Tsunami hits Fukushima plant area
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Workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant were evacuated when a small tsunami hit Japan after a powerful undersea quake yesterday, highlighting the continued threat to the area devastated by the 2011 quake-tsunami.
The government Meteorological Agency warned people to stay away from the Pacific coast for nearly two hours as the tsunami, which was recorded as being as high as 55 centimeters in one place, rolled ashore.
Two workers who had been patrolling wells used to measure underground water at Fukushima sought higher ground after the tremors struck, an official with the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said while adding there were no new problems at the facility. “There were few workers on the waterfront as it was night time. There was no impact of the quake and tsunami on the plant,” he told local media.
Another nuclear plant, at Onagawa, was the site of the largest wave recorded yesterday — 55cm — but there were no problems reported there.
All of Japan’s 50 viable reactors are currently shut down.
The 7.1-magnitude quake struck at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers at 2:10am yesterday, just over 300km southeast of Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The country’s meteorological agency said the quake was an aftershock of the March 2011 tremor.
“We have lifted all tsunami alerts but the sea level may continue to show small changes for half a day or so please be very careful when working by the sea,” Keiji Doi, director of the agency’s quake predictions, said.
“There is the possibility that aftershocks of around seven magnitude will occur once in a while.”
The area affected largely overlapped with that hit by the March 2011 disaster when more than 18,000 people died after a towering tsunami crashed ashore following an undersea quake.
In the town of Ofunato, a 20-cm tsunami was logged just after 3am, while Ishinomaki, which was devastated in 2011, recorded a 30-cm wave.
The 2011 quake-tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, sending reactors into meltdown and forcing mass evacuations.
The effects of that disaster — the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years earlier — are still being felt.
TEPCO is battling to clean up the mess at the plant where thousands of tons of radiation-contaminated water are being stored in tanks after being used to cool the reactors.
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