Funding for radiation research: past, present and future

Abstract

For more than a century, ionizing radiation has been indispensable mainly in medicine and industry. Radiation research is a multidisciplinary field that investigates radiation effects. Radiation research was very active in the mid- to late 20th century, but has then faced challenges, during which time funding has fluctuated widely. Here we review historical changes in funding situations in the field of radiation research, particularly in Canada, European Union countries, Japan, South Korea, and the US. We also provide a brief overview of the current situations in education and training in this field. A better understanding of the biological consequences of radiation exposure is becoming more important with increasing public concerns on radiation risks and other radiation literacy. Continued funding for radiation research is needed, and education and training in this field are also important.

Keywords: Canada; European Union countries; Japan; Radiation research funding; South Korea; US.

Figure 1.

Longitudinal trends in funding landscape for radiation research in Canada. Key events/developments affecting funding streams or shift in scientific interest are shown at the bottom of the diagram. *, the landscape reflects qualitative, not quantitative, assessment of funding sources relative to each other; no trends for absolute amounts were assessed. **, the spike reflects a CAD 50 M investment from the CANDU Owners Group toward the construction of the Biological Research Facility for low-dose radiation biological studies at Chalk River Laboratories.

Figure 2.

A trend in the total amount of Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research in the fields related to radiation biology. Funds for research subjects under the following fields are summed: ‘radiobiology’ (1972–1992), ‘environmental effects assessment (including radiobiology)’ (1993–2002), and ‘risk sciences of radiation/chemicals’ (2003–2012). Created from data in NII (2018).

Figure 3.

Governmental investment on NIRS. (A) Trends in the annual budget of grants for administrative expense (orange) and facilities grant (grey). Data are from NIRS (1977, 1987, 2018) and its annual project plans. Breakdown of annual budgets of grants for administrative expense in million (M) JPY in 1995 (B) and 2015 (C). (B) Nuclear energy fundamental research, safety analysis research and about two third of the radiological priority research were related to radiation safety research and radiobiology. (C) Employment expenses are included in each project in C. Data taken from NIRS (1995, 2018).

Figure 4.

Trend in the annual amount of funding on radiobiology-related facilities and commissioned projects of IES. Amounts include employment expenses and exclude funding for radioecology.

Figure 5.

Temporal changes in the annual budget of the MOE project.

Figure 6.

Temporal changes in the institutional ordinary benefit received from Japanese electric power companies during fiscal years FY 2009 through 2017. The data were replotted from CRIEPI (2018).