Johannesburg: Ukraine and Japan have agreed to launch a joint satellite project to gather information on the effects of radioactive leaks on the areas adjacent to the crippled Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear plants.
The project aims to put eight miniature satellites into the orbit by 2014 to monitor the affected areas of the two world`s major nuclear disasters, News24 reports.
According to the Japanese foreign ministry, their satellites will be launched by Ukrainian carrier rockets under the joint project.
The report added that the satellites will take images every two hours from an altitude of about 600 kms and also receive signals from sensors installed on the ground to collect information from areas where radiation levels exceed the normal.
Experts have claimed that Fukushima meltdown, caused by March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, is expected to take around four decades for cleanup.
And the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 that sent radioactive fallout into the atmosphere spreading across Europe had claimed more than 25 000 lives of the cleanup workers.
ANI
