© R. Ando et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2024

1 Introduction

Due to their lasting nature, post-nuclear accident situations raise numerous societal issues, some of which have little to do with the presence of radioactivity in the daily life of people. One of these issues is the passage of generations. Over the years, the actors in the recovery process gradually evolve. It is therefore inevitable that over time, young people who were still at school at the time of the disaster find themselves confronted with the post-accident situation and wish to get involved in rehabilitating the living conditions of populations residing in the affected territories. Beyond the young experts and professionals who progressively take over from their elders in managing the consequences of the accident, there are also all the young people who live in the affected areas and who have their own vision of the situation, often very different from that of the previous generation. If the major concern at the time of the accident and in the following years is the protection against radioactivity, over time the issue of the future of the affected areas and the quality of life of their inhabitants take precedence.

What is the role of the young generation in the recovery phase after a nuclear accident? What are the main challenges it faces? How can it contribute to the resilience and ensure the sustainable development of affected areas? What lessons can be drawn from the experiences of Chernobyl and Fukushima? This article aims to provide some reflections in relation to these questions.

The first part of the article presents the observations collected during the course of the ETHOS Project and the CORE Programme in Belarus between 1996 and 2008 in the territories affected by the Chernobyl accident (Heriard Dubreuil, 1999; Trafimchik, 2005). The second part presents the testimonies and views heard at the 24th Fukushima Dialogue as far as the role of the young generation is concerned (Fig. 1). The last part discusses the role of the co-expertise process and the adapted governance framework for its implementation as means of meeting the expectations of the younger generation to actively participate in the recovery process after a nuclear accident. The conclusion highlights the importance of developing an adequate governance framework to accompany the recovery process.

Fig. 1 General view of the 24th Dialogue meeting.

2 Experiences with the young generation in the Ethos Project and the Core Programme in Belarus

Following the Chernobyl accident, there have been significant changes in the population in the contaminated territories in Belarus. Many villages have been abandoned or even destroyed and buried due to the severe contamination, leading to permanent relocation of the local communities. In other villages, despite a significant level of the environmental contamination people have been authorized to stay subject to the implementation of protective actions by the public authorities (ICRP, 2020). In this context, the inhabitants of the contaminated territories, and more particularly the younger generations, find themselves faced with a dilemma: to live in a contaminated territory or to leave it. It should be noted that most of these territories were located in rural areas and there was a general trend towards rural exodus since the 1980s. In fact, the younger generations, particularly following rehousing, preferred to live in urban areas benefiting from greater comfort and access to more services and shops. However, the economic crisis that hit Belarus in the mid-1990s changed the attractiveness of cities: it often became easier and cheaper for the inhabitants of rural villages to feed themselves thanks to their vegetable gardens and livestock.

In this context, the ETHOS project was set up by a group of French experts in the mid-1990s, 10 yr after the Chernobyl accident, to initiate a dialogue with the inhabitants of the contaminated territories who had chosen to stay there, in order to improve their protection against radiation but also to implement actions to improve their living conditions. The project started in the village of Olmany, in the South of Belarus close to the Ukrainian boarder, and was then extended to the whole district of Stolyn from 1996 to 2001 at the request of the authorities (Hériard Dubreuil, 1999). Given the internationally recognized results obtained, a large-scale cooperation programme was set up at the end of the Project from 2003 to 2008 named CORE in the contaminated districts of Stolyn, Bragin, Slavgorod and Chechersk with the aim to develop local projects in an integrated approach covering radiological monitoring, health care, economic and social development, education of children and young people and transmission of the memory of the Chernobyl disaster (UNDP, 2002). Among the few projects developed with local actors during the ETHOS Project and more than one hundred projects in the CORE Programme, several have been carried out with young people.

2.1 The young mother group in Olmany

At the beginning of the ETHOS Project, the main concern of the inhabitants of the village of Olmany, particularly young mothers, was about the health of children. No practical information allowed them to understand where the radioactivity was and how it exposed their children, and even less what the possible impact of this radioactivity on the children’s health could be. A group of young mothers was rapidly formed with the support of the experts to understand and share information on the presence of radioactivity in the village. Measurement campaigns were organized and the results shared and discussed in order to identify protective measures that could enable them to reduce the daily exposure of their children (Fig. 2). Gradually, young mothers established the link between the food contamination of their children and the internal contamination measurements (whole body measurement) carried out at school by the health authorities. They were thus able to discuss with health professionals and seek with them possible actions to improve the situation. One of the main results of the creation of this group of young mothers, beyond a significant drop in the internal contamination of children, was to set up a network within the village allowing them to exchange information concerning the radiological quality of the products and to agree on protection criteria which continued after the project (Lochard, 2013).

Fig. 2 Young mothers working on measurement results.

2.2 The young teachers group in Olmany

When the first results of the radiological situation in the village were better known, the teachers of the school of Olmany mobilized to develop with their pupils a practical culture of radiological protection. They were indeed particularly motivated by the fact of sharing with them the information concerning the radioactive contamination of the village with the idea that the latter will be transmitted quickly to the parents. They therefore collected the results of the measurements carried out by themselves and by the villagers including their pupils and students at the occasion of outdoors activities (Fig. 3) and developed small concrete exercises in various disciplines particularly in relation to the dominant agricultural activity of the village. These exercises gradually allowed the students to better understand the way in which they were exposed as well as the possible actions to limit or reduce their exposure. For these young teachers, participation in this activity also gave them access to the new technologies provided by the project, whether to measure radioactivity or to process data with personal computers. It was also an opportunity for them to address the questions they had about the accident, their life in the village and how to protect themselves. Very often, these young teachers sought to go beyond the activities developed with the pupils. Some have engaged in the search for scientific and historical information to deepen their knowledge. Others have contributed to setting up “citizen science” and “participatory science” type projects involving students and parents. All these initiatives and actions have greatly contributed to giving new meaning to their teaching activity, which until then had been confined to transmitting knowledge from official school books with no real effect because the reality of life in the village was not taken into account.

Fig. 3 Teacher collecting data with her pupils.

2.3 The local projects on the memory of the accident developed by young people of Olmany and of the Bragin district

In Olmany, a group of young people mobilized to produce a video on the village with the support of French experts who provided them with the necessary equipment and know-how. Initially, the young people did not feel a priori concerned by the consequences of radioactivity in their village. They were especially attracted by the handling of video material and a first video produced was not focused on the daily life of the villagers. By asking themselves the question of the meaning to be given to this video and the message to be delivered outside their village during various dialogues with the experts, they gradually realized that the production of the video was a means of gathering from village elders the story of the accident because they were still too young at the time of the accident to have any memories of it. After filming several testimonies, they finally got interested in the actions developed in the ETHOS Project. The video was presented to all the inhabitants of the village on the occasion of an evening organized in the communal hall and was the opportunity for a lively dialogue on the daily life in Olmany and the aspirations of young people for the future of the village.

In the district of Bragin, residents first mobilized around a project aimed at gathering information on the lost villages of the district. The objective was to contribute to the preservation of the memory of the disappeared villages in the Belarusian part of the forbidden zone of 30 km around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and to give an image and also produce a narrative. To do this, working groups have been set up with volunteers to collect testimonies from former residents, documents and photos. This project continued with the production of a larger exhibition in the context of the Bragin Historical Museum, which was renovated on the occasion with the financial support of the CORE Programme. Most of the volunteers in these groups were young adults. The preparation of this permanent exhibition entitled ’Lost Land’ required a lot of work and among other things gave rise to exchanges with national and international artists (Fig. 4). Here again, this project has encouraged exchanges between generations. The exhibition inaugurated in 2007 was a great success with the local population but also attracted many Belarus and foreign visitors (Bragin historical museum, 2023).

Another project developed within the framework of the CORE Programme concerning the memory of the accident entitled "Tell me my Cloud" involving schoolchildren and their teachers provided the opportunity to create working groups in 26 schools in Belarus and 26 abroad mainly in Europe but also in Japan. The basic idea of this project was to ask volunteer teachers to develop with their students short videos telling a story related to the Chernobyl cloud which spread over Belarus but also throughout Europe and beyond in April 1986. Each teacher was free to choose a story with the pupils and to get help for the production in the form of a video by local, national and even international artists. The innovative and international aspect of the approach greatly appealed to young teachers. At the end of the project, a festival was organized in Bragin, which gave the opportunity to the project participants to present their achievements and to exchange their ideas and impressions. The videos were also shared around the world, promoting the exchange of messages with schools in contaminated areas. The main assets of this project for the young teachers were to be able to participate actively in the construction of a story telling the life of the territories, then to activate the memory linking the past, the present and the future through the development of a tool for communication and education.

Fig. 4 A view of a section of the Lost Land exhibition.

2.4 Innovative local projects with young farmers in the districts of Stolyn and Bragin

Given the radiological but also economic situation of Belarus villages in the late 1990s and early 2000s, young farmers were particularly motivated to experiment with innovative agricultural practices. For example, in the village of Olmany, young farmers have developed a model to optimize the rotation of herds of cows in the meadows in summer and the use of hay in winter when cows are in barns in order to produce "clean" milk, that is to say below the official contamination standards (Lepicard, 2001).

Young farmers from the Stolyn and Bragin districts got involved in the “potato project”, developed with French experts to ensure vegetable production without significant contamination. For this project, developed with the help of the Belarus Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry (Bogdevitch, 2003), volunteer farmers experimented methods best suited to local conditions. After their development, these methods were disseminated through training provided by the Institute. In addition, specific funding methods implemented by the CORE Programme have enabled them to develop new productions taking into account the radiological context of their territory.

It should be noted that more than 15 yr after the accident, families of young farmers have come to settle in the contaminated territories given the prospects opened up by the innovative projects tested within the framework of the ETHOS Project and the CORE Programme. Some left their village of origin given the socio-economic difficulties with which they were confronted to come and settle in full knowledge of radioactivity and taking the necessary precautions to develop their activities based on lessons in the practical radiological protection culture developed elsewhere. The dialogues with these families revealed that beyond the economic prospects, the new infrastructures put in place after the accident in the affected areas, in particular with regard to education and health, had played a significant role in their choice to change of region.

3 What was learned with the new generation in Fukushima during the 24th Fukushima Dialogue

The 24th Fukushima Dialogue entitled “The Future of Fukushima Created with the Next Generation" took place in November 2022 in the town of Naraha located within 20 kilometers south from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the Pacific coast (Ando et al., 2023). Organized by the Fukushima Dialogue Association (NPO Fukushima Dialogue, 2023) with the support of the Japan Health Physics Society (JHPS) and the Society for Risk Analysis Japan (SRAJ), this Dialogue was also an opportunity to revisit the Chernobyl experience presented above.

The testimonies and discussions collected during the Dialogue were an opportunity for the young generation of Naraha and the surrounding municipalities to express their concerns but also their expectations and challenges regarding their future life in the Prefecture. Included in the 20 km evacuation zone, these localities were totally evacuated in March 2011 and despite some parts of them were not seriously contaminated by the fallout from the accident, the evacuation orders were not lifted until the decontamination programmes ended in each of the municipalities. This happened in 2015 in Naraha. After the evacuation orders were lifted, massive reconstruction work for infrastructure and buildings was implemented and many houses rotten during the evacuation time were demolished. As a consequence, vast vacant lands and new buildings co-exist in the area. The familiar places where the inhabitants used to live have disappeared.

Similarly, demographics have also changed dramatically in the region (Saito, 2023). In particular, the proportion of young and old people is seriously unbalanced. The same is true for women and men, as many workers assigned to reconstruction work are men (Ozaki and Koenuma, 2024). Fear of pregnancy among young women worried about radiation is also a factor preventing young couples from settling in these areas. Although this is a major concern among the younger generation (Ito et al., 2023), this point was hardly raised at the Dialogue because most of the participants were single, and those who returned to the evacuation areas feel able to cope with this problem. And in fact, those who are concerned about residual radiation but who do not feel able to control the radiation or who simply have not had access to the information to do so, are not returning to these areas.

These gradual transformations of the towns and the local population disorient the inhabitants who, moreover, find it difficult to get an idea of what it will look like in the future. The Nahara situation, which is quite similar to the other affected municipalities experience in the Prefecture, confronts the younger generation with new practical problems that their parents had not faced, creating a feeling of being a stranger to their own homeland (Reich and Goto, 2015; Ando et al., 2023). How to create a link between the inhabitants in such a context? How to build a community in such a fragmented environment? How to share the local problems within residents from the Prefecture but also from outside?

The various initiatives described by the participants during the 24^th Fukushima Dialogue do not have the scale that could be described as a project as in the case of Belarus. Qualified by the participants themselves as small-scale activities, compared to the large-scale projects developed by the government in the Fukushima Prefecture mainly in the field of infrastructure, these initiatives nevertheless contribute, at their level, to the revitalization of the affected regions. On the one hand they reflect the aspirations of the young generation and, on the other hand, they highlight the difficulties and issues which this generation is facing.

3.1 The storyteller

The first testimony was that of a young woman who experienced the accident and the evacuation while she was still in junior high school. She lived for some time after the accident, without talking about it or her experience as an evacuee, even within her family. The idea of creating a theater script about her post-accident experience while she was still in high school allowed her to reflect on what she had experienced. Little by little, her desire to return to her hometown grew stronger and one day she decided to take the plunge alone after the evacuation order was lifted. Since then, she has devoted herself mainly to transmitting her experience of the accident but also of the current situation in the affected areas (Fig. 5).

With artist friends from other prefectures who came to live in the Naraha region as a dual residency after the lifting of the evacuation order, she organized visits introducing the historical context of the affected area during which she introduced an artistic performance. By studying the region’s history in depth, she became aware of its unique local characteristics and engaged in personal reflection on what should be preserved but also abandoned in the areas affected by the accident, with a view to reorganizing these areas and giving them a new image. Her approach is therefore completely focused on the future while being strongly anchored in local tradition and culture.

Fig. 5 The storyteller with a group of visitors of Naraha.

3.2 The foreigner

The second testimony was that of a young man who said that several years after the accident after graduating from high school, he visited the affected areas of Fukushima as part of his university studies, which had subsequently encouraged him to go regularly to the affected areas. At one point, he even decided to live in the area for a year and thus experienced local life. Currently, while in graduate school, he is seriously considering renting a vacant house in an area where the evacuation order has been lifted and using the place as a base for community activities. The initial reason for his visit to the evacuation zone was to understand why people are returning to the area and what their motivations are? Initially, he hypothesized that people came back because they had a specific intention to do so, but after listening carefully to them, he realized that many of them came back without much motivation. They returned just as they had lived before.

He would like to carry out small revitalization activities individually in the community. Being a foreigner with the image of an ”intellectual”, who poured into the affected areas after the accident and regarded as distant by local resident, he must think about first what he could do with the locals to benefit their daily lives because it is not easy for intellectuals to be welcomed and gain people’s trust (Fig. 6).

In the evacuation zone, he mentioned that there were other young people who were involved in “small-actions” initiatives as well as him, such as giving lessons to young children for example. He hopes that in the long term they could gradually spread and a dynamic could be created favoring living together in the affected territories. It is in this spirit that he is looking for a house to rent where all those involved in these ’small actions’, like him, could meet, share ideas and initiate new actions.

Fig. 6 The foreigner with a friend visiting the village of Yamakiya.

3.3 The farmer

The third testimony is that of a young farmer who practiced organic farming in another prefecture and who chose to come and settle in Okuma, north of Naraha (Fig. 7). He explained that he was preparing to start an agricultural business as Okuma land, which has been abandoned for over 10 yr and where no pesticides have been used, is an ideal location for organic farming, with rich soils found nowhere else in the world. For farmers who wish to maximize the profitability of their crops, Okuma lands have the advantage of not only being able to exploit the new characteristics of the land but also, despite the fact that the latter was affected by the accident, to attract consumers due to the high quality of the products.

Finally, he also wants to create a store selling directly his production to surrounding communities. Not only does he intend to sell his own products there, but also products from all over the world so that this store could be a meeting and exchange place for consumers attracted by the quality and diversity of the products.

In terms of exposure to radiation, it is interesting to note that the area having been completely reconstructed and decontaminated, the average ambient dose rate in its living space is now less than 0.1 micro-sievert per hour. In the fields where he works during the day, the ambient dose rates are slightly higher resulting in a dose of the order of 1 mSv per year.

Fig. 7 The farmer in his rice paddies.

4 Discussion

It is obvious that the presence of a still significant level of contamination in the affected territories in Belarus has drawn the attention of young adults, in particular mothers and teachers, to the acquisition of the practical culture of radiation protection, which is essential to control exposure to radiation, particularly of children. In Fukushima, young people gradually returned to the evacuated areas once the decontamination work was carried out. As a result, the relatively low levels of residual radiation took a back seat, even if vigilance remained required in certain places, particularly in forests. Despite these quite contrasting radiological situations, the concerns of young adults, more than 10 yr after the accidents, show similarities that it is interesting to highlight.

The first similarity is undeniably the desire to strengthen ties within communities and to develop solidarity. This was particularly marked during the various initiatives carried out in the Ethos Project and the Core Programme. Local projects were in particular an opportunity to share information and also to create new relationships notably with local professionals in the field of health and agriculture. Despite the fact that youth initiatives in Fukushima are essentially individual ones, the concern about the current situation of communities was recurrently highlighted during the discussions.

Communities were considerably affected by the nuclear accident, causing massive population displacements and a major breakdown in human relationships profoundly affecting the quality of living together. Furthermore, evacuation orders during the emergency phase were decided centrally and this approach tended to continue during subsequent phases. The reconstruction process driven by the authorities is largely characterized by a top-down approach to decision-making processes which inevitably induces a feeling of exclusion and isolation among the affected populations (Lochard, 2013). It is undeniably to counteract this feeling of being isolated that young people seek to strengthen existing links within the communities affected by the accident but also seek to strengthen relationships with people outside the affected areas.

The Dialogue clearly highlighted the desire of the younger generation to strengthen ties and develop solidarity, while human relations in the region were completely broken due to the nuclear accident and the evacuation order prolonged. It wishes to form new relationships, taking advantage of the fact that many foreigners visit the affected areas to engage in the recovery phase. However, it is worth mentioning that older people are generally reluctant to form relationships with foreigners, especially those from different cultural backgrounds. This is a distinctive difference between older people and the younger generation.

The second similarity could be described as the search for innovative solutions. As the Belarusian experience clearly shows, the younger generation often welcomes the fact that people of different professions, positions and ideas come to the affected areas and bring new cultures, skills and knowledge through reconstruction projects and to support activities. They often desire positive interaction with new people. This contrasts with the older generation, who are often nostalgic for the society before the accident. In affected areas, where social functioning has deteriorated in many respects, social innovations are needed, going beyond a return to old practices. The positive attitude of the younger generation towards new and innovative ideas is essential for the recovery of areas affected by nuclear disasters. The 24^th dialogue has particularly emphasized that younger generation’s interest in innovative methods and their tendency to follow their curiosity is a major driving force in revitalizing the weakened communities in the affected areas. Agriculture is one of the most affected sectors by the nuclear disaster, but it is interesting to note that in both Belarus and Fukushima, young people are experimenting with innovative agricultural practices. The younger generation tends to take advantage of this exceptional situation and tries new challenges to do things that can only be done in such a context.

The key issue for the long-term is to establish a sustainable framework allowing the inhabitants to secure their economic and social activities. Such a framework needs to address the various economic, societal, health, environmental and cultural activities and must rely on a sustainable and equitable partnership involving the local, national and even international stakeholders including citizens in the management of the affected territories. This is a common feature with the Belarus experience.

The third common trait among Belarusian and Japanese youth in the regions affected by the nuclear accident is clearly the question of their attractiveness. Within the framework of the CORE Programme which took place in districts particularly disorganized by the presence of radioactivity, beyond the concerns linked to radiological protection, the question of the rehabilitation of decent living conditions was clearly conditioned on the sustainable development of the economic and social activity. How to attract the young generation to territories whose image is tarnished by the presence of radioactivity, the population is elderly and cultural life has been reduced practically to nothing? Faced with these challenges, Belarussian public authorities launched a programme in the early 2000s aimed at developing public infrastructure, in particular hospitals and schools, but also at improving the comfort of residents in rural areas by developing the gasification of villages and methods of transportation. It is undeniable that these efforts have encouraged a certain return to the affected regions of young households in search of a life away from the turbulence and economic constraints of large cities, as has been highlighted above. However, this movement was still very limited at the end of the 2000s when the CORE Programme ended.

The discussions during the 24^th Dialogue showed that the major concern of the younger generations is to assess to what extent contaminated territories can be attractive for the future. Is it possible to live sustainably in these areas? It should be noted that the issue of radiation protection has not been addressed much during the Dialogue because the level of residual radiation is significantly less important in Fukushima than in Belarus. However, the organizers, who mentioned the effectiveness of the practical radiological protection culture during the discussions, were consulted by several participants for more precise information on the radiological situation in the affected areas where they live and how it was possible to protect themselves. The perception of the risk after a nuclear accident remains a significant issue (Hande et al., 2023).

After the Fukushima accident, many adults struggled with the turmoil caused by its consequences and they achieved some accomplishment to regain control on their lifes. For instance, some local projects aiming at developing the necessary radiological protection culture to live in a contaminated environment were carried out in Fukushima and neighboring area after the nuclear accident by residents in cooperation with local leaders and local or academic experts. These projects, aimed to give the concerned populations the means to develop a practical culture of radiological protection within the framework of co-expertise processes (ICRP, 2020). Thus, the communities of Kawauchi (Takamura et al., 2018), Suetsugi (Lochard et al., 2020), Yamakiya (Yasutaka et al., 2020) and Kashiwa (Igarashi, 2022) benefited from the support of volunteers or institutional experts who empowered them to regain control of the radiological situation in their daily lives and the experiences have proved to be efficient for them to go ahead and to envisage the future.

It is interesting to note that the Dialogue highlighted that these experiences are in fact not known to the younger generation. Participants who heard about these projects for the first time during the Dialogue expressed their surprise but also their satisfaction to learn that the situation was not blocked as they believed and that there are perspective and experience on which to rely on.

Despite this prospect of a possible improvement in the situation, it is important to emphasize that young people remain doubtful about the future. For example, a young couple who consulted organizers after the dialogue said they did not have children at the moment but would leave the affected area when it was time to have them. In fact, the question of motherhood is indeed a critical issue for many young couples after the nuclear accident (Ito et al., 2023).

This clearly shows that concern for children remains very present and that radiological issues must be considered in a long-term perspective as well as the potential for developing a practical culture of radiological protection among young people. Helping people to understand their own exposure and to open a dialogue with experts to interpret the results including the potential health effects has demonstrated to be crucial both in Belarus and Japan. In this perspective, young people have a key role to play to ensure the relevant vigilance with regard the residual contamination.

5 Conclusion

Beyond the differences between Belarusian and Japanese experiences highlighted in this article, in particular the individual dimension of the Fukushima youth initiatives, while in Belarus they were more part of well-structured projects at the local level, the 24^th Dialogue highlighted many common aspects. There is no doubt that the late lifting of the evacuation order in communities close to the Fukushima nuclear power plant constituted a serious handicap for the implementation of local projects, unlike the ETHOS Project and in particular the CORE Programme which supported the reconstruction of disaster areas as part of an approach shared by stakeholders with the support of public authorities. Surely, some local projects were conducted after the Fukushima accident, however, they were essentially focused on the control of radioactivity and limited in scale compared to the projects carried out in Belarus.

The 24th Fukushima Dialogue made it clear that the generation following the one that handled the consequences of the nuclear accident in Japan in the first years after the accident clearly aspires to be involved in the reconstruction process. The experience of Belarus has demonstrated the importance of developing a governance framework to ensure the effective and sustainable implementation of stakeholder involvement in this process. From this perspective, the development and dissemination of the practical culture of radiation protection is very important. The Dialogue showed that this culture remains a vague notion for most participants. It therefore seems important to deploy activities in the near future with the support of the younger generation aimed on the one hand at promoting vigilance with regard to the residual radioactivity of the accident, and on the other hand at developing the practical radiation protection culture to accompany the recovery process. The Dialogue clearly showed that the young generation in Fukushima is resolutely focused on the future with the desire to contribute to the rehabilitation of living conditions in the affected areas by the accident by putting themselves at the service of others.

Finally, the participants express their wish to engage not only in ‘small activities’ but also large-scale projects implemented by the authorities, which will bring significant impact on the future of the region. They are motivated to cooperate with the local administration to share the common vision for the future of the areas and to get involved in the recovery process. Following the experience of the ETHOS project and the CORE programme above, working together across generations may be the most effective option to revitalize the affected region where social bonds have been seriously damaged, but it is also crucial to respect the freedom of everyone to get involved or not in the post-accident situation.

Acknowledgments

The authors sincerely express their gratitude to all those who participated to the 24th Fukushima Dialogue and particularly the generous donators who made it possible to hold it. They also thank the Japan Society of Health Physics and the Risk Analysis Society of Japan for their moral support of the event.

Funding

This work was supported by NPO Fukushima Dialogue, Japan.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

Readers may find additional date related to this article by consulting the materials of the 24th NPOS Fukushima Dialogue on the NPO Fukushima Website at : https://fukushima-dialogue.jp/en/archives/dialogue/24thdialogue_en

Author contribution statement

R. Ando, J. Lochard and Thierry Schneider: Conceptualization, manuscript writing and internal reviewing; Nanami Akimoto, Daiki Sasaki, Kohei Iseki: advice and internal reviewing.

Publication ethics

This article has been written without any assistance of artificial intelligence software.

References

All Figures

	Fig. 1 General view of the 24th Dialogue meeting.
In the text

	Fig. 2 Young mothers working on measurement results.
In the text

	Fig. 3 Teacher collecting data with her pupils.
In the text

	Fig. 4 A view of a section of the Lost Land exhibition.
In the text

	Fig. 5 The storyteller with a group of visitors of Naraha.
In the text

	Fig. 6 The foreigner with a friend visiting the village of Yamakiya.
In the text

	Fig. 7 The farmer in his rice paddies.
In the text