Collective Radiation Doses Following a Hypothetical, Very Severe Accident to an Irradiated Fuel Transport Flask Containing AGR Fuel

摘要

Studies of the consequences of very severe, although unlikely, accidents to irradiated fuel transport flasks are made in order to evaluate risks. If an irradiated fuel transport flask carrying AGR fuel were damaged in a hypothetical accident involving a severe impact followed by a prolonged fire, a small proportion of caesium and other fission products might be released to the atmosphere from the gap inventory of broken fuel pins. The consequent radiation dose to the public would arise predominantly by direct irradiation from ground deposits and the ingestion of slightly contaminated foodstuffs. Although these collective doses must generally be estimated with the aid of computer codes, it is shown here that the worst case, when a high proportion of the radioactivity is deposited in a densely populated area, can be assessed approximately by a much simpler method, an approach which is of great value in explaining the calculation in a manner that can be readily understood. A comparison is made between the simple approach and equivalent results from the NECTAR code and the worst case is compared with an ensemble average over all weather conditions, and the relative contributions of the two main routes to collective dose are discussed. (Atomindex citation 17:017061)