January 12, 2023 We held an IER Special Seminar.＜Prof. Shinano＞

On January 12, Guest Speaker Professor Takuro Shinano gave a lecture on the subject “Terrestrial Radioecology”. The lecture was attended by the IER Graduate School Master and PhD students as well as members of the IER and other departments of Fukushima University. The lecture was also streamed online. The main topics of the lecture were the impacts of the Fukushima accident on agriculture and countermeasures such as decontamination of plants, decontamination of soil, and mitigation of radiocesium uptake by plants. Among the remaining problems in agriculture, the applicability of transfer factor (or concentration ratio between soil and plants), differences between soil types, and the role of exchangeable potassium in regulating the radiocesium uptake were discussed. The audience actively participated in the Q&A session, which covered issues related to plant decontamination, the impact of countermeasures on soil quality, the effect of potassium fertilizers and Prussian blue on uptake of radiocesium by plants, cost-benefit analysis of agricultural countermeasures, and the perspectives of agriculture on radioactively contaminated lands in Fukushima Prefecture.