Development and evaluation of interdisciplinary teaching materials that "tell Fukushima"

Ten years ago, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan suffered major damage due to a massive earthquake and tsunami and this ultimately led to the second largest nuclear disaster in history. The area is still contaminated with unacceptable levels of dangerous pollution. Professor Taeko Doi, Faculty of Education, Kanazawa University, believes there is a lack of educational materials about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster and, without proper education of the events and aftermath, the Japanese people cannot fully recover. She is currently working on projects related to the Fukushima disaster, the goal of which is to aid the individuals directly affected and improve environmental education in Japan as a whole. In her latest work, Doi is exploring the recent history of Fukushima in order to remind people that problems persist and provide support to victims, as well as teachers trying to educate future generations. This work involves extensive surveys with survivors of the disaster and past and present Fukushima prefecture residents and has shed light on the issues facing residents, including dangerously high levels of radiation. Doi's work is also used to create textbooks and teaching materials for schools. The goal is to keep the lessons and memories of Fukushima alive and inform coming generations in Japan and beyond about the future of energy.

Potentiality of Graphene Oxide and Polyoxometalate as Radionuclides Adsorbent to Restore the Environment after Fukushima Disaster: A Mini Review

This paper discusses the promising candidate of excellent materials, graphene oxide (GO) and polyoxometalates (POMs), for radionuclide adsorbent. In this perspective, the unique properties of GO and POMs make them ideal candidates for developing new composites having the ability to adsorb radionuclides, and several essential things are reviewed. First, the anchoring mechanism to deposit POM on the GO surface area by (i) carboxylation method, (ii) covalent bonding, and (iii) impregnation method. Second, the radionuclides removal mechanism is described in several systems: (i) coagulation, (ii) electrostatic interaction, (iii) ion trapping, and (iv) H+-exchange. Third, the experimental condition that employed to enlarge the sorption capacity such as (i) pH adjustment, (ii) employing multiple oxidations, and (iii) cation charge. A thorough understanding of the POM-anchored GO material can pave the way for future research on similar materials. It can also help in understanding the nature of the interactive collaboration present between GO and POM.

Energy Policy in Japan: Revisiting Radical Incrementalism

This chapter examines major changes in Japan’s energy system, focusing on the period since the March 11 Fukushima disaster. There remain numerous opportunities to describe and explain how politics is affecting the incremental but radical changes in the Japanese energy system. While the Japanese government continues to place concerns about security of energy supplies at the center of energy policy, climate change is the defining challenge for the Japanese government, and energy use is at the center of Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions profile. This chapter offers a sectoral analysis of the direction and degree of change evident across nuclear power, renewable energy, coal, electrification, and transport. A key question is the extent to which the politics of energy is democratizing, understood both in terms of an increased ability to influence siting choices for large centralized energy assets and directly owning or using sources of distributed renewable energy such as rooftop solar power.

A Call to Recognise and to Imagine: Amitav Ghosh, and Others, on Writing the Earth Differently

The crises of the contemporary are severe, especially if we are unable to recognise how and when we went wrong. Amitav Ghosh teaches us about recognition, about the dangers of modernity, and the way our blindness has been institutionalised in the petrocapitalist narratives that dominate scientific analysis and many forms of knowledge important to our times. Discussing the way petrocapitalism frames current issues like air pollution and the Fukushima disaster, this text highlights the art of recognising the state of the Earth. Together with the arts (primarily literature, as Ghosh also suggests), the aim of this text is then to place a greater emphasis on imagining the Earth otherwise, or, recognising a different earth. This way we do not so much critique modernity, or the petrocapitalist forms of science, but rather, affirmatively, search for an alternative, a more inclusive and less human-centred way to deal with the crises of the contemporary.