Official: Tens of thousands of evacuees can't head home for months

Tens of thousands of people who evacuated an area around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant may not be allowed home for months, a Japanese minister said Friday.

There is no end in sight for the nuclear crisis amid fresh concerns about alarming radiation levels in beef, seawater and groundwater.

While he didn't set a firm timetable, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said people who'd lived within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the nuclear plans would not return home permanently in "a matter of days or weeks. It will be longer than that.