A 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit Japan late last Thursday(04/07/2011), and on Monday(04/11/2011), another powerful earthquake struck northeastern Japan. The events come just a month after the area was hit by a monster quake and tsunami, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The USGS initially reported that Monday's quake registered 7.1-magnitude, but later lowered the magnitude to 6.6.
A tsunami warning issued by Japan's Meteorological Agency was canceled.
The quake's epicenter was about 101 miles northeast of Tokyo and about 50 miles south of Fukushima, where the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was crippled by a 9-magnitude temblor March 11, the USGS said.
Workers at the plant were asked to evacuate, CNN said.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said power was knocked out for about 220,000 households and businesses in Fukushima after Monday's earthquake.
The quake came as Japanese officials said they were considering extending the evacuation zone around the nuclear plant because of radiation concerns, the BBC said. The 12-mile zone would be widened to include five communities beyond the current boundary, based on new data about accumulated radiation levels, officials said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the new evacuations would occur in the next month.
"There is no need to evacuate immediately," he said during a news conference.
Japan's monthlong atomic crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant is far from being stabilized but Edano Monday gave an optimistic assessment.
As the critical work of containing radiation leaks and keeping the reactors from overheating continued at the Daiichi plant, with remote-controlled machinery doing some of the radioactive debris clearing, Edano told reporters there was a lesser risk now of massive radiation emission than there was a month ago.
"The risk that the situation will worsen and that there would be new massive emissions of radioactive materials is becoming considerably smaller," Kyodo News quoted Edano as saying.
The nuclear crisis, among the worst in history, was set off 1 by the March 11 earthquake, Japan's strongest, followed by a 30-foot tall Pacific Ocean tsunami that also devastated much of northeast Japan, killing thousands of people and leaving thousands of others missing, and inflicting economic damage already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the country was only beginning a slow economic recovery after years of a deflationary slump.
At the six-reactor plant, Tokyo Electric used a drone chopper to take pictures of the damaged Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors and their pools holding spent fuel rods, which must be kept cool to prevent a meltdown, even as other robotic machinery helped remove the radioactive materials.
Workers also are channeling some of the 60,000 tons of radioactive water in the basements of the reactors into holding pits.
Plant workers also have been pumping inert nitrogen gas into the No. 1 reactor to prevent a hydrogen explosion, while at the same time battling high-level radioactive water flooding the basements of some of the other reactors.
The utility has been dumping low-level radioactive water from a nuclear waste disposal facility into the Pacific Ocean -- a process described as unavoidable -- to create more storage room for the high-level contaminated water, which otherwise would overflow and interfere with other critical restoration work.
The process has raised serious concerns abroad about marine life contamination and the Japanese fishing industry, already hit by the March 11 disaster, strongly protested the utility's action and criticized the government.
A 7.1-magnitude aftershock hit the northeast region Thursday but didn't appear to have caused any further damage to the Fukushima plant. The aftershock spilled some radioactive water at another plant in neighboring Miyagi prefecture.
On Monday, Tokyo Electric Power President Masataka Shimizu visited the Fukushima prefectural government office to apologize for the disaster, but Kyodo News quoted officials as saying prefectural Gov. Yuhei Sato again declined to meet him.
Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa said smaller businesses were encountering problems raising operating capital since the disaster. He expressed concern as the central bank released its quarterly report on the country's regional economies.
The USGS initially reported that Monday's quake registered 7.1-magnitude, but later lowered the magnitude to 6.6.
A tsunami warning issued by Japan's Meteorological Agency was canceled.
The quake's epicenter was about 101 miles northeast of Tokyo and about 50 miles south of Fukushima, where the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was crippled by a 9-magnitude temblor March 11, the USGS said.
Workers at the plant were asked to evacuate, CNN said.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said power was knocked out for about 220,000 households and businesses in Fukushima after Monday's earthquake.
The quake came as Japanese officials said they were considering extending the evacuation zone around the nuclear plant because of radiation concerns, the BBC said. The 12-mile zone would be widened to include five communities beyond the current boundary, based on new data about accumulated radiation levels, officials said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the new evacuations would occur in the next month.
"There is no need to evacuate immediately," he said during a news conference.
Japan's monthlong atomic crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant is far from being stabilized but Edano Monday gave an optimistic assessment.
As the critical work of containing radiation leaks and keeping the reactors from overheating continued at the Daiichi plant, with remote-controlled machinery doing some of the radioactive debris clearing, Edano told reporters there was a lesser risk now of massive radiation emission than there was a month ago.
"The risk that the situation will worsen and that there would be new massive emissions of radioactive materials is becoming considerably smaller," Kyodo News quoted Edano as saying.
The nuclear crisis, among the worst in history, was set off 1 by the March 11 earthquake, Japan's strongest, followed by a 30-foot tall Pacific Ocean tsunami that also devastated much of northeast Japan, killing thousands of people and leaving thousands of others missing, and inflicting economic damage already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the country was only beginning a slow economic recovery after years of a deflationary slump.
At the six-reactor plant, Tokyo Electric used a drone chopper to take pictures of the damaged Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors and their pools holding spent fuel rods, which must be kept cool to prevent a meltdown, even as other robotic machinery helped remove the radioactive materials.
Workers also are channeling some of the 60,000 tons of radioactive water in the basements of the reactors into holding pits.
Plant workers also have been pumping inert nitrogen gas into the No. 1 reactor to prevent a hydrogen explosion, while at the same time battling high-level radioactive water flooding the basements of some of the other reactors.
The utility has been dumping low-level radioactive water from a nuclear waste disposal facility into the Pacific Ocean -- a process described as unavoidable -- to create more storage room for the high-level contaminated water, which otherwise would overflow and interfere with other critical restoration work.
The process has raised serious concerns abroad about marine life contamination and the Japanese fishing industry, already hit by the March 11 disaster, strongly protested the utility's action and criticized the government.
A 7.1-magnitude aftershock hit the northeast region Thursday but didn't appear to have caused any further damage to the Fukushima plant. The aftershock spilled some radioactive water at another plant in neighboring Miyagi prefecture.
On Monday, Tokyo Electric Power President Masataka Shimizu visited the Fukushima prefectural government office to apologize for the disaster, but Kyodo News quoted officials as saying prefectural Gov. Yuhei Sato again declined to meet him.
Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa said smaller businesses were encountering problems raising operating capital since the disaster. He expressed concern as the central bank released its quarterly report on the country's regional economies.
