Atmospheric transport, diffusion, and deposition of radioactivity

From a meteorological standpoint there are two types of initial sources for atmospheric diffusion from Plowshare applications. One is the continuous point-source plume - a slow, small leak from an underground engineering application. The other is the large cloud produced almost instantaneously from a cratering application. For the purposes of this paper the effluent from neither type has significant fall speed. Both are carried by the prevailing wind, but the statistics of diffusion for each type are different. The use of constant altitude, isobaric and isentropic techniques for predicting the mean path of the effluent is briefly discussed. Limited data are used to assess the accuracy of current trajectory forecast techniques. Diffusion of continuous point-source plumes has been widely studied; only a brief review is given of the technique used and the variability of their results with wind speed and atmospheric stability. A numerical model is presented for computing the diffusion of the 'instantaneously-produced' large clouds. This model accounts for vertical and diurnal changes in atmospheric turbulence, wet and dry deposition, and radioactivity decay. Airborne concentrations, cloud size, and deposition on the ground are calculated. Pre- and post-shot calculations of cloud center, ground level concentration of gross radioactivity, and dry and wet deposition of iodine-131 are compared with measurements on Cabriolet and Buggy. (author)