Japan Matters public lectures in 2014/15
Sunday 15 June 2014 from 2.30pm
‘Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity’
Professor Kenji NANBA, Deputy Director, Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity
Interfaith Room on the basement of Glasgow University Chapel
This was co-organised by University of Glasgow Chaplaincy and Japan Desk Scotland, with grant from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.
The lecture was free and open to the public.
When the nuclear accident occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011, Fukushima University, about 37 miles away from the troubled plant, was not teaching nuclear science. Immediately after the accident, however, a group of scientists at the university, none of whom were specialists on nuclear issues at the time, measured air dose rates in Fukushima Prefecture and published the outcome in the form of a radiation map. The map played an important role in changing the government evacuation policy which was based on estimated dose rates.
Prof Kenji NANBA is one of the scientists who made the radiation map, and, two years later, in 2013, when Institute of Environmental Radioactivity was established at Fukushima University, he was made its Vice Director.
He is an environmental microbiologist, and has been engaged in a longitudinal observation of radioactivity in Abukuma River, Fukushima Prefecture, since the nuclear accident. In addition to talking about his own research, he talked about the scope of the Institute’s activities through active international collaboration.
Fukushima Prefecture Government carries out monitoring of agricultural products regularly and its outcome is available in English.
On Monday 16 June, Prof Nanba gave a talk on ‘Environmental radiation in Fukushima’ for pupils at Cumbernauld High School, North Lanarkshire.