Annual Reduction of Transfer Factor of Radiocesium from Soil to Rice Cultivated in a KCl Fertilized Paddy Field from 2015 to 2019

We performed consecutive field trials of rice cultivation to monitor radiocesium contamination in harvested rice from 2012, in the Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture, where people were forced to be evacuated due to high level of radioactive contamination caused by the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant of Tokyo Electric Power. The early year results (2012–2013)1, 2) showed the radiocesium concentration in the brown rice was reduced depending on the decontaminated level of paddy soil and on the exchangeable K content of the soil. This report of later year results (2015–2019) showed further more than 80% reduction of 137Cs concentration in the brown rice and straw at KCl fertilized paddy soil, in spite of little reduction of 137Cs concentration of the soil. The transfer factor of 137Cs from soil to brown rice reduced from 0.0022 in 2015 to 0.0003 in 2019 and that to straw reduced from 0.0262 in 2015 to 0.0028 in 2019, respectively. Exchangeable positive ions of the soil were also analyzed. Multiple regression analyses of all data of transfer factor in 2015 to 2019 to year (ageing) and exchangeable K ion as variables shows that the main causal factor is year (ageing) with some supportive effect of increase of exchangeable K ion. This implicates that radiocesium in soil was gradually transformed to a form more difficult to be absorbed by rice, that is, 137Cs immobilization or fixation on clay minerals by ageing, not only in early years after the accident (2011–2015), but also in later years (2015–2019). This implication was supported by comparative analysis of exchangeable 137Cs of dry soil of 2017, 2018 and 2019.