Powerful aftershock hits Japan as country remembers disaster dead

A powerful 6.6-magnitude aftershock hit Japan on Monday one month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami which killed at least 13,000 people and left 14,000 missing. Workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant ran for safety after the latest of hundreds of powerful tremors hit causing buildings in the Toyko, 163 kilometres away, to shake. 

Reuters/Issei Kato

Tokyo Electric Power said the tremor briefly knocked out power to reactoars at Fukushima before it was restored and the injection of cooling water resumed.

Japan's meteorological agency warned that a wave up to one metre high could hit the coast near the power station before cancelling the alert less than an hour later.

Tokyo has said it is widening the evacuation area around Fukushima because of long-term health concerns, even as the government said that the risk of a large leak of radioactive materials was fading.

Earlier much of Japan fell silent as people across the country remembered the victims of Japan's worst catastrophe since World War Two.