Tsunami hits Japan after strong quake, nuclear plant briefly disrupted | Reuters

By Yuka Obayashi and William Mallard | TOKYO TOKYO A powerful earthquake rocked northern Japan on Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, generating a tsunami that hit the same region devastated by a massive quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011.The earthquake, which was felt in Tokyo, had a magnitude of 7.4 and was centred off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of about 10 km (6 miles), the agency said.A tsunami of up to 1.4 metres (4.5 feet) had been observed around Sendai, about 70 km (45 miles) north of Fukushima, following the quake, which struck at 5:59 a.m. (2059 GMT Monday), public broadcaster NHK said.Television footage showed ships moving out to sea from harbours as tsunami warning signals wailed, after warnings of waves of up to 3 metres (10 feet) were issued."We saw high waves but nothing that went over the tidal barriers," a man in the city of Iwaki told NTV television network.All Japan's nuclear power plants on the coast threatened by the tsunami are shut down in the wake of the March 2011 disaster, which knocked out Tokyo Electric Power Co's (9501.T) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, spilling radiation into the air and sea.A spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco, said the cooling system for a storage pool for spent nuclear fuel at the reactor at its Fukushima Daini Plant had been halted. A spokesman said the cooling system had restarted soon after

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