Helen ApSimon founding member and Chairman of the European Association for the Science of Air Pollution. ApSimon is well known for her research into the transport of radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster. In the immediate aftermath, Russia issued a media blackout and ApSimon was one of few European scientists to detect rising radiation levels. She modelled the nuclear fallout, calculating Chernobyl released 15 - 20 megacuries of Iodine-131 and 1 - 2 megacuries of caesium-137. During the first few weeks after the disaster, ApSimon calculated the radioactive plum covered Scandinavia and the North coast of Europe. She travelled to Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia
Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster used to produce bio-diesel, which could be used to produce electricity. According to director William Nolten the region had a big potential for the production of clean energy. Some 800,000 hectares in the region could not be used to produce food anymore, and after the disaster because of fears for contamination the Japanese people refused to buy food produced in the region anyway. Experiments would be done to find out whether camelia was capable of extracting caesium from the soil. An experiment with sunflowers had no success. High levels of radioactive caesium were found in 23 varieties of freshwater fish