Workers at the Dai-ichi and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants in Japan have been evacuated to safe locations, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said in a statement on Wednesday.
A tsunami warning has been issued for Japan after a powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Russia. Japanese media have already reported a tsunami hitting the northern coast of Hokkaido. Workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have been evacuated.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was severely damaged by a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011. It is considered one of the world’s largest nuclear disasters.
In a statement, Tepco also said that nothing “unusual” had occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. No one was injured. However, the tsunami warning was being closely monitored.
An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Russia at 8:25 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The USGS initially said the magnitude of the earthquake was 8 on the Richter scale. Later, it was revised to 8.7. They revised it again to 8.8.
The agency says the epicenter of the earthquake was 136 kilometers, or about 85 miles, east of the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, under the Pacific Ocean.
Source: Prothom Alo
