CUSTOMIZATION OF RODOS SYSTEM FOR OPERATIONAL USE IN EMERGENCY CENTERS Mieczyslaw Borysiewicz Institute of Atomic Energy 05-400 Otwock-Swierk, Poland tel: + 48 (22) 7180010 e-mail:
[email protected] Slawomir Potempski Institute of Atomic Energy 05-400 Otwock-Swierk, Poland tel: + 48 (22) 7180010 e-mail:
[email protected]
SUMMARY The paper deals with problems of customization of the European Union’s RODOS system for operational use in emergency centers. Areas that need special attention include: 1) the structure and format of on-line meteorological and radiological monitoring data 2) meteorological forecasts, based on using of regional/national weather predictions models 3) geographical, demographic, agricultural and economic data 4) emergency plans and criteria for the introduction of countermeasures, and 5) parameterization of food-chain and ingestion models, including identification of radioecological regions, determined by prevailing agricultural production regimes, share of given soil types in agriculture production of different plants, growing periods of plants, feeding regimes for domestic animals, human consumption habits, etc. I. BACKGROUND A decision support system RODOS for the off site emergency management of nuclear accidents has been developed within the framework of the R&D program of EU. The system has been designed to be comprehensive, generally applicable across Europe and capable of providing the basis of an integrated and coherent response to any future accident. Bringing the RODOS into operational use is clearly the responsibility of the respective countries. Poland is committed to integrating the RODOS decision support system into its emergency arrangements. National regulations require the President of the National Atomic Energy Agency (NAEA) to be responsible in Poland for crisis management in case of a nuclear emergency. For this reason the Center for Radiological Events (CEZAR) has been
Roman Zelazny Institute of Atomic Energy 05-400 Otwock-Swierk, Poland tel: + 48 (22) 7180010 e-mail:
[email protected]
established under the NAEA supervision. During an emergency situation a personnel of the Department of Radiation and Nuclear Safety (DRNS) and other departments of NAEA, together with experts from the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (CLRP), the Institute of Atomic Energy (IAE) and other institutions will constitute the staff of CEZAR. During normal situation the staff of DRNS is responsible for monitoring radiation situation, having access to the national radiological monitoring network provided by CLRP. The National RODOS Center (NRC) is located in CEZAR of NAEA. CEZAR is also designated to operate and maintain the RODOS system and communication links and to monitor the input/output of the RODOS system1,2 in normal operation and in emergencies. The following institutions interacts with the CEZAR: • Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (CLRP): Provides the connection with the national radiological monitoring network. Interactive user in normal operation. • Institute of Atomic Energy (IAE): Interactive user and supplier of dedicated real-time meteorological prognosis databases, based on appropriate links. IAE will also play a role of the Technical Support Organization. IAE – situated in the Swierk Center - is the only place in Poland, where nuclear facilities are located. • Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMWM): supplier of real-time meteorological monitoring data, providing access to the GTS of the WMO. Interactive user in normal operation.
All these institutions have communication lines to CEZAR and the exchange of information has been prepared in such a way as to allow for smooth integration with the generic RODOS system 3,4. II. RADIOLOGICAL DATA The CLRP is responsible for radiological monitoring in Poland. At present two networks are used: - the first one utilizes existing meteorological network (METPAK) and the second one ARGOSNT system. The measurement system operates in four modes: normal, elevated (if a possibility of an increase of radioactive contamination exists), emergency (results of measurements exceed established emergency levels) and post emergency. The whole national radiological monitoring system consists of the following stations: 9 fully automatic early warning alarm stations (part of the Danish ARGOS-NT system), 10 early warning alarm stations belonging to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry, 9 early warning aerosol stations belonging to NAEA, 49 sanitary epidemiological stations belonging to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, 17 chemical agricultural stations and 19 veterinary hygiene stations belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture, 11 stations belonging to the Ministry of National Defense and 11 stations belonging to the Civil Defense. The ARGOS-NT system is also installed in CEZAR and it is possible to get replica of radiological data stored in ARGOS-NT system. The exchange of information is based on standard Microsoft SQLServer capabilities. Another type of interface to radiological data has been also developed, based on direct connection to SQL-server in CLRP from the NAEA Web server operating under Linux system. The radiological data are regularly updated and put into html documents. The following thresholds are used for alarms in the early warning system: • an increase of the gamma dose rate to 1.5 times the value of natural background and a maintained level for several hours, • air contamination, measured immediately after sampling aerosols on a filter, is over 3 Bq/m3 and during 1 hour decreases less than 20%. III. METEOROLOGICAL DATA There is one country wide meteorological network (METPAK) operated by IMWM, which is responsible for meteorological services in Poland. The raw and prognostic meteorological data are
stored in Informix database as bulletins encoded in the WMO standard formats. The coarse prognostic data come from German and British meteorological centers (Offenbach and Reading respectively). CEZAR has a direct dedicated connection to HP server of IMWM and can access meteo information via OpenMail software of HP. Up to now there is no operational numerical weather forecast for Poland, officially provided by IMWM. Only raw monitored and coarse prognostic data are available from WMO network through IMWM. Therefore a special team of IAE, as a part of the Technical Support Organization of CEZAR, will provide prognostic meteorological fields dedicated to the RODOS system, making use of the RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling System) package. The Interdisciplinary Center of Modeling (ICM) of the Warsaw University serves as an auxiliary meteorological service, complementing IMWM functions. The ICM, as a part of its R&D activity, generates numerical weather predictions for 48 hours, every day, making use of the national British meteorological model from the Bracknell MetOffice and data from WMO and IMWM. The results of coarse mesh simulations for Poland are sent to IAE daily in a special format. These data can be further downscaled for the local/regional weather numerical predictions by use of RAMS package, installed in IAE.
IV. GEOGRAPHICAL DATA One of the most important elements of RODOS implementation is the development of the country specific data sets. Most of them are stored in GIS databases in the form of numerical maps (both vector and raster types). The following geographical databases have been transferred into RODOS databases: • topographic map of 1:1000000 scale prepared by the Main Topographic Office of Polish Army (MTOPA). This map contains almost all necessary data except of: soil types, orographic data, agriculture production and economic data, • detailed orographic data prepared by MTOPA for surrounding of Swierk in Intergraph format. • topographic data surrounding of Swierk (in different scales: 1:50000, 1:25000, 1:10000) in Mapinfo format, • new set of numerical maps of the scale 1:100000 for the whole territory of Poland from
the National Inspectorate for Environment Protection will be made available for RODOS within next few months. V. FOOD-CHAIN AND COUNTERMEASURE MODELS A particular emphasis has been put on tuning of food-chain and countermeasures models. The following works have been carried out in that area: 1. Identification of 7 radiological regions, based on agriculture, vegetation and intensive growth periods The selection of 7 radiological regions is, to major extend, based on agroclimate changes and the long experience in Poland in collecting statistical agriculture data for those regions. 2. Development of the algorithm for calculating radionuclide dependent and radionuclide independent data for different radiological regions, related to the different groups of plants. 3. Development of databases containing:
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plant production, vegetable production, fruit production, animal products; Due to cooperation with the Main Statistical Office in Warsaw and the Statistic Offices of 49 regions in Poland information from the country wide agricultural inventory drawn up in 1998 has been made available for the purpose of developing country specific data base for food chain and countermeasures modules of RODOS. These are detailed data on agriculture types of land use, various cultivated plant areas and plant production, cattle, animal production, building categories, pipelines for potable water use. The collected data are aggregated according to the categories used in RODOS. It will result in two level spatial resolution of the final data set with the coarse scale corresponding to regions and the fine scale to communes, country averaged components of the human diet per day/ month/year and animal diet (cows, pigs, poultry ) for all 7 regions and 49 provinces, leaf area index as a function of vegetation period for various plants specific for Poland, representing different groups identified in FDMT, Making use of available measured data for the leaf area indices of grass, winter wheat, potatoes, beet the experts from the Faculty of Plant Physiology of the Agriculture Academy in Warsaw developed functions presenting
LAI vs. time, taking into account various vegetation cycles for 7 agroclimate regions of Poland,
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plant and soil library of properties.
For the purpose of tasks 1 and 3 the following maps have been customized and their digital versions have been completed: • Maps of Poland's soils: detailed, (1:500 000) and aggregated: (8 types and 11 textural groups of soils, 1:1500 000); • Map of Poland's soils agriculture classes (1:1000 000); • 12 maps, describing the beginning of agriculture period (air temperature > 30C); vegetation period (air temperature > 50C) and intensive growth period (air temperature > 100C); • 18 maps, presenting the lengths of vegetation and intensive growth periods; • Digital map of agroclimate of Poland. The types of soils, covered by the aggregated map are the following: initial and weakly developed soils, rendzina soils, calcareous soils, brown soils (proper and leached) and deluvial (pseudo podzolic) soils, brown acid soils, podzolic and rusty soils, chernozems and gray forest soils, black earths, hydromorphic soils, alluvial soils, complex of leached brown soils and deluvial soils. These maps allow for easy handling of various approaches to define radiological regions boundaries and their possible revisions, if necessary, for Food Chain Dose Module Terrestrial (FCDMT) and Long-Term Countermeasure Terrestrial (LCMT), as well as for managing region specific data for these modules of the RODOS system. Another important set of information for the RODOS implementation is connected with countermeasure evaluation and ranking. Up to now the following groups of information have been included into data files for quantifying agriculture and decontamination countermeasures:
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derived limit for various nuclides with account of dietary habits in Poland, agriculture production (for radioecological regions and for each province), animal diets (composition and quantities) for each major soil category in each radioecological regions the soil-based countermeasures including availability of
materials and equipment needed, labor resources and the disposal of any waste),
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fractions of land covered by buildings, permeable surfaces such as soil and grass and impermeable surfaces such as roads and paved areas; population living in this area, time spent at each location, shielding of representative building types; feasible decontamination techniques and available equipment resources.
To assist the transformation of administrative unit data into geographic grids, a digital map of administration units in the ArchInfo format has been developed. It contains administrative border of communes and regions. The ArchInfo functional modules are used to handle this database of collected information to produce grided data for FCDMT and LCMT. Criteria for the application of the different protection measures in Poland are based on international standards from IAEA and ICRP 26. They will be adjusted according to ICRP 60. At the Local Emergency Center Swierk, for hazards related with the research reactor MARIA, the following criteria are established for introducing different countermeasures: evacuation (effective dose > 0.05 Sv), sheltering (effective dose > 0.005 Sv), administration of stable iodine (thyroid dose > 0.05 Sv) and withdrawal of milk for terrains with ground concentration of I-131 > 55000 Bq/m3. VI CONCLUSIONS As the RODOS system is an advanced and comprehensive decision support system it needs not only a large amount of data but also tuning of its modules taking into account country specific conditions. In particular this concerns food-chain and countermeasure models. The other problems are related to connections with real-time monitoring networks. Nevertheless the advantages of the usage of the RODOS system in Europe are obvious because of easy exchange of information between neighboring countries and first of all possibility of the efficient incorporation of the advanced decision support tool into national preparedness and response procedures. REFERENCES 1. J. Ehrhardt, J. Pasler-Sauer, O. Schuele, G. Benz, M. Rafat, J. Richter, “Development of RODOS a Comprehensive Decision Support
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