Saturday, March 20, 2021

Another Major Earthquake Near Fukushima Daiichi Shakes Up the Plant

 

A 7.0 earthquake shook northern Japan off the coast of Miyagi prefecture today. The US Geological Survey reports the depth of 54 kilometers (33.5) miles with shaking at 6:10 pm.

MARI YAMAGUCHI (AP). March 20, 2021, 2:29 AM.. Strong quake shakes Japan; minor injuries, no major damage. Yahoo. https://www.yahoo.com/news/strong-earthquake-shakes-japans-capital-092948775.html


The Fukushima Daiichi plant is really steaming today, probably because of this shaking. 

You can look at my previous March 2021 posts for more "before" pictures to compare with the current conditions at the plant, as represented by the TEPCO webcams:

Here is a screenshot from the webcam trained on units 1 and 2 at Fukushima Daiichi today:

 



For comparison, here is a screenshot from a few days ago, 3/17/2021

 


Now look at the screenshot from today of units 3 and 4 and notice the steam coming from the building on the left bottom corner. I believe that is the "common spent fuel pool" where TEPCO has deposited much of the fuel extracted from the ruined reactor buildings:

 


Looking back at my posts you will see a recurring pattern: Earthquake activity "shakes things up" at Daiichi, causing visibly increased steam, which is very likely to be highly radioactive.