Monte Carlo simulation for verification of nonparametric tests used in final status surveys of MARSSIM at decommissioning of nuclear facilities

Abstract

In order to verify the statistical performance of the nonparametric tests used in the MARSSIM approach, all plausible contamination distribution types that can be encountered in a survey area should be investigated. As the first of such investigations, this study aims to perform the verification for normal distribution of the contamination in a survey area by simulating the collection of random samples from it through the Monte Carlo simulation. The results of the simulations conducted for a total of 81 simulation cases showed that Sign test and WRS test both exhibited an excellent statistical performance: 100% for the former and 98.8% for the latter. Therefore, in final status surveys of the MARSSIM approach, a high statistical performance can be expected in applying the nonparametric hypothesis tests to survey areas whose net contamination can be assumed to be normally distributed.