The Fukushima accident led to high radionuclide releases into the atmosphere for more than 3 weeks. This situation has not been assumed when the concepts of nuclear emergency preparedness were developed internationally. The results of simulations studying potential implications of Fukushima-like source terms on nuclear emergency preparedness are presented. Two hypothetical source terms are considered. Radiological consequences are assessed with the decision support system RODOS. Atmospheric dispersion calculations are based on meteorological monitoring data from June and December 2010, respectively, to study potential seasonal effects. Simulations are performed for two nuclear power plant sites in Northern and Southern Germany, respectively. These sites are chosen due to their differing meteorology and topography. Predicted radiation doses of members of the population are compared with dose reference levels actually recommended for initiating protective measures in Germany. Potential implications of general interest for nuclear emergency planning are discussed.
-The Fukushima accident has demonstrated the possibility of long-lasting releases of radionuclides from a nuclear power plant over several weeks. Within the framework of the "PREPARE" research project one work package focused on testing emergency preparedness arrangements in various countries for the special case of long lasting emissions. The aim of this study was to test whether protection strategies included in current nuclear emergency planning in various European countries could adequately reduce the radiological consequences of Nuclear Power Plant accidents with long lasting severe releases. This paper presents an overview and the conclusions of this study, more details of the work can be found in the following articles.
-The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) accident has demonstrated the possibility of longlasting releases of radionuclides from a damaged NPP over several weeks. The objective of this paper is to provide long lasting potential environmental source terms (ST) for the typical reactor units that are being in operation in various European countries. The main aim is to provide environmental ST for testing of the current off-site nuclear emergency planning in European countries with accident scenarios based on lessons learned from the Fukushima accident and to derive recommendations how to improve the current planning. There are described the environmental ST's for three, the most frequent, reactor types -Pressurizer Water Reactor (PWR), Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) a and VVER-440 (VVER = Russian acronym for PWR) that are under operation in Germany, Slovakia, Finland and Spain, but they can be considered as typical for NPP's under operation in another European countries, too.
A two-step concept is proposed in order to derive a consistent set of intervention levels for early (sheltering, evacuation) and late (relocation/resettlement, returning) protective actions that have to be considered in radiation emergency planning. In the first step, the dose ratios of the projected effective doses have to be calculated for four defined time periods, which correspond with the integration times for sheltering and relocation. In the second step, it is necessary to adopt an intervention level for one protective action or a more general reference level for a certain time period as, for example, the reference level recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Publication 103 in 2007. The adopted intervention level or reference level and the relationships between the projected effective doses are used to derive a consistent set of intervention levels for early and late protective actions. To illustrate the two-step concept, four sets of intervention levels are exemplarily derived for two accidental releases from nuclear power plants.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.