News Archive

Latha Vasudevan, PhD, CHP, Chapter Public Relations Chair

The Health Physics Society State of Texas Chapter (STC-HPS) held its spring meeting virtually on 24 April 2021. The focus was "Student Presentations and Retrospective of Fukushima on 10th Anniversary of the Nuclear Disaster." The chapter utilized the Zoom platform provided by HPS, and the virtual meeting again proved to be very effective and successful.

The meeting began at 9 am and STC-HPS President-elect Doug Johnson welcomed the speakers and meeting attendees. We started off with undergraduate student paper presentations followed by graduate student presentations. The high school science fair winner was invited to present his work "Using Artificial Intelligence to Reduce MRI Patient Exposure" and it was quite encouraging to see the young researcher making an extremely well-prepared presentation reflecting the caliber of future professionals.

The graduate student presentations included students from Texas A&M University, the University of Texas, and the University of Florida. The highlight of the meeting was the three invited speakers providing the Fukushima-Decade Retrospective. Dr. Dale Klein (former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee of Tokyo Electric Power Company) discussed "Update on the Fukushima Daiichi Cleanup—Deaths From Radiation Remain at Zero While Deaths From the Earthquake and Tsunami Are About 20,000." Dr. Wesley Bolch (distinguished professor of biomedical and radiological engineering, University of Florida) presented "A 2020 UNSCEAR Review of the Level and Effects of Radiation Exposure Following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident." Dr. Steven Rademacher provided the talk "DOD Aspects of Fukushima Disaster Response, Operation Tomodachi." The discussion on the Fukushima nuclear disaster was very well received.

We had about 30 attendees for the virtual meeting and the meeting was successfully concluded by announcing the prize winners for both the undergraduate and graduate student categories. The chapter thanks the speakers and the attendees for their outstanding contribution and for making this meeting successful.

The full agenda can be found on our chapter website.

Dr. Dale Klein presenting "Update on the Fukushima Daiichi Cleanup." Photo Courtesy of Latha Vasudevan
 

Dr. Wesley Bolch presenting "A 2020 UNSCEAR Review of the Level and Effects of Radiation Exposure Following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident." Photo Courtesy of Latha Vasudevan
 

Screen shot of some of the attendees. Photo Courtesy of Latha Vasudevan