TOKYO: Pressure is growing on Japan to expand the 20-kilometre exclusion zone around Fukushima after the International Atomic Energy Agency said radiation in one village 40 kilometres away had reached evacuation level.

However, Japan said it had no immediate plans to widen the zone around the stricken nuclear plant.

Many countries have told their citizens in Japan to respect an 80-kilometre exclusion zone.

''We have advised [Japan] to carefully assess the situation," Denis Flory, the agency's deputy director-general, said.

The station operator, Tepco, said that iodine-131 in the sea near the plant had risen to a new high of 4385 times the legal level.