Radionuclide analysis of the National Data Centre preparedness exercise 2019 (NPE2019): Malaysian National Data Centre (MY-NDC) findings

Abstract

The National Data Centre preparedness exercise (NPE) simulates fictitious violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and is regularly conducted by the National Data Centres (NDCs) for NDCs. The purpose of the exercise is to increase the NDCs’ preparedness and capabilities to perform objective analysis of possible treaty violation events. In November 2019, the NPE2019 has officially launched as a combined radionuclide and waveform scenario. The scenario started as a fictitious state named RAETIA announced a reactor incident with a release of unspecified radionuclides into the atmosphere. The simulated concentration of particulate and noble gas isotopes at several radionuclide stations had been provided as a case study. Hence, the NDCsis tasked to check the consistency with the announcements as well as to identify potential source region of such release. This paper aims at presenting MY-NDC’s radionuclide analysis findings of NPE2019. The analysis involved among others, multiple nuclide isotopic analysis, and atmospheric transport modelling (ATM). Consequently, the analysis had enabled MY-NDC to identify the potential source region of the radionuclide release as well as to discriminate the source of such release, whether coming from civil nuclear facilities or nuclear tests.