OTSU, Shiga Prefecture--As a former president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, Akimi Serizawa was moved to take action when he saw the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant unfold on TV.
OTSU, Shiga Prefecture--As a former president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, Akimi Serizawa was moved to take action when he saw the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant unfold on TV.
The 69-year-old former Kyoto University professor left his post at a university in China to devote himself to disaster relief, helping to develop technologies to decontaminate farmland in Fukushima Prefecture.
"I want to fulfill my role as a nuclear engineer," he said.
Serizawa majored in nuclear engineering at Kyoto University. He taught at his alma mater and served as AESJ president over a one-year period from June 2005. He became a professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, in June 2010.
Serizawa was watching TV at his home in Otsu when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, triggering the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
"Nuclear power is useful as long as it is used properly," Serizawa used to tell his students at Kyoto University. One of them was working for the Fukushima No. 1 plant when the disaster occurred.
"My former student could be working in the control room there," Serizawa said. "When I thought about that, I was no longer in a mood to be sitting still."
He returned to Harbin to ask to take a leave from his university. Last October, he took part in a volunteer effort to sow seeds of the rape plant, which is said to effectively absorb cesium, in Fukushima Prefecture.
He met Toshihiko Ito, 54, president of J-RAP, a farming corporation based in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture. Following the nuclear crisis, J-RAP was testing its farm harvests with a radioactive substance detector and was giving the readings to its customers.
Serizawa offered to help develop decontamination technologies, a proposal that Ito accepted.
Two others joined Serizawa's research: Kouta Shioda, 46, an employee of Himeji EcoTech Co., based in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, which maintains heat exchangers at nuclear plants; and Toshihiko Eguchi, 54, president of Aura Tec Co., based in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture, a manufacturer of micro-bubble generators that are used to clean heat exchangers.
Late last year, the research team started experiments to remove radioactive cesium from soil in one room at J-RAP's office. They devised a method to use very small air bubbles, up to only about 1 micrometer in size, to catch mud particles that have absorbed cesium and to have them float to the surface, like the head on a beer.
Serizawa said he views nuclear plants as a necessary evil.
"Nuclear plants once presented a rosy dream, but they have turned into a drab reality," he said. "I won't deny what I have been doing all my life. I think I have a role to play in the face of the present situation."