Title: Large-eddy simulation studies for predicting plume concentrations around nuclear facilities using an overlapping technique

Authors: Hiromasa Nakayama; Tetsuya Takemi

Addresses: Environment and Radiation Sciences Division, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Ibaraki, Japan ' Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Uji, Japan

Abstract: We propose, in emergency response to nuclear accidents, a practical and quick local-scale atmospheric dispersion calculation method using an overlapping technique. First, we pre-calculated large-eddy simulations (LESs) of plume dispersion around an actual nuclear facility under idealised atmospheric conditions with 36 wind-direction cases and made a dataset of the 10-minute averaged concentrations for each wind direction case. Then, we conducted LESs of plume dispersion for 1-hour periods under realistic atmospheric conditions using the meteorological data and estimated the spatial distributions of the 1-hour averaged concentrations by overlapping the pre-calculated concentration data depending on the frequency of the mean wind directions. It is shown that the concentration distribution patterns are well reproduced in comparison to those under the realistic conditions. It is concluded that the atmospheric dispersion calculation method using the overlapping technique has potentially a high performance in emergency responses to nuclear accidents.

Keywords: large-eddy simulation; LES; plume dispersion; overlapping technique; emergency response.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2018.099153

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2018 Vol.64 No.1/2/3, pp.125 - 144

Received: 24 Jan 2018
Accepted: 29 Sep 2018
Published online: 16 Apr 2019 *

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