Possibilities of radiation sciences

It is well known that the application of a radioisotope made it possible to develop recent overwhelming gene technology so rapidly. Not only in biological science, but in many other fields radiation technology plays an essential role for the research. There was a survey work for the economic scale of radiation market. About half of the market was related to atomic energy but the other half was the others, id est (i.e.) engineering, medical and agricultural fields. Though we are not aware of these large radiation markets comparable to that of atomic energy, there are so many fields applying radiation technology. Take a look at research field. For example, radiation technology is crucial in analysis and imaging. In the case of analysis, only activation analysis provides absolute amount of the elements in the sample, because it allows nondestructive experiment. Imaging based on radiation measurement can be performed under light condition and allows numerical treatment of the image. We have to confirm again that the radiation technology is an indispensable tool to open new sciences. (author)