The total release of xenon-133 from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident

Abstract

The accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (FD-NPP) on 11 March 2011 released large amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere. We determine the total emission of the noble gas xenon-133 (133Xe) using global atmospheric concentration measurements. For estimating the emissions, we used three different methods: (i) using a purely observation-based multi-box model, (ii) comparisons of dispersion model results driven with GFS meteorological data with the observation data, and (iii) such comparisons with the dispersion model driven by ECMWF data. From these three methods, we have obtained total 133Xe releases from FD-NPP of (i) 16.7 ± 1.9 EBq, (ii) 14.2 ± 0.8 EBq, and (iii) 19.0 ± 3.4 EBq, respectively. These values are substantially larger than the entire 133Xe inventory of FD-NPP of about 12.2 EBq derived from calculations of nuclear fuel burn-up. Complete release of the entire 133Xe inventory of FD-NPP and additional release of 133Xe due to the decay of iodine-133 (133I), which can add another 2 EBq to the 133Xe FD-NPP inventory, is required to explain the atmospheric observations. Two of our three methods indicate even higher emissions, but this may not be a robust finding given the differences between our estimates.