TOKYO – A major earthquake shook a wide area over eastern Japan late Saturday night, with its epicenter off the coast of Fukushima, near where three nuclear reactors melted after an earthquake and tsunami nearly ten years ago.
The Japanese weather service reported the preliminary magnitude of the quake as 7.1, but said there was no danger of a tsunami.
The earthquake came a little less than a month before the tenth anniversary of the earthquake in Great East Japan, and at 23:08 hours plagued the greater Tokyo area and was felt powerfully in Fukushima and Sendai.
No serious damage was reported immediately, but authorities warned residents to support aftershocks in the coming days.
The quake occurred when Tokyo and nine other major prefectures were in a state of emergency to contain the coronavirus. Residents are encouraged to work from home and not go out at night, while restaurants and bars are closed every night at 8 p.m.
Japan is also preparing to host the Summer Olympics, with a year postponed from 2020. The Games are scheduled for July 23.
Authorities are mobilizing in response.
The prime minister’s office immediately set up a crisis management office and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, which operates the nuclear power plants, said it was checking its monitoring posts in Fukushima to make sure there were no radiation leaks.
In Minami Soma, one of the Fukushima villages evacuated after the nuclear disaster in 2011, NHK, the public broadcaster, reported that severe horizontal shaking lasted about 30 seconds.
Tepco has inspected all nuclear power plants in the region concerned. According to NHK, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant did not suffer any damage.
According to Katsunobu Kato, general secretary of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, about 860,000 households were left without power in the affected areas. Several cooling train lines have been suspended.
What the hours and days ahead may entail.
Takashi Furumura, a professor at the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, warned over NHK that an earthquake of this magnitude could be followed by another similar scale within two or three days.
He said the epicenter of the quake on Saturday night was off the coast of Fukushima, probably about 60 kilometers below sea level.
Makiko Inoue, Hisako Ueno and Hikari Hida reported.