Effects of nearby surface features on wind speed at a nuclear plant meteorological station

There is a definite cause and effect relationship between the trees in the vicinity of the meteorological tower and the wind speed at the 10-meter level on the meteorological tower. For the affected directions, horizontal wind speed is significantly reduced below what it would be for that level if the trees were not present. This effect is only slightly less for the 10:1 exposure achieved with the 1977 tree clearing, which illustrates that meeting this commonly accepted distance to height ratio does not assure representativeness of 10-meter data collected at a nuclear plant site. The somewhat stronger effect for winds from the south through southwest directions may be partly attributable to the abrupt change in roughness and elevation encountered by air moving at an angle or directly across the reservoir, which is 3.5 to 5.0 kilometers wide at this site. This general reduction in wind speed values below what would be expected at the plant location will result in biased dispersion estimates. Calculated relative concentration values for releases treated as ground-level or building-wake releases would be larger than actual concentrations. While this would provide conservative concentration values, radioactive plume transport calculations would be nonconservative. The calculated, or predicted, transport rate would be slower than the actual transport rate. Such local biases affecting the spatial representativeness of airflow at 10 meters are a primary reason for TVA's decision to use 46-meter wind data for ground-level transport and diffusion modeling in its radiological emergency preparedness program