Twelve high schools in Japan (of which six are in Fukushima Prefecture), four in France, eight in Poland and two in Belarus cooperated in the measurement and comparison of individual external doses in 2014. In total 216 high-school students and teachers participated in the study. Each participant wore an electronic personal dosimeter 'D-shuttle' for two weeks, and kept a journal of his/her whereabouts and activities. The distributions of annual external doses estimated for each region overlap with each other, demonstrating that the personal external individual doses in locations where residence is currently allowed in Fukushima Prefecture and in Belarus are well within the range of estimated annual doses due to the terrestrial background radiation level of other regions/countries.

This paper presents a cartridge filter incorporating a nonwoven fabric impregnated with potassium zinc ferrocyanide (Zn-C) to effectively concentrate and quantify cesium dissolved in water. Experiments conducted with 137 Cs in conditioned water showed that at a flow rate of 2.5 L/min the filter could absorb 97.9% of dissolved 137 Cs from 20 L of water; high recovery efficiency was achieved over a pH range of 3-10. Test measurements of 137 Cs concentrations using Zn-C in river water agreed with the results derived by using an evaporative concentration method (within the counting error of the detector). Using this method, the pre-concentration time of radiocesium in 20 L of fresh water can be reduced to just 8 minutes.

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