Japan quake tsunami unlikely to damage China’s coastline: expert

A tsunami triggered by a 7.4- magnitude earthquake in northern Japan’s Fukushima region, which briefly rocked a cooling facility in a local nuclear power plant Tuesday morning, is unlikely to cause any damage to China’s coastal areas, expert and China State Oceanic Administration said.

Kyodo News quoted Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency as saying a dozen people were reported injured in Fukushima, Miyagi, Chiba and Tokyo from Tuesday’s earthquake.

The cooling system of a storage pool for spent nuclear fuel at the Fukushima Daini Plant reactor was initially shut down on Tuesday due to the earthquake but was restarted soon after, a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric Power ( Tepco) was quoted as saying by Reuters.

No abnormalities were observed at other nuclear plants in Fukushima and other parts of northeastern Japan, according to Tepco and other power companies. Reactors at these nuclear plants have been offline.

The Japanese government’s top spokesman Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday that the cooling failure will not immediately lead to a radiation leak or an increase in the fuel temperature.

Zhao Kechang, an earthquake expert at Peking University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that China’s coastline will not be affected by the tsunami because the quake’s epicenter in the Pacific Ocean is too far away from China, and islands including Japan home islands will serve as natural seawalls, thus preventing the tsunami from causing huge waves along the coast.

China’s vast continental shelves will also stunt the impact, Zhao noted.

The tsunami will not affect China’s coastal areas, said the State Oceanic Administration Tuesday. It said its tsunami warning center will continue to track and analyze data.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said Tuesday’s quake is an aftershock of the massive 2011 quake, which caused a devastating tsunami, damaged nuclear reactors and killed over 15,000 people.

An employee at Feizhu, Alibaba Group’s online travel booking platform, told the Global Times that no travel routes to major Japanese tourist cities have been affected so far, but flights to or from Sendai Airport on Tuesday were suspended.

No injuries of Chinese tourists in Japan have been reported as of press time.