Predicting the spread of nuclear radiation from the damaged Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

Japan suffered a M9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami on March 11, 2011, which seriously damaged the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant and caused a nuclear crisis. The spread of nuclear radiation from the power plant through the atmosphere and ocean was predicted with a short-term climate forecasting model and an ocean circulation model under some idealized assumptions. If nuclear matter were leaked in the near-ground layer of 992 hPa, the climate model results show that the nuclear radiation would cover North America 10 days after the initial leakage, with the concentration at the forefront dramatically reduced to 10 millionths of the initial model concentration at the source. The radiation would span Europe in 15 days and cover much of the Northern Hemisphere in 30 days. If the initial leakage was assumed to occur in the layer 5000-m above the ground, the radiation would cover Europe in 10 days and cover much of the Northern Hemisphere in 15 days. Moreover, under the assumption that the nuclear matter leaked in the 10000-m layer, the radiation would affect much of China after 10 days. The ocean circulation model indicates that the nuclear material would be slowly transported northeast of Fukushima and reach 150°E in 50 days, and the nuclear debris in the ocean would be confined to a narrow band. Compared with the spread in the ocean, the area affected by leaked nuclear radiation in the atmosphere would be very large. Atmospheric monitors in North America and Europe will be helpful for estimating the effect in China of any leaked nuclear material. leaked nuclear material, spread, atmospheric and oceanic channels, prediction, numerical model

Radiological impact in Korea following the Fukushima nuclear accident

“…Iodine-131 was first reported in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece on March 26, 2011 (Manolopoulou, et al, 2011). Based on the atmospheric circulation model in the near-ground layer (992 hPa), Qiao et al (2011) predicted that a radioactive cloud would have arrived in China 20 d after the initial release of radioactive material from the Fukushima accident site. Takemura et al (2011) reported a numerical simulation of global transport of atmospheric particles emitted from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant.…”

Detection of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident radioactive traces in Monaco

“…More volatile and/or particulate bound isotopes and radionuclides were transported across the Pacific towards the North American continent and around the northern hemisphere (CTBTO, 2011;Takemura et al, 2011;Qiao et al, 2011). Traces of contaminated air masses were detected in most of European countries despite dispersion and washout along the trip of the contaminated air masses (Masson et al, 2011;Pittauerová et al, 2011).…”

The numerical simulation of caesium-137 transportation in ocean and the assessment of its radioactive impacts after Fukushima NPP release

“…Several groups have studied numerical simulations of radionuclides from the Fukushima NPP by the above mentioned models, such as Tsumune et al (2012) who employed ROMS to simulate the circulation of the Northeast Pacific Ocean and assess the concentration of radionuclides; Behrens et al (2012) estimated the long-term dispersion after Fukushima nuclear crisis; Qiao et al (2011) estimated the spread of nuclear radiation and predicted the time to spread to Europe and America. Note that most of them focused merely on the dispersion of contaminants, while the radioactive impacts of the contaminated water are less studied.…”