The International Monitoring System contains up to 80 stations around the world that have aerosol and xenon monitoring systems designed to detect releases of radioactive materials to the atmosphere from nuclear tests. A rule of thumb description of plume concentration and duration versus time and distance from the release point is useful when designing and deploying new sample collection systems. This paper uses plume development from atmospheric transport modeling to provide a power-law rule describing atmospheric dilution factors as a function of distance from the release point.
Revised: July 23, 2015 |
Published: June 22, 2015
Citation
Eslinger P.W., T.W. Bowyer, I.M. Cameron, J.C. Hayes, and H.S. Miley. 2015.Atmospheric plume progression as a function of time and distance from the release point for radioactive isotopes.Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 148.PNNL-SA-107734.doi:10.1016/j.jenvrad.2015.06.022