The 5th Annual Meeting of SRRCE and International Symposium of Environment Radioactive Contamination on July 8 (Fri.) 2016 (Fukushima, Japan)

Post Date: September 9, 2016

The 5th Annual Meeting of the SRRCE and International Symposium of Environment Radioactive Contamination was held in Fukushima by the Society for Remediation of Radioactive Contamination in Environment (SRRCE), co-hosted by the Ministry of the Environment.
Experts from U.S. and Japan were invited and made presentations on current status of decontamination and environmental remediation as well as related research and development of technologies, in which over 150 people attended. Each presentation is as follows;

Dr. Seiji Ozawa, Deputy Director-General, Headquarters for Fukushima Environmental Restoration, Ministry of the Environment, Japan, gave a presentation on the legal frame work of decontamination activities and current status of the Interim Storage Facility (ISF). He also introduced the approaches for relationship with local residents and cooperation with international societies.

Dr. Yasuo Onishi, professor of Washington State University, formerly worked for Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, presented the codes to assess environmental contamination and their effectiveness with examples applied to contamination assessment caused by Chernobyl nuclear accident and clean-up of hazardous materials in U.S. He also explained methods to reduce or extract radioactive cesium concentration from sediments.

Mr. Jon Richards, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), showed Protective Action Guides (PAGs) for late phase, EPA’s views on clean-up goals and contaminated waste management, and several approaches for decision-making, based on the experiences from radiation dispersion device (RDD) exercises or case studies of international real incidents.

Dr. Kazuki Iijima, from the Fukushima Environmental Safety Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), gave a presentation about F-TRACE project (a Long-term Assessment of Transport of Radioactive Contaminant in the Environment of Fukushima) by JAEA. The latest findings on a migration behavior of radioactive cesium in forests and mountains were reported.

Dr. Kenji Nanba, director of the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity (IER), Fukushima University, introduced some examples of support activities for decontamination or agriculture by Fukushima pref. and Fukushima Univ. In addition, plans of research and development in IER on the future behavior of radioactive cesium in the environment and the decontamination methods were presented.

Dr. Ryutaro Yatsu, President and CEO Japan Environmental Storage & Safety Corporation (JESCO), showed us the outline of JESCO’s role and plan of interim storage project in Fukushima, the current trends and issues on volume reduction technology of radioactive wastes, and recycling of treated soil.

The data of those presentations above are as below;

• The 5th Annual Meeting of SRRCE and International Symposium of Environment Radioactive Contamination