April 2016 sees the 30(th) anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. As a consequence of the accident populations were relocated in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and remedial measures were put in place to reduce the entry of contaminants (primarily (134+137)Cs) into the human food chain in a number of countries throughout Europe. Remedial measures are still today in place in a number of countries, and areas of the former Soviet Union remain abandoned. The Chernobyl accident led to a large resurgence in radioecological studies both to aid remediation and to be able to make future predictions on the post-accident situation, but, also in recognition that more knowledge was required to cope with future accidents. In this paper we discuss, what in the authors' opinions, were the advances made in radioecology as a consequence of the Chernobyl accident. The areas we identified as being significantly advanced following Chernobyl were: the importance of semi-natural ecosystems in human dose formation; the characterisation and environmental behaviour of 'hot particles'; the development and application of countermeasures; the "fixation" and long term bioavailability of radiocaesium and; the effects of radiation on plants and animals.

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* Excessive caesium can be toxic to plants. Here we investigated Cs uptake and caesium-induced gene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana. * Accumulation was measured in plants grown for 5 wk on agar supplemented with nontoxic and up to toxic levels of Cs. Caesium-induced gene expression was studied by suppression-subtractive hybridization (SSH) and RT-PCR. * Caesium accumulated in leaf rosettes dependent upon the external concentration in the growth media, whereas the potassium concentration decreased in rosettes. At a concentration of 850 microM, Cs plants showed reduced development, and withered with an increase in concentration to 1 mM Cs. SSH resulted in the isolation of 73 clones that were differentially expressed at a Cs concentration of 150 microM. Most of the genes identified belong to groups of genes encoding proteins in stress defence, detoxification, transport, homeostasis and general metabolism, and proteins controlling transcription and translation. * The present study identified a number of marker genes for Cs in Arabidopsis grown under nontoxic Cs concentrations, indicating that Cs acts as an abiotic stress factor.