Emergency response for nuclear accidents

The Air Quality group is involved in emergency response mainly for accidental radioactive releases. This activity has lately been extended to radioactive debris from potential nuclear weapons.

The MATCH model is the basic component for emergency response system combined with a Java based graphical user interface, and a web server for dissemination of model calculations. The emergency response system can be activated on short notice to provide forecast concentration and deposition fields, and disseminated to the relevant authorities by the web server. The emergency system has been developed in cooperation with the Swedish Radiation Protection Agency, SSI.

The the emergency response version of MATCH is also an integrated part of the Real time Online Decision Support system, RODOS, a comprehensive decision-aiding system in case of a nuclear accident in Europe..

For the specific purpose of emergency response the MATCH model includes a Lagrangian particle model, used in the initial phase of the release, in order to describe sub-grid scale dispersion that the Eulerian part of MATCH is not able to resolve.

Example

The Chernobyl accident prompted a strong development in the field of modelling of accidental releases and long-range transport. The animation below shows an application of the MATCH emergency response model to this historic accident.

Click on the picture to see the animation.