An earthquake struck Japan’s Fukushima prefecture this morning, location of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered scrapped a day earlier.

The US Geological Survey says the quake measured 5.3 on the American scale and a 5.8 according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.  The epicenter was 20 kilometers beneath the surface.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had earlier donned a radiation suit and taken a tour of the Fukushima site.  After three hours, he ordered the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to decommission the entire site, including shutting down the functioning fifth and sixth reactors.

“I told (TEPCO) to ensure decommissioning of reactors No. 5 and 6 so that they can concentrate more on dealing with the accident,” Abe said at the plant's emergency command center.

A pressing issue is dealing with leaking radioactive water that had been used to cool the nuclear waste pools.  It’s being stored in an array of 1,000 hastily built tanks that are leaking into the Pacific Ocean. 

Abe had vowed to the International Olympic Committee that the Fukushima disaster would not affect Japan’s ability to host the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.

On 11 March 2011, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, a 9.0 struck in the ocean off the Northeast coast, causing all sorts of damage.  It was followed by an enormous tsunami that destroyed the cooling system at Fukushima Daiichi.  Three reactor cores melted through the bottom of their containment vessels and a hydrogen explosion damaged a fourth reactor.  The No. 5 and 6 reactors were allowed to operate so TEPCO would have an asset on its balance sheet.