Speaker
Description
Following an underground nuclear explosion, fission products may be vented to the surface and transported through the atmosphere. Initial systems built for nuclear explosion monitoring were based on requirements assuming a simple release of these fission products. A more rigorous evaluation of the inventory releases will provide better requirements for IMS stations and improve analysis of detections. This work compares isotopic signatures reaching monitoring stations under complex venting scenarios. The release of fission products to the surface was modeled in two components - prompt and delayed releases - and were varied to produce 63 total scenarios (example: 0.1% gas vent prompt release and no delayed release). The transport of these radionuclides was modeled using HYSPLIT, an atmospheric transport modeling software. Various scripts were developed to automate the writing of the initialization files for a set of HYSPLIT simulation runs for a period of 366 days and to automate the execution of these simulations. This computationally intensive modeling was performed on machines at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Dilution factors for the resulting plume reaching IMS stations and detection frequencies are presented for a select number of fission products at a subset of IMS stations, corresponding to specific release scenarios.
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