Chernobyl source term estimation
The Chernobyl source term available for long-range transport was estimated by integration of radiological measurements with atmospheric dispersion modeling and by reactor core radionuclide inventory estimation in conjunction with WASH-1400 release fractions associated with specific chemical groups. The model simulations revealed that the radioactive cloud became segmented during the first day, with the lower section heading toward Scandinavia and the upper part heading in a southeasterly direction with subsequent transport across Asia to Japan, the North Pacific, and the west coast of North America. By optimizing the agreement between the observed cloud arrival times and duration of peak concentrations measured over Europe, Japan, Kuwait, and the US with the model predicted concentrations, it was possible to derive source term estimates for those radionuclides measured in airborne radioactivity. This was extended to radionuclides that were largely unmeasured in the environment by performing a reactor core radionuclide inventory analysis to obtain release fractions for the various chemical transport groups. These analyses indicated that essentially all of the noble gases, 60% of the radioiodines, 40% of the radiocesium, 10% of the tellurium and about 1% or less of the more refractory elements were released. These estimates are in excellent agreement with those obtained on the basis of worldwide deposition measurements. The Chernobyl source term was several orders of magnitude greater than those associated with the Windscale and TMI reactor accidents. However, the {sup 137}Cs from the Chernobyl event is about 6% of that released by the US and USSR atmospheric nuclear weapon tests, while the {sup 131}I and {sup 90}Sr released by the Chernobyl accident was only about 0.1% of that released by the weapon tests. 13 refs., 2 figs., 7 tabs.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 6302389
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-103413; CONF-901034-1; ON: DE91007130; TRN: 91-004617
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ASME/IEEE joint power generation conference, Boston, MA (USA), 21-25 Oct 1990
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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