Comparison of U.S. NRC'S Rascal Emergency Response Code with Noaa's Hyrad Dispersion Model and Tracer Experimental Data.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Field Research Division uses the HYRad-HYSPLIT dispersion model to assess hypothetical accidental releases of airborne radioactive materials at the Idaho National Laboratory in southeastern Idaho. The State of Idaho Department of Environmental Quality Idaho National Laboratory Oversight Program provides independent assessment of these releases using a different model, RASCAL, which is the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's primary reactor-emergency response code. To confirm RASCAL is a reasonable independent assessment tool, the Oversight Program compared the two models' output for typical meteorological cases encountered at the Idaho National Laboratory. RASCAL results were also compared to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration experimental SF6 tracer data from 2013 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Both RASCAL and HYRad predicted very similar plume shapes and paths for the different meteorological cases. For typical daytime conditions, HYRad predicted slightly higher integrated air concentrations by up to a factor of two at downwind distances of less than about 40 km, then decreased below the RASCAL concentrations. The opposite was true for a nighttime release, with RASCAL giving significantly higher concentrations (by one to two orders of magnitude) at a distance of 20 km. For all the runs, RASCAL predicted significantly less total deposition, except at the outer edges of the plume during a nighttime release. Most of the discrepancies are believed to be due to differences in the models' simulation algorithms and the hard-wired input parameter values used by each model (e.g., deposition velocities). For tracer data comparisons, RASCAL's straight-line Gaussian plume model calculated maximum 2 h predicted-to-observed concentration ratios of 0.8 to 1.8 for unstable conditions and 0.4 to 0.9 for neutral conditions.

Radioactive cesium isotope ratios as a tool for determining dispersal and re-dispersal mechanisms downwind from the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.

Fractionation of the two longer-lived radioactive cesium isotopes ((135)Cs and (137)Cs) produced by above ground nuclear tests have been measured and used to clarify the dispersal mechanisms of cesium deposited in the area between the Nevada Nuclear Security Site and Lake Mead in the southwestern United States. Fractionation of these isotopes is due to the 135-decay chain requiring several days to completely decay to (135)Cs, and the 137-decay chain less than one hour decay to (137)Cs. Since the Cs precursors are gases, iodine and xenon, the (135)Cs plume was deposited farther downwind than the (137)Cs plume. Sediment core samples were obtained from the Las Vegas arm of Lake Mead, sub-sampled and analyzed for (135)Cs/(137)Cs ratios by thermal ionization mass spectrometry. The layers proved to have nearly identical highly fractionated isotope ratios. This information is consistent with a model where the cesium was initially deposited onto the land area draining into Lake Mead and the composite from all of the above ground shots subsequently washed onto Lake Mead by high intensity rain and wind storms producing a layering of Cs activity, where each layer is a portion of the composite.