Radiation levels recorded at a village outside the evacuation zone around the quake-striken Fukushima nuclear plant are above safe levels, the UN atomic watchdog says.
The warning came as the level of radioactive iodine in the sea off Japan's disaster-hit Fukushima nuclear plant has soared to its highest reading yet at 4,385 times the legal limit, the plant operator said.
The level of iodine-131, reported a few hundred metres south of its southern water outlet has risen in a series of tests since last week, carried out by plant operator the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Previous readings there were 1,250 times the legal maximum on Friday, 1,850 times the limit on Saturday and 3,355 times the limit on Tuesday.
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The International Atomic Energy Agency said safe limits had been exceeded at Iitate village, 40km northwest of Fukushima, well outside the government-imposed 20km exclusion zone and the 30km "stay indoors" zone.
"The first assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded in Iitate village," the IAEA's head of nuclear safety and security, Denis Flory, told reporters.
The watchdog had advised Japanese authorities to "carefully assess the situation and they have indicated that it is already under assessment," Flory said.
But he said the IAEA -- which does not have the mandate to order national authorities to act -- was not calling for a general widening of the exclusion zone.
Advice had been given to "carefully assess the situation and they have indicated that it is already under assessment," he said. The reading in Iitate was merely a spot reading, he said.
"Deposition of radioactivity is something which is not the same everywhere, it depends on wind, it depends on rain and also on profile of terrain," Flory said.
"Saying at one point that there is a need to assess further does not mean that all around that is a concern."
But he said that overall, the situation at Fukushima "remains very serious."
According to Elena Buglova, head of the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre, the reading in Iitate village was 2 megabecquerels per square metre.
That was a "ratio about two times higher than levels" at which the agency recommends evacuations, she explained.
