Eta-CALPUFF Meteorological Plume Analysis to DeterminePotential Casualties Due to Catastrophic Failures atUS/Canada Border Nuclear Power Plants

摘要

Industrial facilities in bordering nations, Canada and Mexico, pose a potential security and healthrisk to the Continental United States (CONUS). These sites which include chemical facilitiesand nuclear power plants pose a severe health risk in the event of catastrophic failure due to theirproximity to United States (US) civilian populations. An estimate for the initial plume releaseand spread from a catastrophic failure at a US/Canada nuclear power plants is estimated withmeteorological plume analysis. The modeling system consists of a “hybrid modeling system” inwhich the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Eta model, a prognosticmodel, is used as input to create diagnostic wind fields with the California Meteorological Model(CALMET) for the California Puff Model (CALPUFF). For the year 2004, EDAS (Eta 40 kmwith Data Assimilation) model data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)archive were examined to choose cases with prevailing winds blowing towards United Statespopulations. CALMET and CALPUFF were used with this Eta data set to estimate plume spreadfor the worst-case scenarios. Populations exposed to various concentration levels of radioactiveor chemical agents as predicted with CALPUFF were estimated by using the Gridded PopulationDatabase of the World (GPW), a management tool developed by various universities andagencies.