Japan: Fukushima sows sunflowers to soak up radiation

City officials in Fukushima, Japan sowed sunflower seeds Wednesday at a plaza in the city as part of efforts to remove radioactive materials from the soil following leaks and meltdowns at a nearby nuclear plant, following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

Lots of plant do soak up radioactives from the environment, for example tobacco, but sunflowers are cheap, fast growing, safe, low fuss, and easy to pull when done.
mail4joeg

As if sunflowers are going to clean up thousands of square miles of farmland and groundwater. Those people need to flee for their lives, and stop believing the hollow promises of the authorities.
- Anonymous
  
  How exactly does one ‘flee for their life’ when your country is an island? Doesn’t leave a lot of room for fleeing. Unless you have a couple of hundred thousand spare bedrooms you’re not using…
hobomike

At least it’ll look nice for the people who have no where else to go.
zyodei

Oh. Glad they’re on top of that, then.
phosphorious

Do sunflowers in particularabsorb radiation? Or would any flower do?
- Ethan
  
  A google search on “sunflower radiation use efficiency” will answer you question in a fair amount of detail.
  - Anonymous
    
    Your making the assumption that some of us might be able to understand the papers that google brings up. I certainly don’t, and wouldn’t be able to sift the useful links from the garbage.
DoctressJulia

Oh, Japan is so awesome… the first thing that came to mind when I saw this post was the toxic forest in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. See it if you haven’t, I don’t want to give away spoilers…

Did I double post? If so, sorry…
Anonymous

10 bucks says they’ll feed these sunflowers to food-animals and sell the seeds for human consumption.
cureyourills

Be careful around these. You don’t know what could happen if you get bitten by a radioactive sunflower.
- Nelson.C
  
  Presumably you develop mutant sunflower powers, such as the ability… to… uh… know where the sun is at all times?
ManOutOfTime

Gilligan suggested they plant spinach, Mary Ann carrots, and Mrs. Howell likes sugar beets.
Anonymous

Isn’t this how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began??
Anonymous

Nice story. They’re clearly just planning for the zombie invasion. It’ll be pea shooters next.
in silico

When looking up “sunflower radiation use efficiency” be aware that many of the papers are reporting about converting sunlight to plant matter and not about capturing radioactive isotopes from the air,water or soil. Try searching “phytoremediation” or “bioremediation”
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Off topic, but the concept of phytoremediation reminds me of those (afaik unproven) theories, which hold that one can find specific mineral deposits by inspecting the native flora for species which are known to be “philic” for the specific mineral complexes you’re prospecting for.
  
  I wonder if there’s anything to such theories.
randomguy

I sense a niche market a Radioactive Sunflower Seeds spoof product in an over-the-top anime-style package. Hmmm.
Anonymous

so thats where they get the sunflowers in “plants vs. zombies”
Joseph Hertzlinger

They’re not using man-in-the-moon marigolds?
- coop
  
  That’ll be the next generation.
David

This technique was used at Chernobly to clean up radioactive water. Plants were suspended on a grid at the surface. Radiation moved with the water and remained behind as the H2O transpired from the plants. Afterwards the plants were collected and buried in a nuclear waste dump. I’ve been wondering if the Fukishima operators would use the same process on the thousands of gallons of dirty water they have.
- PMcGorrill
  
  I’ve always wondered how one disposes of thousands of toxic sunflowers. Thnx.
  - danma
    
    I believe what you do is have the sunflowers absorb the radioactive materials, and then where you bury them, the sunflowers degrade and the radioactive materials are left behind. Sure beats treating the soil through chemical (or other) processes!
    
    There is a concern about the seeds having radioactive materials in them (which is valid!) but the mass of a sunflower >> mass of the seeds so really, when the area’s already been exposed, this is not a bad way to remediate the soil. Interesting.