Calculating the consequences of recovery, a European model for inhabited areas

Abstract

Abstract. The European Model for Inhabited Areas (ERMIN) was developed to allow a user to explore different recovery options following the contamination of an urban environment with radioactive material and to refine an appropriate strategy for the whole region affected. The input data include a description of the environment, initial deposition of radionuclides on to a reference surface and a description of countermeasures. Output information includes the average doses to members of the public from external exposure to gamma and beta radiation from deposited radionuclides and inhalation of resuspended radioactivity, the contamination on urban surfaces, the activity concentration in air from resuspension, the doses to workers undertaking the recovery work, the quantity and activity of waste generated and the cost and work required to implement the countermeasure. ERMIN has been designed to be implemented as a tool that supports the approach of decision-makers and allows the area to be broken down into smaller regions where different conditions prevail and different countermeasure packages are enacted.

Facilitating the Decision‐Making Process After a Nuclear Accident: Case Studies in the Netherlands and Slovakia

“…Recovery strategies 3 to 5 could also be combined with a 2‐mo relocation period, increasing the number of strategies to 8. The consequences for health, costs, and waste for each of the recovery options were evaluated using the European Model for Inhabited Areas (ERMIN2) (Charnock et al 2009, 2016). The ERMIN2 model is a tool for the analysis of recovery strategies for contaminated environments.…”

Parametric improvement for the ingestion dose module of the European ARGOS and RODOS decision support systems

“…It is however problematic that such data has still not been included in the versions of ECOSYS implemented in ARGOS and RODOS, as it clearly has great influence on the reliability of dose predictions. Some years ago, a new inhabited areas model in ARGOS and RODOS (ERMIN) was implemented [8], which distinguished between deposition velocities of aerosols of different size groups (although it was in practice only parameterised for two of the originally scheduled four groups). A similar effort is urgently needed for the crop deposition model.…”

On the requirements to establish a European radiological preparedness for malicious airborne dispersion scenarios

“…[9]). This type of dependencies have only recently been considered in the ARGOS and RODOS decision support systems, where a library of deposition velocities [10] has been introduced to distinguish between the small (slightly less than one micron) particles likely to be formed in a large nuclear power plant accident by volatile radiocontaminants like caesium, tellurium and molybdenum and the somewhat larger (typically 2-4 m) particles of more refractory contaminants (e.g., strontium, zirconium and cerium) that were for instance observed at considerable distance after the Chernobyl accident. However, the size spectra of particles that could contaminate an inhabited area in a 'dirty bomb' scenario are much more complex, and here it is essential to distinguish between different types of particle formation processes.…”