On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred on the subduction interface boundary of the Pacific Plate sinking underneath Japan along the Japan Trench. A rupture within the central region of the trench spanning an area of about long and wide resulted here. It is considered as the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan as well as one of the four most powerful earthquakes ever recorded since the start of modern record-keeping in 1900. This megathrust earthquake caused giant tsunami waves to form which eventually caused destruction to the coastline of northern Japan. The damage left about 16,000 people killed along with a catastrophic level 7 nuclear meltdown of three nuclear reactors located at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex. The World's Bank recorded the total cost of damage to be about US$235 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in history.