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Work underway at Fukushima nuclear power plant

Since 1 August, Astrium Services has been providing regular status reports for the international community on clean-up and repair work underway at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Produced with GO Monitor, Astrium Services’ monitoring and analysis service, the reports are derived from very-high-resolution imagery acquired by the Pléiades 1A satellite.

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Information will be regularly refreshed on line on the GO Monitor website to keep track of:

  • Movements of radioactive waste and materials
    - Analysis and monitoring of processes employed to treat contaminated materials (cement encapsulation, vitrification, storage, etc.)
  • Demolition and construction work
    - Clearance or reinforcement of infrastructures damaged by the tsunami (buildings, reactors, cooling systems, etc.)
  • Use of support tools such as cranes, storage and public works plant and machinery
    - Analysis of volume of activity to gauge involvement of all stakeholders working on the site

This analysis follows on from that based on FORMOSAT-2 satellite imagery in the month after the tsunami of 11 March 2011. This imagery, which can be viewed via the same interface on the GO Monitor website, tracks the trail of damage left by the tsunami on a daily basis.

Astrium Services’ full satellite constellation and domain experts dispatched vital data to emergency relief teams in the aftermath of the tsunami:

  • SPOT 5 delivered images of the stricken coastline and nuclear power plants on 12 March 2011, the day after the tsunami.
  • GO Monitor experts provided daily analysis of what soon became a “no-go” area from images acquired by the FORMOSAT-2 satellite.
  • TerraSAR-X data enabled comparative analysis of the Sendai region before and after the earthquake, highlighting the tsunami’s destructive power and the debris left in its wake.

GO Monitor tracks clean-up and repair operations at Fukushima plant

Source Astrium Services