Abstract
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements has published a series of screening models for releases of radionuclides to the environment. These models have been used to prioritize radionuclides being considered in environmental dose reconstructions. The NCRP atmospheric models are also accepted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for demonstrating compliance with the constraint on releases of airborne radioactive materials to the environment from licensees other than power reactors. This study tested the NCRP atmospheric techniques by comparing annual average predicted air concentrations of radon with measured radon concentrations at 14 locations 43 m to 598 m downwind of the former U.S. Department of Energy Feed Materials Production Center (FMPC) near Fernald, Ohio, for the period 2 July 1985 to 2 July 1986. Predictions were made using five different sets of meteorological data as input: (1) NCRP default values; (2) composite FMPC site data; (3) data from the Greater Cincinnati Airport; (4) data from the Dayton, Ohio, airport; and (5) data collected at Miami University, located near Oxford, Ohio. Following are the respective medians and ranges of the ratio of the predicted to observed annual radon air concentrations for each of these sources of meteorological data: (1) 5.2, 0.9-54; (2) 1.4, 0.1-8.2; (3) 0.7, 0.1-7.2; (4) 0.7, 0.1-8.4; and (5) 0.6, 0.1-10. The stated goal of the NCRP models is to predict doses that do not underpredict actual doses by greater than a factor of 10. In this comparison, all of the meteorological data produced air concentration predictions that meet this criteria. However, to ensure that final doses meet this criterion, one would need to carefully evaluate all assumptions used to calculate dose from each of these air concentrations.
Published Version
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