Monday, March 21, 2011

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: 3 Different Shots of Reactor No.3 - How Bad Is It?

The gray smoke started to rise from the Reactor No.3 in the afternoon of March 21 (Japan) and TEPCO has temporarily evacuated its workers from the site.

How bad is the situation? No one really knows, and those who must know are not telling much.

Usually the the photos of the Fukushima reactors are aerial photos. Like this one, Reactor No.3 from Digitalglobe:


Or the close-up shot like this one, taken from the Self Defense Force's video they shot when they did the dousing of the Reactor No.3 on March 18:


They both show a badly damaged Reactor No.3 building, but looking at these photos, it still seems there's some semblance of structure. Particularly the SDF's video screenshot seems to show that the mangled building is almost as high as the other reactor buildings (like the Reactor No.4 building to the right). Yes, it is shot from a low angle and close, but even after discounting the low-angle factor you could still figure out the shape of the original building.

Then I found this long-shot photo of the Reactor No.3 at AP, as released by TEPCO. It looks as if the Reactor No.3 building has further collapsed. I don't think I've ever seen the shot taken from a distance like this before, and it just looks worse than what's been reported.

2 comments:

Jorge Stolfi said...

I becameintreigued too. But the last picture is taken from an earth platform adjacent to the plant. You can see it in the satellite pictures. The "ground level" in that picture is several meters above the base of the reactors.

Spence Cooper said...

Thanks for all your great work covering the Fuk plant.

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