The impact of the nuclear power plant accident in Japan on agricultural and rural engineering
Moono Shin, Hiroshi Jinguji
The 2020 Korean Society of Agricultural Engineer Annual Conference in Web, 2020年10月
Abstract
The Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred in March 2011, along with the accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, caused about $2.2 billion in damage to approximately 4,300 agricultural land and agricultural facilities, including farmland, levees, drainage pumping stations and waterways in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. In addition, recovery and decontamination work have been progressing since the accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and farming has been resumed with the lifting of the evacuation order except for the difficult-to-return zone. In this study, we report on the measures and results taken after the earthquake, such as decontamination of farmland, measures to inhibit absorption through potassium fertilization, and elucidation of the dynamics of radioactive cesium in agricultural land. It was revealed that the areas to the evacuation instructions were lifted, the impact on brown rice from radioactive cesium in the irrigation water was limited, if soil improvement was conducted to increase the content of exchangeable potassium to 200 (mgㆍK)/kg soil before the conventional application. It is also necessary to deepen farmers' and consumers' understanding of the safety of agricultural products from Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, and an important issue is how to provide public support for farmers to put this into practice themselves.
Key words: Irrigation water, Paddy field, Radioactive cesium, Earthquake, Fukushima