The Sixth 2017 Fukushima Research Conference (FRC).

The Fukushima Environmental Safety Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) held the “3rd International Cesium Workshop” as a FY2017 sixth Fukushima Research Conference on March 4, 2017 at the Fukushima Prefectural Centre for Environmental Creation in Miharu Town, Fukushima Prefecture. The objective of the workshop was to exchange opinions on the latest knowledge obtained in Fukushima concerning the future subjects in the field of environmental restoration and future prospect of the investigation research together with the foreign examples such as the Chernobyl accident.

The workshop was open to the public, and about one hundred people participated. At the beginning, Mr. Koichi Noda, Executive Director of JAEA, made an opening speech representing the organizer. After that, the discussion was made in two sessions. The Session 1 was “Circulation behavior of cesium in forest environment and its biological migration” and the Session 2 was “Migration behavior of cesium in terrestrial environment and its biological migration and future prospects of dynamics research”.

In the Session 1, discussion was made as to the migration of radioactive cesium in forest environment. In addition, the migration to rice and wildlife, and the factors influencing the migration behavior of radioactive cesium were discussed.

In the Session 2, discussion was made concerning the migration of radioactive cesium to aquatic life and factors influencing biological migration.

In this workshop, seven researchers including four oversea experts from Austria (Russian Research Institute of radiology and Agroecology), UK (University of Nottingham), France (SUBATECH Laboratory), and Swiss (McKinley Consulting) presented the lectures. The workshop attracted much attention, so a newspaper company (Fukushima-Minyu) reported the workshop.

Through the discussion, it was recognized that the movement of radioactive cesium in forests and the migration parameters of radioactive cesium in environment are important, thereby it is required to further evaluate them in detail. At the end of the workshop, Professor Yuichi Moriguchi of the University of Tokyo, the facilitator of the workshop, summarized the session proposing, “The future subject is how the results obtained by researchers will lead to help the residents’ life in the community”. The workshop was considered to be a valuable opportunity to pave the way to the future prospects in the field of the environmental restoration.