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March 13, 2011
Smoke Plume from Industrial Fires in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan
In the aftermath of the massive earthquake that struck northeastern Japan at 2:46 p.m. local time on March 11, 2011, and its subsequent tsunami, several oil refineries and industrial complexes caught fire, including facilities in the Port of Sendai and a petrochemical facility in Shiogama, where a large explosion has been reported. This pair of images, acquired on March 12, 2011 by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft, shows a large smoke plume that appears to be associated either with the Shiogama incident or the Sendai port fires. The presence of clouds makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact origin. The data were obtained at a local time of about 10:30 a.m.
The images are oriented with north at the left and east at the top, and cover an area measuring 85 kilometers by 115 kilometers (53 miles by 71 miles). The left-hand view is a natural-color image from MISR's nadir (vertical viewing) camera. The large brown smoke plume extends about 85 kilometers (53 miles) southeast from the coastline. To confirm that the brown plume is an airborne feature, the right-hand image is a stereoscopic "anaglyph" created from data in MISR's red spectral band, and generated by displaying the 46-degree backward view in red and 60-degree backward view in cyan. The separation between the red and cyan images is known as stereo parallax, and is related to the height of the observed features above the surface. Viewing the anaglyph with red-cyan glasses (red filter over the left eye) gives a perception of height. No separation is visible for the coastline, which is at sea level, but the clouds and plume are distinctly elevated. The height of the plume is estimated to be about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles), at a similar altitude as the nearby clouds.
Image, Text, Credit: NASA /GSFC / LaRC/ JPL, MISR Team.
Current status of nuclear reactors damaged by the earthquake
Tokyo Electric Power Co. continues to implement emergency cooling and pressure relief operations at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. In addition, at Fukushima Daini, three reactors remain shut down. They have electrical power available at Daini, but the suppression water pools used for reactor cooling are saturated at both sites.
The Fukushima Daiichi power plant's Unit 1 is seen after an explosion
Schematic of Reactor Design at Fukushima Daiichi 1
Fukushima Daini: There is a state of emergency at Units 1, 2 and 4 and evacuation has been ordered and executed for 2.5 miles around the plant. There has been no radioactive release reported at the site. There is electric power available at all four reactors at the site, but there is limited use of cooling water pumps at Units 1, 2 and 4 due to damage from the tsunami. The suppression pools are saturated at all three reactors.
Comments from Japanese officials:
The company is providing seawater and boron for core cooling at Fukushima Daiichi units 1 and 3 and is venting containment at the reactors, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano, said on Sunday. Officials are acting on the assumption that a meltdown could be underway at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. "Unlike the No.1 reactor, we ventilated and injected water at an early stage," Edano said.
Authorities are preparing to distribute iodine to protect people from radioactive exposure.
Images, Text, Credits: Nuclear Energy Institute / Reuters.
Related links:
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Web page on radiation protection: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/calculate.html
Tokyo Electric Power Co: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html
Nuclear Energy Institute: http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region
Japan
This image of Japan from 1999 was taken as part of SeaWiFS, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor Project. The SeaWiFS Mission, which was part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, was designed to look at our planet from space to better understand it as a system in both behavior and evolution.
Image, Text, Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center, SeaWiFS Project and ORBIMAGE.
Earthquake and Tsunami near Sendai, Japan
On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. local time (05:46 Universal Time, or UTC), a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, at 38.3 degrees North latitude and 142.4 degrees East longitude. The epicenter was 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Sendai, and 373 kilometers (231 miles) northeast of Tokyo. If the initial measurements are confirmed, it will be the world's fifth largest earthquake since 1900.
This map shows the location of the March 11 earthquake, as well as the foreshocks (dotted lines) and aftershocks (solid lines). The size of each circle represents the magnitude of the associated quake or shock. The map also includes land elevation data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and ocean bathymetry data from the British Oceanographic Data Center.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake occurred at a depth of 24.4 kilometers (15.2 miles) beneath the seafloor. The March 11 earthquake was preceded by a series of large foreshocks on March 9, including an M7.2 event. USGS reported that the earthquakes “occurred as a result of thrust faulting on or near the subduction zone interface plate boundary.”
The March 11 quake sent tsunami waves rushing into the coast of Japan and rippling out across the entire Pacific basin. Crescent-shaped coasts and harbors, such as those near Sendai, can play a role in focusing the waves as they approach the shore. Also, the land elevation is low and flat along much of the Japanese coast west and south of the earthquake epicenter, leaving many areas particularly vulnerable to tsunamis.
The Japan Meteorological Agency reported maximum tsunami heights of 4.1 meters at Kamaishi at 3:21 p.m. (06:21 UTC), 7.3 meters at 3:50 p.m. (06:50 UTC) at the Soma station, and 4.2 meters at 4:52 p.m. (07:52 UTC) at Oarai.
The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) reported a wave with maximum height of 2.79 meters (9.2 feet) at an observing station at Hanasaki, Hokkaido, at 3:57 p.m. local time (06:57 UTC). Other PTWC reports of tsunami waves include:
1.27 meters (4.2 feet) at 10:48 UTC at Midway Island
1.74 meters (5.7 feet) at 13:72 UTC at Kahului, Maui, Hawaii
1.41 meters (4.6 feet) at 14:09 UTC at Hilo, Hawaii
0.69 meters (2.3 feet) at 15:42 UTC in Vanuatu
1.88 meters (6.2 feet) at 16:54 UTC at Port San Luis, California
2.02 meters (6.6 feet) at 16:57 UTC at Crescent City, California
NASA Earth Observatory image created by Robert Simmon and Jesse Allen, using earthquake and plate tectonics data from the USGS Earthquake Hazard Program, land elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) provided by the University of Maryland’s Global Land Cover Facility, and ocean bathymetry data from the British Oceanographic Data Center’s Global Bathmetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). Caption by Michael Carlowicz.
NASA Radar Image Shows Topography of Sendai, Japan Region
The topography of the earthquake and tsunami-stricken city of Sendai, Japan, is revealed in this radar image from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck offshore about 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Sendai, the capital city of Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, generating a tsunami that devastated the low-lying coastal city of about 1 million residents.
This image combines a radar image acquired in February 2000 during the SRTM mission, and color-coding by topographic height using data from the same mission. Dark green colors indicate low elevations, rising through yellow and tan, to white at the highest elevations.
Image, Text, Credit: NASA /JPL / NGA.
More Imagery:
* Images from NASA's Earth Observatory: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/event.php?id=49622
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