April 13, 2011 - The disaster at the Fukushima atomic power plant cannot be compared to Chernobyl, Russia's nuclear chief said on Wednesday, suggesting Tokyo was exaggerating the emergency, possibly for financial reasons.

"It is hard for me to assess why the Japanese colleagues have taken this decision," Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom, told reporters in the southern Chinese city of Sanya on the eve of the BRICS summit.

"I suspect this is more of a financial issue than a nuclear one."

Earlier this week Japan upgraded its month-old nuclear emergency to a maximum seven on an international scale of atomic crises, placing it on a par with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Kiriyenko appeared to suggest that the Japanese authorities were seeking to reduce the burden on insurance companies.

"I guess that maybe it could be linked to the definition of force majeure with regards to insurance? I would pay attention to that. It is a bit strange," Kiriyenko said.

Kiriyenko said at first the Japanese authorities had thought to downplay the scale of the disaster but now the situation at the plant was improving.

"Our estimates have shown that the level was between five and six," Kiriyenko said. "Today it doesn't reach the sixth level."

France's nuclear safety agency also said this week that the impact of the Fukushima accident was not comparable to the Chernobyl disaster.

Fukushima has had three reactors that have hit problems, compared with one at Chernobyl.

But the Japanese plant has released only one-tenth of the radioactivity disgorged by Chernobyl because its reactor vessels have so far remained intact, thus keeping almost all of the nuclear fuel enclosed.

The previous rating of five had placed the unfolding disaster at the tsunami-hit Fukushima plant northeast of Tokyo on the same level as the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the US state of Pennsylvania.

Level seven of the UN's International Nuclear Events Scale describes events with "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects, requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News