Radiation Measurement Fieldwork in Fukushima

Place: Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture
Date: Mar. 20－24,2014

From March 20, 2014 to March 24, 2014, seven Dojo students, including two students from overseas, participated in the class of "environmental radiation measurement fieldwork" for five days in Fukushima prefecture. On the first day, students checked how to operate the three types of survey meters to be used (ionization chamber, Geiger–Müller tube, and sodium iodide scintillation) and the portable gamma ray spectrometer capable of identifying nuclides at the lodging facilities in Fukushima City which would be the base for the fieldwork. Afterwards, students took a written examination to check their comprehension. On days 2 to 4, all students used rent-a-cars for fieldwork by driving in Fukushima City, Date City, and Iitate-mura. The photo shows the scene of fieldwork near the front of the barricade for the difficult-to-return region inside Iitate-mura. Through their experiences, students were able to deepen their understanding of the difference in dosage rate by the influence of decontamination, topography, and other factors. On the final day, students visited the Environmental Radioactivity Monitoring Center of Fukushima Prefecture and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Sasakino Analysis Office in Fukushima City, where they observed the system for measuring trace amounts of radioactive nuclides in food and environmental samples and where they trained with a whole-body counter. Also, the students plan to identify nuclides and perform distribution measurements of the radioactivity and radioactive nuclides in the soil and plants that were brought back to the university as environmental samples soon.