Sunflowers in Fukushima

Fukushima, Japan, faced a terrible outlook as of March, 2011. After the devastation of an earthquake, tsunami and a nuclear power meltdown, the city was left with a huge cleanup not for the faint hearted with radioactive isotopes filling the air, water and earth beneath them. With terrible agricultural and medical consequences looming, scientists had to act fast and on a very large scale. Using lessons from Chernobyl, scientists have enlisted the assistance of sunflowers and their fast growing capabilities. Could sunflowers be the ray of hope for this country left devastated?

Sunflowers in Fukushima

How Fukushima became contaminated
Similar in severity to Chernobyl’s 1986 Nuclear Disaster, in March, 2011, Fukushima and the surrounding area went into crisis. Fukushima was hit hard with an earthquake followed by a tsunami which breached the power plant and lead to disaster. With safety measures catastrophically failing, pressure was building in Fukushima Daiichi and engineers had no choice but to open the unfiltered vents to release the pressure from the reactor (Bunn / Heinonen, 2011). Overall the disaster was a series of safety failures, equipment failures and nuclear meltdown which all resulted in the release of radioactive materials into the environment.

Consequences of contaminated soil
Soil containing radioactive isotopes is particularly concerning to humans in the immediate area. Due to the agricultural aspect of Fukushima, farming was affected in Japan and risk of contaminated crops and live stock was high which in turn caused widespread panic and had the potential to lead to malnutrition (Nakanishi, 2013).
The radioactive isotopes of greatest concern in a nuclear power meltodwn are Iodine 131 and Caesium 137. Iodine 131 has a half-life of eight days, meaning half of it will have decayed after eight days, and half