Lifeboat Foundation

Utsunomiya explained:

It was incredibly exciting to see the beautiful pattern of Cs atoms in the pollucite structure, where about half of the atoms in the image correspond to radioactive Cs.

He continued: “this is first time humans have directly imaged radioactive Cs atoms in an environmental sample. Finding concentrations of radioactive Cs high enough in environmental samples that would permit direct imaging is unusual and presents safety issues. Whilst it was exciting to make a scientific world first image, at the same time it’s sad that this was only possible due to a nuclear accident.”