Dose to man from a hypothetical loss-of-coolant accident at the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant

At the request of the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, we used our computer codes, MATHEW and ADPIC, to assess the environmental impact of a loss-of-coolant accident at the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant, about 40 kilometres southeast of Sacramento, California. Meteorological input was selected so that the effluent released by the accident would be transported over the Sacramento metropolitan area. With the release rates provided by the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, we calculated the largest total dose for a 24-hour release as 70 rem about one kilometre northwest of the reactor. The largest total dose in the Sacramento metropolitan area is 780 millirem. Both doses are from iodine-131, via the forage-cow-milk pathway to an infant's thyroid. The largest dose near the nuclear plant can be minimized by replacing contaminated milk and by giving the cows dry feed. To our knowledge, there are no milk cows within the Sacramento metropolitan area