Magnitude 7.2 quake strikes off Japan’s coast
A tsunami alert was triggered after a powerful earthquake struck off northern Japan on Monday, the country’s meteorological agency said.
The magnitude-7.6 quake struck off Hokkaido, near the coastal city of Aomori, with an epicenter about 30 miles below the sea surface, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. In an earlier statement, it said it was magnitude 7.2.
It also issued an alert in the region for a tsunami of up to 10 feet.
The Japan Meteorological Agency downgraded the tsunami warning to a tsunami advisory Monday afternoon.
There does not appear to be an imminent threat to coastal North America. No tsunami warnings were issued for Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California, according to the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center.
Japanese authorities kept busy late Monday safeguarding coastal communities.
Nuclear power plants in the region were conducting safety checks, public broadcaster NHK reported, adding that the government had set up a response room at Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s office.
An offshore tsunami has been observed around 6 miles off Iwate prefecture in northeastern Japan, NHK reported. A tsunami wave around a foot tall was also reported farther north off Erimo Town, the broadcaster said.
Waves of up to a foot and a half were recorded near the town of Urakawa, NHK said.
Japan suffered one of its worst natural disasters on March 11, 2011, when it was hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake — the strongest in the country’s history.
A deadly wall of water slammed through the walls of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, knocking out power supply, including backup generator, and flooding parts of the facility. Three nuclear reactors melted down, spewing radioactive particles into the air.
Japanese officials found “no abnormalities” at Fukushima, the International Atomic Energy Agency said early Tuesday.
While the Japanese government and the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, have worked to contain the damage, thousands of residents have been forced to leave their homes, and much about the site’s highly radioactive interior remains a mystery.
Despite opposition at home and abroad, Japan started releasing more than 1 million tons of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant in August 2023.
Hundreds of tons of fatally radioactive melted fuel remain in tanks on land however, and the government and TEPCO have set a 30-to-40-year target to finish the cleanup by 2051, although some experts say that is overly optimistic and that it could take for a century or longer.
No specific plans for the full removal of the fuel debris or its final disposal have been decided.
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