Use of ARGOS in Ireland Introduction In Ireland a plan – the National Emergency been developed to provide the framework fo r co-ordinating the emergency response to al to contaminate a wi an accident or terrorist attack at a nuclear installation abroad; the re-entry of a nuclear powered satellite over Ireland. NEPNA may also be invoked as part of the emergency res incidents affecting a limited area: accidents involving nuclear powered ships or ships transporting radioactive supply contamination or by any other means. NEPNA outlines emergency notification and alerting, responsibilities of the relevant coordination, implementation of countermeasures and The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) has been assigned particular assessment of the incident, on countermeasures and monito ring of the environment and divided into those related to emergency preparedness and emergency response: To fulfil its emergency preparedness role the RPII: operates an on-call system to facilitate a rapid response to accident. Arrangements are in place so th at a duty officer, a senior member of time following such a notification; operates and maintains a national mon participates in the European Radiologi cal Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP) whereby monitoring data is routinely excha provides advice to the Irish Government threats, the adequacy of emergency preparedness arrangements and nuclear emergency exercises; participates in a range of internal, maintains a number of systems to s upport its emergency response operational sion support system ARGOS (Accident Reporting and Guidance System) and a web based Emergency Response Management Information System (ERMIS) to facilitate the e critical information within the Instit ute during an emergency or crisis; and operate a radioanalytical laboratory to maintain capability for the measurement of environmental samples. To fulfil its emergency response role make a technical assessment of the cons equences of accidents with the potential to impact on Ireland by gathering all of the available information relevant to such an accident and to assess the consequence for the Irish population; and protective measures to minimise the radiation analyse environmental and food samples. analysis of air filters and other environm ental samples will be crucial to making an accurate assessment of the accident cons equences. In the longer term testing of foodstuff is vital to the implementation of eff respond to media enquires and issue informa emergency and its potential consequences; provide other services, where required, such other agencies involved in monitoring. ary tool for technical assessment of, and radiological emergency. The installation of ARGOS in the RPII features the following components: the ARGOS database which contai ns radiological monitoring data data (e.g. dose coefficients, nuclear RIMPUFF (RIsų-Mesoscale-PUFF), an at mospheric dispersion model driven by meteorological forecast data provided FDM (Food and Dose Module), a model for simulation of contamination of the food chain and assessment of doses following a nuclear or radiological emergency; and the PMS (Permanent Monitoring Stations) da The ability to overlay measured data and model results on geographical maps and to export these to standard Geographical Informa tion Systems (GIS) for further analysis are ularly useful functions of ARGOS. l assessment of a nuclear or radiological emergency as follows: information; to report results in the most efficient and useful format; and to provide technical advice on possible countermeasures. release phases of an accident, RIMP UFF would be used to predict information became available. A simple sensit ivity analysis would also be performed by RIMPUFF results would also be exported to a GIS and compared with independent II and from sources such as the World Once a release had occurred, more informati nuclear facility and the potential evolution of the accident, including an estimate of the The RPII’s technical assessmen t procedures are currently undergoing an extensive review. source term (by this stage po ssibly corroborated by measurem ents from stack or site ng process would be repeated once more at this stage. Advice on countermeasures would be reviewed ARGOS would be used to compare atmosphe measurements from permanent and mobile monitoring stations in order to assess data would be overlaid with atmospheric As the emergency evolved, FDM would be used to predict elevated activity concentrations in food and animal feed. Th ese calculations would be used by the RPII, the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAF d), the importance of m decreases as more monitoring results become Case Study 1: Integration of ARGOS with the RPII’s Emergency Response Management Information System (ERMIS) ERMIS supports the RPII’s role under NEPNA. a simple message board application for whereby users can enter information rele vant to the decision making process; an emergency contact database; and the latest information from international and bilateral notification systems. The system is interfaced with the ARGOS decision support system to provide a number of important functions: Publication of ARGOS results dissemination of RIMPUFF and FDM result s. As a result, all staff can access single snapshot image or animated sequences of images for each timestep of the of the model run. RIMPUFF ‘Auto-forecasts’ te, at scheduled times, predefined RIMPUFF prognoses driven by the latest HIRLAM weather forecast which is updated every six hours. The input parameters employed in these model runs contamination (or worst case scenario). Th duty officer, an immediate assessment at any of the featured reactor sites. In a real emergency these results would be quickly superseded by more rigorous modelling of the accident situation. Gamma dose rate measurements from the Irish and UK Developments proposed for the RPII in the fu ture are to implemen t an improved logging system to ensure that all decisions and actions taken are transparent a Case Study 2: FDM: Implementation and Use in a National Emergency Exercise e population due to ingestion of contaminated foodstuffs is highly gion where deposition takes place. For this reason, many model input parameters, such as those describing the climate and agricultural production systems, ha region. In 2005 FDM was configured for Irish conditions by the RPII. The input data administrative regional boundaries; main agricultural crops and their production in each region; growing season, maturity and foliar covera main domestic animal products and feeding rations throughout the year for each animal; human consumption rates for the main domestically produced foodstuffs; and soil types. d with ARGOS, this data can be easily entered into the ARGOS database and modified easily. Often this data is available in the ESRI GIS Shapefile format which can be importe d directly into the ARGOS database. The INEX exercise programme is an internati onal series of exercises co-ordinated by the intervention and countermeasures. November 2005 and involved players from all Government departments and State bodies exercise purposes it was assumed that a major nearest nuclear facility to Ire land, the Wylfa Magnox reactor on the west coast of Wales, 110 km from the east coast of Ireland. to test the consequence management issues of a major countermeasures. It was an ideal opportunity to ‘test’ the adapted FDM. The model was cted food products and animal feeds arising from the accidental release. I ngestion doses for the selected foodstuffs were also calculated. The results were successfu lly used by the RPII and by Agricultural and Pattern. The isocurves show 100 kBq/m2 and 1000 kBq/m2 Elevated Radioiodine Concentration in Cow’s Milk Calculated by County , Radiocaesium and Radiostrontium A future development may be to implement a countermeasure model in the Irish ARGOS system. Currently FDM results provide a pi cture of the worst case situation as it is assumed that no actions are taken to mitigate the effects of radioactive contamination and that ‘normal life’ continues as would be implemented to reduce the potential ingestion dose. A countermeasure model would enable the RPII to assess the benefits in terms of dose reduction of such actions or combinations of actions. This would en able a more realistic simulation of the consequences of an accident to be provided.
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