EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Latest Satellite Imagery From Fukushima Tells Sobering Tale

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Noting that the press has largely turned its resources off of the Fukushima complex, and needing up-to-date information on the status of the damage control efforts there, we secured the most up-to-date satellite photo from DigitalGlobe (dated March 31st), which we analyze below. This is the first photo of the damaged reactor site at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility made available to the public in over a week. That means you, our readers, are the first public eyes anywhere to see this photo.

Drawing upon the expertise of our resident nuclear engineer and Ann Stringer, imaging expert, we conclude that the situation at Fukushima is not stabilized: Things are not yet at a place of steady progress in the containment and clean-up efforts. It's still a dance, forwards and backwards, with the workers making gains here and there but the situation forcing them to react defensively all too often.

In this report, we will tell you what we know for sure, what we are nearly certain of, and what we remain forced to speculate about.

Here is a portion of a much larger image (covering 25 square kilometers in total) showing the reactor complex as of March 31, at roughly mid-day:

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Photo Credit, 2011, DigitalGlobe

What We Can See

Here's what we can directly observe in the larger satellite image:

  • Steam is still rising from Reactors #2, #3 (circled in green), and #4.
  • Of the four reactor buildings, three are nearly or totally destroyed, while the outside (at least) of the fourth is in relatively better shape.
  • We can count 7 fire trucks 'on site' with another 7 just to the north, all with water lines strung out across the ground.
  • There is only one ship/vessel to be seen, located inside of the breakwater and nearly as far to the north as it can go inside that boundary.
  • A significant number of the vehicles that can be seen at the core of the site have not moved since the first released photos on March 12.  
  • There is a parking lot slightly to the north and west with approximately 250 passenger vehicles in it and a side lot with 30 large green tanks neatly arranged in rows.
  • The rest of the area contains one-, two-, and four-lane roads (no traffic at all), worked farmland, residential and commercial areas, mostly empty parking lots, and two baseball diamonds.

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Here's what we don't see...

  • Nowhere in the 25 km area in the main photo can we find anything that looks like a staging area with a large collection of assets such as tanker trucks, pumpers, cement trucks, piles of pre-staged materials, ambulances, and fire trucks.
  • The cement pumper truck seen a week ago has been apparently replaced by the boom at Reactor #4.
  • There's no obvious barge delivering fresh water for the reactor cooling efforts as recently reported. (Perhaps it has come and gone?)
  • There are no obvious changes to the roofs of any of the reactors.
  • We don't see any people outside the plants working.

Things we can logically conclude...

The steam that is venting is a mixed blessing. It implies that cooling water is getting to some hot material, which is a good thing, but it also means that something is hot enough to vaporize water, leading to the continued release of radioactive contamination into the surrounding environment and further bombarding the reactor complex with radiation, which complicates the work efforts. [Note: prior sentence edited for clarity on April 2, 2011].

This means that the lack of steam coming from Reactor #1 is either a very good sign, or a very bad sign. Good because it could mean that the containment vessels are intact and cooling water is circulating. Bad because it could imply that no water is getting to it, and it is a very hot mass right now. According to TEPCO, Reactor #1 has had seawater, and now freshwater, circulating through the reactor vessel - and since both containment vessels are intact, we'll conclude the lack of steam is a good sign.

The situation at Fukushima is going to drag on for years. First there's the matter of stabilizing the situation, and this has not yet been fully achieved. Recent surprises in terms of the amounts and locations of radioactivity are one sign that the situation is not fully stabilized. Still, nothing has blown up in quite a while, the steam venting appears consistent, and the major surprises seem to be over for now. While the TEPCO workers are still reacting to things as they arise, these are smaller issues than last week, which is another hopeful sign.

The detected presence of neutron beams, I-134, and radioactive chlorine are all strongly supportive of the idea that criticality has resumed. Our best guess is that these are localized pockets, probably of short duration, and do not involve the entire core mass of any particular reactor conflagrating in some gigantic, greenish blob of uncontrolled fission. The geometries of the fuel in relation to neutron moderators requires precise conditions to support sustained fission and so it is rather unlikely to be occurring in anything other than localized pockets. If the entire reactor in its fully operational state was capable of supporting what we might scale to 100% fission, the amount of fission happening after a partial (or complete) meltdown will be a far lesser percentage. Still, any amount of fission is unwelcome at this point, because it is adding to the heat and generating fresh radioactive elements that can escape.

The constantly rising levels of radioactivity found in the seawater are a further unwelcome development, but without a proper isotope analysis, we cannot conclude anything about the potential resumption of fission from their gross amounts alone. It's always possible that the leftover fission products are now being washed in larger amounts into the sea for some reason.

Additional Drone Photos

These are the most detailed photos yet to emerge into the public space (released yesterday, March 31, as far as I know), and they are purported to come from a drone flyover on March 20 and 24. They are really quite good, and worth viewing in their entirety here.

Beginning with Reactor #3, one thing we can say is that this thing is a right proper mess:

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(Source for all that follow) 

There's a significant hole to the left of center that goes deep into the sub-structure (with a strange greenish cast that we've not been able to resolve after much conjecture) and it's clear that this building alone will take a long time to resolve.

Interestingly, we get our clearest image yet of the hole in turbine building #3 that was created by something ejected into the air during the Reactor #3 explosion.

Looking like one of those cartoon cutouts that happens when the coyote hits the ground, we get the impression that whatever it was happened to be quite heavy and possibly shaped like an Apollo capsule. It has been my suspicion, contradicting the official story, that the concrete containment vessel was what actually blew up in Reactor #3. I have been looking for evidence of in the form of large, heavy chunks of concrete (especially the refueling plug) lying about. I don't know what made this hole in the roof of the turbine building, but it was heavy.

Reactor #4 provides us with proof that serious damage can result from the effects of an overheated spent fuel storage pool:

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Here the watering boom can be clearly seen. A camera was recently attached to the boom, and it took some interior shots that were suggestive of the idea that the spent fuel pool is damaged and largely drained of water. Spraying water into this pool, then, is probably a balancing act, with the desire to spray enough water on the rods to keep them cool being offset by the risk of having radioactive water drain away for parts unknown.

Almost certainly this same balancing act defines the efforts for Reactors #2 and #3 as well.

Conclusions

The efforts at Fukushima are probably weeks away from even basic stabilization, and we are years away from any sort of a final resolution. This crisis is going to be with all of us for a very long time. Radioactive material will continue to escape from the complex into the environment for weeks at best, and months or years at worst.

The chief concern here is that things might still take a turn for the worse, whereby radiation spikes to levels that prevent humans from getting close enough to perform meaningful operations and work on the site. If the radiation spikes high enough, it will force an evacuation from the vicinity, complicating every part of what has to happen next, from monitoring to remediation.

The general lack of staged materials anywhere in the vicinity indicates that authorities have not yet decided on a plan of action, feeding our assessment that they are still in 'react mode' and that we are weeks away from nominal stabilization.

On Thursday we learned from the Wall Street Journal that TEPCO only had one stretcher, a satellite phone, 50 protective suits, and enough dosimeters to give only a single one to each worker group. Given this woeful level of preparation, it is not surprising to see that regular fire trucks, cement trucks, and a lack of staged materials comprise much of the current damage-control mix.

We don't yet know enough to conclude how much fission has spontaneously re-occurred, but we have strong suspicions that the number is higher than zero. Here we make our call for the release of more complete and timely radiation readouts and sampling results by TEPCO and Japan so that we can assess what the true risks are. The situation remains fluid, and quite a lot depends now on chance and which way the wind blows. 

And as I detailed in the Alert report I issued soon after the tragic events of the Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 10, the impact of Japan's tribulations on the global economy will be large and vast. World markets are simply unprepared for the third-largest economy to suddenly and violently downshift. The persisting crisis at Fukushima simply worsens the picture.

As always, we'll continue montioring developments closely and reporting our findings and conclusions on this site.

best,
Chris

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/exclusive-photos-latest-satellite-imagery-from-fukushima-tells-sobering-tale-2/

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Very informative, non-sensationalized, report. Hard to find these days.
We (my wife and I) subscribe to NHK and my wife told me that on the news tonight (April 2nd, morning in Japan) the Japanese Gov’t was considering asking the U.S. Navy to dispose of radioactive waste water and this was considered one of the big issues they were pondering. My wife is native Japanese (now U.S. citizen) so the translation is good. Not much more detail though.

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This was a very in depth report which lends support to the idea that this crisis will be with us for some time.  I think it is really sad that the situation in Japan is barely mentioned on some news broadcasts.
As dreadful as the nuclear situation is, it was helpful to hear CM reference his alert from a few weeks ago.  If you listen to the mainstream press you would think the economy is popping along and the only place the global markets can go is up.

Good report.

 

Jason

 

 

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I don’t frequently post, but wanted to say thank you Chris.  I’m half-way through the book.  I’m enjoying it very much.  … dons

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A sincere thank you to CM and the CM staff as well as our resident experts for this timely report !  Thanks also for making your investigations open to the public :)  :)  :)  :smiley:

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Yes, I meant per second, not minute.
Greenpeace had their Geiger counters maxed out at a site 30 km away from Fukushima.  This is definitely a hot spot that they had to drive around to find, but there it is.

Unless they get this under control soon, more and more of these unlivable hotspots will be developing.

(Source)

It’s well worth watching the video in the link because you will get a feel for just how messy the situation is by watching people on a windy day taking readings, getting in and out of a vehicle, pulling their masks on and off, and generally being forced to accept some level of contamination along the way.  

There’s just no way to stop something you can’t see from getting all over everything.

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Chris or anyone
That is a very informative analysis.  A few days ago we saw reports comparing the amount of contamination from Fukushima to Chernobyl.  It was still lower at that time, but high, and  Fukushima is expected to continue creating contamination for a longer period of time, probably much longer as you report.  The likely results would be a higher total amount of contamination than Chernobyl.

Since Fukushima did not have an active core directly exposed, and a raging fire, it seems contamination was not drawn into the upper atmosphere and the jet streams, like Chernobyl.  Yet if the total amount of contamination over time is larger, this bodes very badly for Japan and its neighbors.  Your map of unlivable areas around Chernobyl compared to Japan was instructive.  Japan can’t afford to have a significant area become uninhabitable.  I would appreciate any thoughts the CM team, or members, may have on the likelihood of Fukushima creating more total contamination. 

Travlin 

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Chris, unbelievable! Riveting and you’re my link. Thank you…So sad.

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 Thanks, this is a useful and well done informational update. 
As far as effect on the world economy does, I have heard somewhat cynical assessment that Japan’s trouble is good for the US. The logic goes - this is destruction of productive capacity, likely to increase US market share and allow some firms to raise prices. Rebuild effort is likely to lead to increased orders from the US, too. Plus central banks are going to be more accomodating, preventing any debt or foreign exchange disruptions.  Sure, some companies may also suffer due to supply chain disruption, but these effects are likely to be dwarfed. 
 What is your take on this? 

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Helpful analysis as always, thanks.
 

 

One comment: one of the things the mainstream media has done so very poorly in regard to this story is to blindly repeat government assurances that 'levels of radiation' pose no 'no immediate threat' - and the way in which this tends to be done is by confusing, through intention or ignorance, the terms 'radioactivity' and 'radiation' - it's a tip off that the report either 1) doesn't know what its talking about (usually, a journalist), or 2) is engaged in misinformation (typically, a government official or member of the nuclear lobby). 
 

 

Unfortunately, the analysis above falls prey to the same confusion, when it states:
 

 

"Radiation will continue to escape from the complex into the environment"
 

 

It's not radiation escaping that is the problem - its escaping radioactivity and the attendant contamination.
 

 

Radiation would be alpha and beta particles, and gamma waves. These are dangerous to the 'Fukushima 50' or others exposed to them, but not to the world at large. The serious health threat here is radioactive materials escaping (isotopes of iodine, cesium, etc). Those materials, carried in wind currents and in earth and sea, get ingested by living things (e.g. humans and fish and asparagus), and accumulate, and can then be ingested by other living things which eat them (think: food web).
 

 

Here's the key point which you will not have grasped from reading the mainstream media: the danger lies with these 'internal emitters' - that is, isotopes which are ingested (breathed in or eaten). That is what will cause cancers worldwide. That is what gives this crisis global scope. NOT radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) emanating from the plant.
 

 

So from the standpoint of global public health (and remember: scientists insist that residue from Chernobyl continues to this day to cause new cases of thyroid cancer, years after the isotopes themselves have degraded to harmlessness), the statement should have read:
 

 

"Radioactivity [or radioisotopes] will continue to escape from the complex into the environment"
 

 

With this understanding, it is worth noting that such isotopes have in fact already been detected on both the east and west coasts of America, so we can safely assume that if they've reached the heartland by now or will very soon. The only effective 'defense' I know of - and a very partial, limited one at that - is to increase uptake of iodine via kelp or supplement of some form. At least, this may protect from iodine-131, which tends to lodge in the thyroid and leads to thyroid cancer years later. As the wikipedia page on I-131 puts it:
 
"Much smaller incidental doses of iodine-131 than are used in medical treatment, are thought to be the major cause of increased thyroid cancers after accidental nuclear contamination. These cancers happen from residual tissue radiation damage caused by the I-131, and usually appear years after exposure, long after the I-131 has decayed."
 

 

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[quote=sasha243022] 
Thanks, this is a useful and well done informational update. 
As far as effect on the world economy does, I have heard somewhat cynical assessment that Japan’s trouble is good for the US. The logic goes - this is destruction of productive capacity, likely to increase US market share and allow some firms to raise prices. Rebuild effort is likely to lead to increased orders from the US, too. Plus central banks are going to be more accomodating, preventing any debt or foreign exchange disruptions.  Sure, some companies may also suffer due to supply chain disruption, but these effects are likely to be dwarfed. 
 What is your take on this? 
[/quote]
 
Companies will step in to make monies off of the disaster.  And as you say, foreign firms will benefit from the Japan disruption in that they will have lost some competition and gained access to new markets.
Another thought is that even Japanese firms will benefit from rebuilding their own infrastructure.
To me these short term outcomes are just mini bubbles of the kind that are created all the time.
The bigger and more important issue for all of us is that  the destruction of infrastructures simply put additional pressures on scarse commodities and increase debt.  As such the quake is ultimately destructive for the world economy as a whole.
 
 

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[quote=Travlin]Chris or anyone
(…)
I would appreciate any thoughts the CM team, or members, may have on the likelihood of Fukushima creating more total contamination. 
Travlin 
[/quote]
It all depends, but “Jim in MN” over at ZH has taken a solid swipe at the data:
First, the scale of the situation:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory analyzed the core constituents at the Brown's Ferry nuclear plant as a 'reference unit' for boiling water reactors. In a 1,065 MW core, cesium was estimated at 429 kg given an extended period of fuel irradiation. For the slightly smaller 1,000 MW Chernobyl core the comparable figure would be 402 kg if the fuel was fully irradiated, but Chernobyl Unit 4 was only three years old. For the Fukushima Daiichi Units 2, 3 and 4 rated at 784 MW, 315 kg of cesium should be present in each core load of fuel. For the 460 MW Unit 1 185 kg of cesium would be present. Thus, in the cores of Units 1-4, some 1,130 kg of cesium was in place when the accident occurred. Adding the spent fuel pools (net of the offloaded Unit 4 core) gives an additional 1,245 kg for a total of 2,375 kg of cesium in the damaged buildings. 3 of 3 (no air dispersal analysis yet; will work on it) Fraction Of On-Site Material Emitted Into the Atmosphere According to the UN, only 22 kg of cesium was released into the atmosphere as a result of the Chernobyl accident. The amount of cesium at the Fukushima Daiichi site, then, represents over 100 Chernobyl releases. The next question is, what fraction of the total cesium may be released into the atmosphere from Fukushima Daiichi? (Source)
The potential amount of Cesium is 100x what got released at Chernobyl.  That's the maximum and a far, far smaller fraction than that will be eventually released, but that gives us an idea of the scale involved. The longer the reactors and spent fuel pools can vent, leak, drip, and otherwise eject their contents into the environment, the worse the release amounts will be. So nobody knows at this point how much will be released, but Japan has been incredibly lucky in one regard, the winds have been nearly perfectly steady off-shore patterns since the start of the crisis.  even with this, the few circulating wind patterns that have briefly existed have been sufficient to render towns 40 km away (mainly to the north so far, again luckily from a population density standpoint) as worthy of immediate evacuation, at least by some international standards.   Whether the Japanese will do so or not is another matter.
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[quote=ozzy43]“Radioactivity [or radioisotopes] will continue to escape from the complex into the environment”
[/quote]
Good catch.  I am normally quite clear on the difference between radiation and contamination and I left out the contamination part.  There was quite a race on yesterday to rapidly analyze the images, decice what we could say and not say, get it all written up, while trying to balance speed with accuracy.  Overall we did a pretty good job, and it was a team effort I should stress, but the final responsibility for the writing is mine.
I am, actually, concerned about radiation itself because if it climbs high enough it will prevent effective work from being performed at the plant.  And I am also concerned about radioactive contamination.  I should have had both in there.
So I would amend your line to read, “Radioactivity [or radioisotopes] will continue to escape from the complex into the environment and radiation will continue to bombard the reactor work environment.”
Thanks for the catch and opportunity to clarify.

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[quote=ozzy43]One comment: one of the things the mainstream media has done so very poorly in regard to this story is to blindly repeat government assurances that ‘levels of radiation’ pose no ‘no immediate threat’ - and the way in which this tends to be done is by confusing, through intention or ignorance, the terms ‘radioactivity’ and ‘radiation’ - it’s a tip off that the report either 1) doesn’t know what its talking about (usually, a journalist), or 2) is engaged in misinformation (typically, a government official or member of the nuclear lobby).
[/quote]
ozzy -
Good catch.  You forgot to mention option 3) contains a typo. 
PM sent requesting correction - thanks for the backup.  Talk about defense in depth…

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[quote=Dogs_In_A_Pile]PM sent requesting correction - thanks for the backup.  Talk about defense in depth…
[/quote]
Done!
Thx.

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Sasha-Consensus at this point is that this is a minor temporary supply chain problem for a few things like autos & semiconductors, & that this could prove positive for production in the US & other countries.  There are truths to these arguments & they may prove accurate, but they are too simplistic & linear for my taste, when the effects of this are likely to be nonlinear.
The big question is how big & where will the exclusion zone from this accident ultimately be.  Reason being that i’ve seen estimates that 25-30% or more of Japan’s GDP is in Tokyo.  If Tokyo becomes unlivable, now we have problems for the Japanese economy, currency & global financial system.  I do know there is for example a Hitachi plant that makes air flow regulators for 60% of the world’s cars that is out of commission; the other 40% are made in Europe, by Bosch apparently.  They will ramp up at some point, but if this plant is too close to Fukushima, it is not coming back on line for decades…so you are looking at disruption to 60% of the autos produced in the world, for whatever period of time it takes to expand global air flow regulator capacity by 60%.  In the mean time, does this ripple thru to steel producers, auto dealers, industrial companies, etc. the world over.  Still unknowable.  
Also consider that when Lehman Bros went under, it had an $800B balance sheet, plus derivatives.  Japan’s GDP is $5T, they have $10T of gov’t debt outstanding (JGB’s), plus own $880B or so of US Treasuries - to say nothing of the currency positions held out there, the size of the Yen carry trade whereby the financial world is massively short the yen as a cheap funding mechanism.  Further, a significant chunk of the JGB’s are held by Japanese corporations.  
Japan is the most levered nation in the world - they MUST have a trade surplus to fund that.  I think the world currency & bond markets will give them a pass for as long as those markets believe the optimistic, consensus case that Japan will rebuild.  If it becomes apparent that a significant chunk of Northern Japan &/or Tokyo will become uninhabitable exclusion zones for the next 50+ years, you could see all hell break loose, given the amounts I cited above.
The yen could collapse, as the productive capacity supporting it would be uninhabitable.  This would conceivable upset global trade as the Japanese could theoretically land a Lexus in the US for cheaper than a Ford Fusion, IF they could afford the iron ore, met coal & oil needed to produce those cars…which they might want to use the $800B in Treasuries to buy…but then again, remember many of the JGB’s are held by Japanese corporations & banks; if the yen collapsed, JGB values would collapse, & suddenly you would have massive holes in the balance sheets of Japanese corporations.
Alternatively, if they are unable to afford raw materials b/c of the collapse of the yen, the value of those $10T in JGB’s would also collapse, leaving massive holes in Japanese corporate balance sheets, which would have ripple effects through the financial markets that are unknowable, but likely to be not good, & ultimately quite inflationary, as either money is printed by authorities to help the system, or currency values are undermined.
I don’t think this provides “the answer” to your question, but hopefully it will help you with what some of the “right questions” to ask are.  I think the fact that in the 1st week after the earthquake, the BOJ injected $450B into their markets, combined with $10s of billions more injected by global central banks to intervene in the yen markets, gives some idea of magnitude of how big the problem could be in the financial markets & economy (a $450B injection in 4 days by the BOJ would be like the US Fed injecting $1.5T, or 2x the size of TARP, in less than a week.) 

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Hi Chris,  Great summation of events.  Question:  You mentioned the lack of a staging area at or around the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.  As you probably know by now, news is reporting that workers have been sequestered to an area 20 km away from the site - called J camp.  Have you been able to locate a satellite photo of the area?  It should provide an indication of how well the organizational efforts are progressing.   TIA. 

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Radiation dosage chart.   sorry if it’s already been posted. 
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/radiation-dosage-chart/
 

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And no matter the problems around the world, the us stock market keeps going up.   How can no news organization not question this?   The FED is running out of bullets.   If Japan must sell a significant chunk of US t-bills, then the FED is not ending QE in June.   But how can it sop up t-bills being put in the secondary market at higher price than others will be willling to pay?   We could see inflation really take off this summer.   We need a state to secede and we all can move there.

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Continuing updates on the Fukushima crisis http://enenews.com/