A study on the public evacuation time estimates for radiological emergency plan and preparedness of Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant site

When an accident occurs at nuclear power plant and radionuclide material is released to the area around the plant, public evacuation is considered as a measure to protect the safety of the residents nearby. This study draws factors required to estimate evacuation time and make estimation of the time to evacuate all residents from the EPZ of Wolsong site in consideration of traffic condition in the neighborhood and on the basis of field data around the site for each factor. The traffic capacity and the traffic volume by season were investigated for the traffic analysis and simulation within EPZ Wolsong site. As a result, the background traffic volume by season were established. To estimate TGT (Trip Generation Time), the questionnaire surveys were carried out for resident and transient. The TSIS code was applied to traffic analysis in the events of daytime/night and normal/adverse weather under normal day/summer peak traffic condition. The results showed that the evacuation time required for total vehicles to move out from EPZ took generally from 118 to 150 minutes. The evacuation time took longer maximum 17 minutes at night than daytime during summer peak traffic