An earthquake of magnitude 5.2 occurred in the North East of the main Japanese island of Honshu on Sunday afternoon; there is no tsunami threat, a report of the National Meteorological Agency of the country says.
Aftershocks were registered at 14:24 local time (05:24 GMT) in the southern part of the Iwate Prefecture. The seismal focus lay down at a depth of 70 kilometers below ground. Magnitude up to 4 earthquake shocks were registered in ten Japanese prefectures, including Fukushima. There is no information about failures in the work of the crippled Fukushima-1NPP and other nuclear facilities in the region.
There is also no threat of a tsunami after the earthquake. In March, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred in the North-East of Japan. It was followed by a 14-meter tsunami wave that came to the coast and flooded four out of six reactors of the Fukushima-1 NPP and destroyed the system of their cooling, which led to a series of explosions of hydrogen and melting of the active zone. The roof of the first and third blocks was damaged. The accident was the largest in the last 25 years after the catastrophe at the Chernobyl NPP. There were leaks of radiation in the atmosphere and sea. 140 thousand people were evacuated from the area within a radius of 20 kilometers from the station. Many of them continue to live in temporary dwelling. Due to the high level of contamination, some areas were in fact found unfit for living. Complete liquidation of the consequences of the catastrophe will take about 40 years.
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