TOKYO, Japan – A strong 6. 5 magnitude earthquake struck east Japan on Wednesday, September 4, the U. S. Geological Survey said, but local government said there is no tsunami threat.
The earthquake occurred at 0018 GMT with an intensity of 404 kilometers (251 miles), the USGS said.
“The epicenter is in the Pacific, many kilometers south of Tokyo. We don’t see any tsunamis,” said a spokesman for the Japanese weather firm.
The Fukushima operator, TEPCO, reported that there are no new challenges at the affected nuclear power plant.
The earthquake, measured at 6. 9 through Japanese seismologists, focused on a location more than six hundred kilometers south of Tokyo, the USGS said.
Journalists from the Agence France-Presse in the Japanese capital reported having felt a major earthquake that shook the buildings and said it was the largest they felt in the earthquake-prone city at some point.
A Tokyo Power Spokesman said the earthquake caused no additional damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the site of fate’s worst nuclear turn in a generation where radioactive wastewater leaked into the Pacific Ocean.
“We have shown that there is no immediate anomaly,” based on knowledge gathered through the surveillance team, a TEPCO spokesman said, adding that crews would patrol the vast campus of the crippled plant for physical damage.
A series of radioactive water leaks at the nuclear power plant has left TEPCO standing in months.
On Tuesday, September 3, the Japanese government announced that it would intervene with 47 billion yen ($470 million) of public cash to build an ice wall under the plant to prevent contaminated water from leaking into the sea. – Rappler. com