Agricultural Implications of Fukushima Nuclear Accident (IV): After 10 Years

This open access book presents the findings from on-site research into radioactive cesium contamination in various agricultural systems affected by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011. This fourth volume in the series reports on studies undertaken at contaminated sites such as farmland and forests, focusing on soil, water, mountain, agricultural products, and animals. It also provides additional data collected in the subsequent years to show how the radioactivity levels in agricultural products and their growing environments have changed with time and the route by which radioactive materials entered agricultural products as well as their movement between different components (e.g., soil, water, and trees) within an environmental system (e.g., forests). The book covers various topics, including radioactivity testing of food products; decontamination trials for rice and livestock production; the state of contamination in, trees, mushrooms, and timber; thedynamics of radioactivity distribution in paddy fields and upland forests; damage incurred by the forestry and fishery industries; and the change in consumers’ attitudes. In the series of this book, a real-time radioisotope imaging system has been introduced, a pioneering technique to visualize the movement of cesium in soil and in plants. This is the only book to provide systematic data on the actual change of radioactivity, which is of great value to all researchers who wish to understand the effect of radioactive fallout on agriculture. In addition, it helps the general public better understand radio-contamination issues in the environment. The project is ongoing; the research groups from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences of The University of Tokyo continue their work in the field further to evaluate the long-term effects of the Fukushima accident.

Tomoko M. Nakanishi In 1978, She got Ph.D. in radiochemistry from The Univ. of Tokyo. She is now an Emeritus Prof. of The Univ. of Tokyo and former President of Hoshi Univ. She has been enthusiastic about the development and application of imaging techniques using radiation and radionuclides in plants. Her research strategy excels by optimizing various complementary radiochemical/nuclear analytical techniques and innovative experimental set-ups to get insight into a part of plant physiology. Her work was published by Springer as an open access book, entitled ＂Novel Plant Imaging and Analysis -Water, Elements and Gas Utilizing Radiation and Radioisotopes. (Nakanishi, T.M., 2021) She received Hevesy Medal Award, an Honorary Doctor of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, an Ordre National du Mérite from the French government, etc. She is a board member of the Fukushima Institute for Research, Education, and Innovation to manage the reconstruction and development of the suffered area in Fukushima.

Keitaro Tanoi Prof. K. Tanoi got Ph.D. in Agriculture, The University of Tokyo in 2011. He became a Prof. at the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences at The University of Tokyo in 2018. His interest is in applying radiation and radioisotope to agriculture studies or bioscience. He is now involved in studies of mineral transport in plants using radioisotopes as tracers. Periodically, he is producing unique radioisotopes with short half-lives, such as Mg-28, utilizing an accelerator for the tracer work. He is a manager for all the researchers and facilities utilizing radioisotopes in the faculty. He is an expert in radioisotope measurement and analysis. Since 2011, right after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, he has studied radioactive cesium dynamics in agricultural fields, along with experiments in the lab.