Astrium Monitors Work Underway at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

Since 1 August, Astrium Services has provided regular status reports for the international community on the 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 high-resolution imagery acquired by the satellite, Pléiades 1A.

Information is regularly refreshed on-line at the GO Monitor website, where Astrium keeps 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 infrastructure damaged by the tsunami (buildings, reactors, cooling systems, etc.)
• Use of support tools such as cranes, storage and public works plants and machinery
• Analysis of the 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 March 11, 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 March 12, 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 satellite, FORMOSAT-2.
• 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.

We registered on the GO Monitor website and it was an easy process – you should register as well to see the wealth of information and imagery available on the site. For questions about Astrium Services’ GO Monitor product, let the Apollo Mapping team know at sales@apollomapping.com.