Model Validation for External Doses Due to Environmental Contaminations by the Chernobyl Accident

Abstract

The objective of the present paper is to validate the deterministic JSP5 model for external exposures to population groups living in the areas contaminated with radionuclides after the Chernobyl accident. For this purpose inhabitants of contaminated areas wore TL-dosimeters for about 1 mo in the spring/summer periods of the years 1989 to 1994. External doses due to the Chernobyl accident were determined from the dosimeter readings by subtracting the natural background. 2,342 results for rural inhabitants and 420 results for inhabitants of the town Novozybkov passed reliability checks. These data show that the average dose in inhabitants of a rural settlement predicted by the model is in the range 0.69-1.55 of the measured values with a confidence level of 95%. Differences are attributed to settlement specific location factors, which are supported by the very good agreement of model and measurements in Novozybkov. In this case location factors of the model were obtained from Novozybkov directly.

Radiation exposure to the population of Europe following the Chernobyl accident

“…The methods of dose estimation were tailored to the types of radiation data available in each particular country. Local experts provided dose estimates for Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, where extensive work has been undertaken developing and validating methods for dose reconstruction (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23) . For less affected European countries, information on country-specific radiation data and dose estimates was either obtained from local experts: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania and Switzerland; and/or from published data: Austria (24)(25)(26)(27)(28) , Belgium (29) , Bulgaria (30) , Croatia (31,32) , the Czech Republic (33,34) , Estonia (35) , Finland (36) , France (37) , Greece (38,39) , Hungary (40) , Italy (41,42) , Lithuania (43,44) , Norway (45,46) , Serbia and Montenegro (47) , Slovakia (48,49) , Sweden (50) , Switzerland (51) and the United Kingdom …”

“…The behavioural factors, BF r and BF u , were taken to be 0.36 and 0.18 for the rural and the urban populations, respectively, for the estimation of the doses delivered in 1986; for the estimation of the doses delivered in the following years, the values of BF r and BF u , were taken to be 0.31 and 0.16, respectively (1,5,17) .…”

“…Following this, the most severe nuclear accident to date, large amounts of radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere from the destroyed nuclear reactor, including (1.2À1.8) Â 10 18 Bq of 131 I, and $1.4 Â 10 17 Bq of long-lived 134 Cs and 137 Cs (1) . Atmospheric transport of these and other radionuclides caused serious contamination in Belarus and in Ukraine, as well as in the western part of the Russian Federation close to the Chernobyl power plant.…”

External and internal irradiation of a Rural Bryansk (Russia) population from 1990 to 2000, following high deposition of radioactive caesium from the chernobyl accident

“…For adults (> 15 years), we used a product of the two conversion factors, E/D surface , of 0.92 Sv/Gy (24,25). For school children we multiplied the dosemeter reading by 0.95 Sv/Gy to obtain the effective dose (26). The same values were used during the whole study period.…”

Probabilistic Assessment of Doses to the Public Living in Areas Contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident

“…Most people within the 20 km from the nuclear power plant were rapidly evacuated within a few days after the accident (evacuation scenario no. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. However, some areas including Namie Town, Katsurao Village, Iitate Village, Minami Soma City, and Kawamata Town were later designated as "deliberate evacuation areas" based on environmental monitoring data (evacuation scenario no.…”