Resuspension and atmospheric transport of radionuclides due to wildfires near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2015: An impact assessment

Evangeliou, Nikolaos; Zibtsev, Sergiy; Myroniuk, Viktor; Zhurba, Marina; Hamburger, T.; Stohl, Andreas; Balkanski, Yves; Paugam, Ronan; Mousseau, Timothy A.; Møller, Anders Pape; Kireev, S. I.

doi:10.1038/srep26062

Cited by 60 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(49 reference statements)

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“…There were also two episodes (April and August) of a large fire in the Ukrainian part of the exclusion zone in the same year. This fire is a prime example of transboundary air pollution case because smoke moved to the north toward the territory of Belarus (Evangeliou et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential threat to human health during forest fires in the Belarusian exclusion zone

Dvornik

Korol

et al. 2018

Aerosol Science and Technology

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Forest fires are of special interest for Belarus because of radioactive contamination caused by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This work aims to determine the potential activity of long-lived radionuclides in surface air caused by forest fires and to estimate the potential health threat to firefighters. The methodology is based on measurements of radioactivity released by forest fuel materials using a combustion chamber. The emissions were combined with a simple dispersion model to estimate air concentrations and dose to firefighters. The inhalation dose from transuranium elements tend to be an order of magnitude greater than that from Cesium-137. Although there was variability among sites, about half of the total dose was caused by external radiation, as measured by dosimeters. Overall effective radiation dose ranged from 3 to 7 uSv for a 1-h exposure, far below the annual effective dose of 20 mSv for workers and 1 mSv for the public. Although, the risk of exceeding annual effective dose limits is low during small fires, such data are important to inform the population and reduce social and psychological stress caused by popular sources.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential threat to human health during forest fires in the Belarusian exclusion zone

Dvornik

Korol

et al. 2018

Aerosol Science and Technology

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“…Media coverage [6][7][8] and speculations on the resuspended amounts of the radionuclides [9][10][11] that are deposited in the CEZ since the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) accident in 1986 caused public concerns about the risk of artificial radioactivity on the local and European population. It has been previously suggested that resuspension after fires is a real fact in the CEZ [12][13][14] and strongly depends on the level of contamination rather than the amount of biomass to be burned 15 . It will become a more important problem in the future 16 , due to the pronounced increase of surface temperature that will, in turn, lead to more frequent drought events and to more fires in the area 17 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering transport, deposition and impact of radionuclides released after the early spring 2020 wildfires in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Evangeliou

Eckhardt

2020

Sci Rep

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In the beginning of April 2020, large fires that started in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) established after the Chernobyl accident in 1986 caused media and public concerns about the health impact from the resuspended radioactivity. in this paper, the emissions of previously deposited radionuclides from these fires are assessed and their dispersion and impact on the population is examined relying on the most recent data on radioactive contamination and emission factors combined with satellite observations. About 341 GBq of 137 Cs, 51 GBq of 90 Sr, 2 GBq of 238 Pu, 33 MBq of 239 Pu, 66 MBq of 240 Pu and 504 MBq of 241 Am were released in 1st-22nd April 2020 or about 1,000,000,000 times lower than the original accident in 1986 and mostly distributed in Central and East Europe. The large size of biomass burning particles carrying radionuclides prevents long-range transport as confirmed by concentrations reported in Europe. The highest cumulative effective doses (> 15 μSv) were calculated for firefighters and the population living in the CEZ, while doses were much lower in Kiev (2-5 μSv) and negligible in Belarus, Russia and Europe. All doses are radiologically insignificant and no health impact on the European population is expected from the April 2020 fires. On April 4th, 2020, the Ukrainian authorities reported that a fire started at Volodymyrivka village located in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). The fire damaged up to 20 ha of forest litter, before firefighters could stop it shortly after. The same day, it was reported that another fire had started in the Kotovsky forests burning 4 ha of forest litter 1. On April 6th, 2020, actions to eliminate two more fires were reported again in Kotovsky Forest (25 ha), while on April 7th, 2020, measures were taken to extinguish a grass (6.5 ha) and a forest litter fire (4 ha) in the territory of the Kotovsky Forest in the CEZ. In the afternoon of the same day, a gust spread the grass fire across other regions of the Kotovsky forest. The fire spread to six regions of the Denysovets Forest in the CEZ 2. On April 8th, grass and litter fires continued in the Kotovsky Forest, while another fire was observed in seven regions between Poliske and Volodymyrivka villages. The same day, another grass and litter fire near the Ososhnya village was eliminated (4 ha). On April 9th, firefighting activities were still ongoing near the Chistogolovka village with a smoldering fire burning over 20 ha. Several other smoldering fires that burned shrubs were reported in the Denysovetsky forest and in Poliske and Volodymyrivka vilages 3. Firefighting activities continued the next five days in Korogodsky, Kotovsky and Denysovets regions; however, about 20 ha per day were burned. On April 14th, new fires were observed in the Parishovsky mountain, and in Janiv Lubianski approaching the city of Chernobyl. On April 15th, grass, cane and litter fires were reported in villages near the Poliske town, and in the territory of Korogodsky, Kotovsky, Denysovytsky, Paryshevsky and Lubyansky forests that ...

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“…(1) were fed to the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEX-PART version 10.3 (Pisso et al, 2019) to simulate transport and deposition. This model was originally developed for calculating the dispersion of radioactive material from nuclear emergencies, but since then it has been used for many other applications (e.g., Fang et al, 2014;Stohl et al, 2011Stohl et al, , 2013. The model has a detailed description of particle dispersion in the boundary layer and a convection scheme to simulate particle transport in clouds .…”

Section: Atmospheric Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions

et al. 2019

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Highly unusual open fires burned in western Greenland between 31 July and 21 August 2017, after a period of warm, dry and sunny weather. The fires burned on peatlands that became vulnerable to fires by permafrost thawing. We used several satellite data sets to estimate that the total area burned was about 2345 ha. Based on assumptions of typical burn depths and emission factors for peat fires, we estimate that the fires consumed a fuel amount of about 117 kt C and emitted about 23.5 t of black carbon (BC) and 731 t of organic carbon (OC), including 141 t of brown carbon (BrC). We used a Lagrangian particle dispersion model to simulate the atmospheric transport and deposition of these species. We find that the smoke plumes were often pushed towards the Greenland ice sheet by westerly winds, and thus a large fraction of the emissions (30 %) was deposited on snow-or ice-covered surfaces. The calculated deposition was small compared to the deposition from global sources, but not entirely negligible. Analysis of aerosol optical depth data from three sites in western Greenland in August 2017 showed strong influence of forest fire plumes from Canada, but little impact of the Greenland fires. Nevertheless, CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) lidar data showed that our model captured the presence and structure of the plume from the Greenland fires. The albedo changes and instantaneous surface radiative forcing in Greenland due to the fire emissions were estimated with the SNICAR model and the uvspec model from the libRadtran radiative transfer software package. We estimate that the maximum albedo change due to the BC and BrC deposition was about 0.007, too small to be measured. The average instantaneous surface radiative forcing over Greenland at noon on 31 August was 0.03-0.04 W m −2 , with locally occurring maxima of 0.63-0.77 W m −2 (depending on the studied scenario). The average value is up to an order of magnitude smaller than the radiative forcing from other sources. Overall, the fires burning in Greenland in the summer of 2017 had little impact on the Greenland ice sheet, causing a small extra radiative forcing. This was due to thein a global context -still rather small size of the fires. However, the very large fraction of the emissions deposited on the Greenland ice sheet from these fires could contribute to accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet if these fires become several orders of magnitude larger under future climate.

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Resuspension and atmospheric transport of radionuclides due to wildfires near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2015: An impact assessment

Cited by 60 publications

References 44 publications

Potential threat to human health during forest fires in the Belarusian exclusion zone

Potential threat to human health during forest fires in the Belarusian exclusion zone

Uncovering transport, deposition and impact of radionuclides released after the early spring 2020 wildfires in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions

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