Comparison of CALPUFF and HYSPLIT Models for Atmospheric Dispersion Simulations of Radioactive Materials

Abstract

In this study, the atmospheric dispersion of radioactive material ( 137 Cs) was simulated with regard to its impact within a 50-km radius from the Kori Nuclear Power Plant (NKPP) based on two different types of models (the nonsteady-state puff model CALPUFF and the lagrangian model HYSPLIT) during the spring of 2012 (May 2012). The dispersion distribution of 137 Cs calculated in the CALPUFF model was similar to that of the HYSPLIT model, but the magnitudes of differences in its spatio-temporal concentrations between the two models were different. The Cs concentrations simulated by the CALPUFF were significantly lower than those of the HYSPLIT due to a limitation of puff models (e.g. puff size growth over time). The CALPUFF had the advantage of determining the dispersion of radioactive materials and their impacts on the surrounding regions, compared with the HYSPLIT that had high concentrations of 137 Cs in only small local areas with the movement of air masses along the local winds.

A Kalman Filter-Based Approach for Online Source-Term Estimation in Accidental Radioactive Dispersion Events

“…In the Eulerian approach, transport equations are discretised and numerically approximated [5,6]. In the Lagrangian approach, a large number of pseudo-particles of the released agent are tracked along their trajectories [7,8]. Such trajectories are determined as the result of two contributions, i.e., deterministic advection by the wind field and stochastic diffusion due to turbulence.…”