Sunflowers can reduce radiation in soil?

[Paradox74]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ea298a6179f170db0cbddba5974710a6.1c1&show_article=1

Campaigners in Japan are asking people to grow sunflowers, said to help decontaminate radioactive soil, in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed March's massive quake and tsunami.
Volunteers are being asked to grow sunflowers this year, then send the seeds to the stricken area where they will be planted next year to help get rid of radioactive contaminants in the plant's fallout zone.

Is there any truth to this? I can see planting flowers to help improve morale, but reducing radiation in soil?

 

[Madalch]

It's possible that they concentrate and incorporate cesium or some other element that was among the radioactive contaminants.

Hopefully they don't concentrate it too much, or we'll have novaflowers.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Note to self: Avoid Japanese imported sunflower seeds for a few years.


(Isn't this how Godzilla got started? We could have a new glow-in-the-dark version of Little Shop of Horrors in the making.)

 

[Dinwar]

I've never heard of sunflowers being used for this, but I've seen phytoremediation used before. Basically you plant a lot of fast-growing trees, which act as pumps and storage containers for contaminants. Once they get to a certain size (or die, depending on which comes first and what the protocol is) you cut them down and send them to specific facilities for disposal. Sunflowers would be a good choice because they're fast-growing--really tall annuals. The only question in my mind is what elements they're hoping the sunflower picks up, and if they are capable of said absorption. And I have to say, I've never been overly impressed with phytoremediation. It never seems to work--for some reason, plants have a hard time growing in badly contaminated soils.

 

[Stray Cat]

The campaign, launched by young entrepreneurs and civil servants in Fukushima prefecture last month, aims to cover large areas in yellow blossoms as a symbol of hope and reconstruction and to lure back tourists.

So no science then. The entrepreneurs had an idea to sell sunflower seeds and the civil servants wanted to get tourists back. And they've made $60,000 already selling the seeds.

 

[Emet]

I've never heard of sunflowers being used for this, but I've seen phytoremediation used before.

That's because you don't read Natural News :

Phytoremediation: You can grow plants that help eliminate radiation in the soil
(...)
Clean up efforts at Chernobyl after the April of 1986, nuclear explosion included the use of sunflowers that absorbed radionuclides up through their roots from contaminated bodies of water. Phytoremediation in bodies of water is referred to as rhizofiltration. The success of using plants to cleanup radioactive material at Chernobyl gives promise to the use of phytoremediation at Fukushima and at other sites where radioactive materials are present.

http://www.naturalnews.com/032747_phytoremediation_radiation.html

And as SBM writes of Mike Adams of Natural News:

Mike Adams, as regular readers may know, runs the website NaturalNews.com from deep in the jungles of Ecuador. His website is a one-stop shop, a repository if you will, of virtually every quackery known to humankind, all slathered with a heaping, helping of unrelenting hostility to science-based medicine and science in general. True, Mike Adams is not as big as, say, Joe Mercola, whose website, as far as I can tell, appears to draw more traffic than NaturalNews.com, but what Adams lacks in fame he makes up for in sheer crazy.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...-mehmet-ozs-colon-polyps-spontaneous-disease/

 

[MG1962]

It's possible that they concentrate and incorporate cesium or some other element that was among the radioactive contaminants.

Hopefully they don't concentrate it too much, or we'll have novaflowers.

Didn't Larry Niven in Ringworld, do something about when sunflowers go bad

 

[CORed]

I've never heard of sunflowers being used for this, but I've seen phytoremediation used before. Basically you plant a lot of fast-growing trees, which act as pumps and storage containers for contaminants. Once they get to a certain size (or die, depending on which comes first and what the protocol is) you cut them down and send them to specific facilities for disposal. Sunflowers would be a good choice because they're fast-growing--really tall annuals. The only question in my mind is what elements they're hoping the sunflower picks up, and if they are capable of said absorption. And I have to say, I've never been overly impressed with phytoremediation. It never seems to work--for some reason, plants have a hard time growing in badly contaminated soils.

Even if sunflowers do absorb radioactive elements, unless you clean up the dead ones and dispose of them somewhere safe, they won't do much good. If the dead plants are just allowed to decay back into the soil, you have accomplished nothing.

 

[Dinwar]

If the dead plants are just allowed to decay back into the soil, you have accomplished nothing.

One of the reasons phytoremediation never seems to work--they run out of cash before the "proper disposal" phase. Though you have accomplished some things: you've concentrated the radioactive isotopes into a tight little bundle and transmitted it through the ecosystem (we never harvest 100% of any crop).

 

[Wolrab]

Didn't Larry Niven in Ringworld, do something about when sunflowers go bad

They certainly reduce the level of radiation hitting the soil!