The use of weather radar in assessing deposition of radioactivity from chernobyl across England and Wales

Abstract

Deposition of radionuclides from the Chernobyl accident depended critically on patterns of precipitation intercepting the material. This paper describes the use of the RAINPATCH model to calculate wet deposition of 137Cs over England and Wales. This puff-based model makes direct use of precipitation data measured by weather radar to determine the scavenging of airborne material. The detailed spatial and temporal resolution of when and where material was scavenged provides good agreement with measurements. Since all the data used could potentially have been available at the time, such methods could usefully be applied in real time in the event of any future accident releasing such radionuclides.