Assessing doses to humans in the Posiva safety case

Abstract

Abstract. In Finland, Olkiluoto Island has been selected for constructing a spent nuclear fuel disposal facility. With the approaching licensing step, submitting the application for nuclear construction licence in 2012, all components of the safety case are becoming more site-specific. In order to assess compliance with regulatory requirements, a prospective deterministic dose assessment methodology based on the ICRP concept of assessing doses to the representative person was developed and implemented in the interim safety case 2009, to be further refined for the safety case 2012. To facilitate the assessment of doses to the most exposed people and other people at the evolving site, full dose distributions are derived, comprising the dose to each potentially exposed person in each generation.

On real and abstracted geometries of boreal forest plants

“…the ellipsoid being drawn around the plant individual) and their measured mean mass (fw) as input values to the ERICA assessment tools, are about 4.6 × 10 −8 Gy/h from I-129, 6.3 × 10 −12 Gy/h for Ni-59 and 2.0 × 10 −12 Gy/h for Se-79, proportionally to the source term. The order of magnitude of the dose rates is as expected in our case [9]. As seen many times earlier, e.g.…”

“…For the concentrations in the environmental media, the results from a case of a 4-mm initial hole in a single spent nuclear fuel canister combined to high groundwater flow rate in the geosphere (Sh4Q-A, [9]) for a suite of typical dominating nuclides in the assessment were utilised: 5.41 × 10 −3 Bq/kg dw of I-129, 6.50 × 10 −6 Bq/kg dw of Ni-59 and 4.98 × 10 −8 Bq/kg dw of Se-79 as the maximum concentrations in forest top soil within the 10 000-year dose assessment time window applied, for each nuclide separately (on occurrence of the maximum total dose rate, some of the nuclides show a lower concentration than their maximum). …”

Transfer of elements relevant to nuclear fuel cycle from soil to boreal plants and animals in experimental meso- and microcosms

“…Radionuclides of U ( 234 U, 235 U, 238 U) can be released during entire nuclear fuel cycle; 210 Pb is a member of the 238 U decay chain; 60 Co, 93 Mo, 59 Ni and 63 Ni are activation products of nuclear power production (STUK, 2001;Nykyri et al, 2008;Hjerpe et al, 2010), and Zn used to inhibit corrosion in pressurized water reactors produces 64 Zn and 65 Zn (Betova et al, 2011). Transfer of total element concentrations was used as a model of transfer of radionuclides, based on the assumption that uptake of stable and radioisotopes is equal (IAEA, 2010).…”

Modeling the impact of climate change in Germany with biosphere models for long-term safety assessment of nuclear waste repositories

“…Geological changes are considered in advanced planning and performance assessments for repositories for the disposal of radioactive waste in Sweden and Finland (Avila and Ekström, 2006;Hjerpe et al, 2009;Ikonen et al, 2008;Little et al, 2011;SKB, 2011). Climate change is the main driving factor for changes in the biosphere (Kirchner, 2009;Pinedo et al, 2005).…”