Assessment of routine atmospheric discharges from the Sellafield nuclear installation—Cumbria UK

Comparison between the predictions of a Gaussian plume model and a Lagrangian particle dispersion model for annual average calculations of long-range dispersion of radionuclides

“…As described by Nelson et al (2002), NAME was used to model a continuous release of radionuclides from two emission heights, of 10 and 120 m, reflecting the range of stack heights found on the Sellafield site. Scaling factors were calculated by using a 1 Bq s À1 release, so that results could be multiplied by a discharge amount in order to calculate actual concentrations and deposition values.…”

“…half-life and deposition properties. Nelson et al (2002) selected five reference nuclides: 85 Kr, 41 Ar, 131 I, 129 I and 137 Cs for their calculations. The reference radionuclides chosen represent a range of radionuclide behaviour: long-and short-lived, depositing, non-depositing and iodine radionuclide species (Table 2).…”

“…In the NAME runs, it was considered important to maximise air concentrations and depositions at the receptor points for these reactive radionuclides. For this reason, dry deposition was omitted from the calculations and instead, was obtained using a post-processing program which calculated the dry deposition at the receptor point only from the time-series of 15-min values of air concentration (Nelson et al, 2002). Values of dry deposition velocities used are presented in Table 2.…”

“…The NAME model was used previously to calculate long-range dispersion of continuous releases from the British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) site at Sellafield, in West Cumbria (UK) (Nelson et al, 2002). We use their results here as a test case by modelling atmospheric dispersion using the Gaussian model, PLUME, as used for radiological assessments under the Euratom Treaty Article 37 (Euratom, 1996), with the same receptor locations used by Nelson et al (2002) located over Western Europe.…”

“…We use their results here as a test case by modelling atmospheric dispersion using the Gaussian model, PLUME, as used for radiological assessments under the Euratom Treaty Article 37 (Euratom, 1996), with the same receptor locations used by Nelson et al (2002) located over Western Europe.…”