There was a 7.0 earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan this morning (late Saturday afternoon Portland time). They're calling it an aftershock of the 9.0 quake of March 11 -- let's hope they're right, and that the two shakers aren't precursors to some larger, more destructive event yet to come. Today's quake was in roughly the same place as the March 11 quake. This time, there was no major tsunami.

And since today's 7-pointer, there have been a series of 4.7 and 4.8 aftershocks close by -- six of them in four and a half hours. You can imagine what all of this is doing to the minds and hearts of the workers at the Fukushima triple-meltdown site. Four nuclear reactors there are in deep trouble, and the delicate work of trying to keep them from even greater disaster has got to be a lot harder when evacuation sirens are blowing and the ground under you is throwing you around. Here's a video of the 7.0 quake, as seen from the videocam posted by the reactor operator, Tokyo Electric (a.k.a. Tepco). Things really get going about 25 seconds into it:

Among Fuku watchers, all eyes have been on reactor 4, which is way in the back from that viewpoint (just to the right of the center of the frame). The plant building is on the verge of collapse, and the spent fuel pool has been shored up by steel posts beneath it, as the walls around it appear on the verge of collapse. If the spent fuel pool in number 4 should fall and go dry, it may be tough getting a plane ticket out of Tokyo for a long time.

Tepco reportedly is just now bringing in shrinks to counsel its employees at Fukushima -- four months into the worst and most prolonged nuclear crisis in history. Maybe the workers could use some counseling, they say. Gee, guys, d'ya think? They'd better keep their heads together -- it may be 10 years before they start working on the trashed fuel itself.

The latest big one in Japan is the third 7-point earthquake around the Pacific Rim in the last 18 days. There was a 7.6 between Tonga and New Zealand on Wednesday of this past week, and a 7.2 rocked the Aleutian Islands on June 24.

Meanwhile, closer to home, there was 4.1 earthquake off the coast of Oregon last evening, just as the 4.7 Japanese aftershocks were going off. The epicenter of the Oregon temblor was about 200 miles off shore, at a depth of about six and a half miles. From the looks of the mainstream media, nobody felt it. Two hundred miles is a long distance. Let's keep it that way.