Abstract
The severe accident of Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant due to the Tohoku Region Pacific Coast Earthquake in 11 March 2011 caused wide contamination and pollution by radionuclides in Fukushima and surrounding prefectures. In the current JPR symposium, a group of plant scientists attempted to examine the impact of the radioactive contamination on wild and cultivated plants. Measurements of gamma (γ) radiation from radionuclides in “Fukushima samples”, which we called and collected from natural and agricultural areas in Fukushima prefecture were mostly done with a high-purity Ge detector in the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe University. In this technical note, we describe the methods of sample preparation and measurements of radioactivity of the samples and discuss the reliability of our data in regards to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Interlaboratory comparisons and proficiency test (IAEA proficiency test).
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Abbreviations
- F1NPP:
-
Fukushma 1 Nucelar Power Plant
- IAEA:
-
International Atomic Energy Agency
- HPGe:
-
High-purity germanium
- MCA:
-
Multi-channel analyzer
- cps:
-
Counts per second
- gps:
-
Gamma-ray counts per second
References
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Acknowledgments
The new multi-channel analyzer and data analysis software were purchased by the emergent financial support from Kobe University. We are grateful to Prof. Yuichi Onda (University of Tsukuba) for his kind support for using the set of standards for preliminary calibration of the detector and joining the IAEA proficiency test. We are also grateful to the laboratories participating in the ad-hoc measurement group organized by Prof. Kazuyoshi Masumoto and Michihiro Shibata, Japanese Society of Radiation Safety Management, for providing the standard set of U8 samples for calibration. We thank Prof. Keiji Oda, Prof. Tomoya Yamauchi, Prof. Hideo Okamura and Dr. Yuji Tooyama for their assistance with the use of the HPGe detector, and also IAEA for evaluation of our measurements in the proficiency test. We are grateful to Dr. Robert Reid, The University of Adelaide, Australia, for his kind assistance with the English text. The present technical work was partly supported by a grant from the Mitsui & Co., Ltd. Environment Fund and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas Grant Number 24110007.
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‘Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station’ is cited as ‘Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant’ in the present manuscript.
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Mimura, T., Mimura, M., Komiyama, C. et al. Measurements of gamma (γ)-emitting radionuclides with a high-purity germanium detector: the methods and reliability of our environmental assessments on the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant accident. J Plant Res 127, 91–97 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-013-0594-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-013-0594-y