Japan was rocked again by a second earthquake, this one measuring between 7.1 and 7.4 and the Japanese government has issued another Tsunami warning.

A powerful earthquake struck Japan on Thursday, triggering a tsunami warning for one prefecture and advisories in other prefectures.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake was a magnitude of 7.4. The U.S. Geological Survey said it was 7.1. There were no reports of casualties from anywhere in the earthquake zone, the National Police Agency said.

Workers evacuated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the quake, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said. Tokyo Electric said it has communication with the plant and the power is still on there. There were no immediate reports of damage, it said.

The quake's epicenter was off the coast of Miyagi in northeastern Japan, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Living through two big earthquakes myself, I know aftershocks are very, very scary after you've been hit and Japan has had a tremendous number of those following the 9.0 monster quake, but to then get hit again so soon has to have shaken up the psyche of the Japanese people even more. Let's hope nothing more happened to the Fukushima reactors.

And then we get this news from the NRC:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission thinks the reactor in unit 2 of Japan’s disabled power plant got so hot it “probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel,” U.S. Representative Edward Markey said.

Martin Virgilio, the agency’s deputy director for reactor and preparedness programs, told reporters after a House hearing today that the commission doesn’t think the “core has breached,” which would let radiation escape. The commission gets reports several times a day from agency staff in Japan and none mentioned a breach, he said.

The pressure vessel is one line of defense preventing a larger radiation leak from Fukushima Dai-Ichi’s crippled reactors, where workers have sought to reconnect power to provide a steady supply of water.

“After you lose the vessel, then you are down to one final barrier, that’s the containment,” Virgilio told reporters.

Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has pressed for new safety regulations in response to the crisis in Japan, triggered by the 9-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami on March 11. Virgilio said workers have yet to stabilize the damaged facility.

Giselle Barry, a spokeswoman for Markey, said information on the status of the unit 2 reactor came from correspondence between his staff and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Markey and Virgilio spoke at a House Energy oversight and investigations subcommittee hearing today on the Japan crisis.
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Virgilio said he wasn’t aware of an agency report, cited by the New York Times, that said water used to keep fuel from overheating at the Japanese plant makes containment vessels more vulnerable to rupture amid aftershocks that have rattled the region since March 11.

The report raises the possibility of explosions inside containment structures from the release of hydrogen and oxygen in the seawater pumped into the reactors, according to the Times. The assessment doesn’t speculate on the risk of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, events that may lead to a more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core, the newspaper reported.

The Japanese people don't believe anything TEPCO is saying to them and have lodged over 40,000 complaints and neither do I. I've been following this pretty closely and all I can tell you is that I have ordered some Potasium Iodine pills.

The reporting by the MSM has been very flaccid on the Japanese nuclear tragedy because of politics. Japan is making it up as they go along. Just pumping seawater into the reactor is not going to work. I'll have more on this soon..