TY - JOUR
T1 - Time resolution requirements for civilian radioxenon emission data for the CTBT verification regime
AU - De Meutter, Pieter
AU - Camps, Johan
AU - Delcloo, Andy
AU - Deconninck, Benoît
AU - Termonia, Piet
N1 - Score=10
PY - 2018/2/1
Y1 - 2018/2/1
N2 - The capability of the noble gas component of the International Monitoring System as a verification tool for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is deteriorated by a background of radioxenon emitted by civilian sources. One of the possible approaches to deal with this issue, is to simulate the daily radioxenon concentrations from these civilian sources at noble gas stations by using atmospheric transport models. In order to accurately quantify the contribution from these civilian sources, knowledge on the releases is required. However, such data are often not available and furthermore it is not clear what temporal resolution such data should have. In this paper, we assess which temporal resolution is required to best model the 133Xe contribution from civilian sources at noble gas stations in an operational context. We consider different sampling times of the noble gas stations and discriminate between nearby and distant sources. We find that for atmospheric transport and dispersion problems on a scale of 1000 km or more, emission data with subdaily temporal resolution is generally not necessary. However, when the source-receptor distance decreases, time-resolved emission data become more important. The required temporal resolution of emission data thus depends on the transport scale of the problem. In the context of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, where forty noble gas stations will monitor the whole globe, daily emission data are generally sufficient, but for certain meteorological conditions, better temporally resolved emission data are required.
AB - The capability of the noble gas component of the International Monitoring System as a verification tool for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is deteriorated by a background of radioxenon emitted by civilian sources. One of the possible approaches to deal with this issue, is to simulate the daily radioxenon concentrations from these civilian sources at noble gas stations by using atmospheric transport models. In order to accurately quantify the contribution from these civilian sources, knowledge on the releases is required. However, such data are often not available and furthermore it is not clear what temporal resolution such data should have. In this paper, we assess which temporal resolution is required to best model the 133Xe contribution from civilian sources at noble gas stations in an operational context. We consider different sampling times of the noble gas stations and discriminate between nearby and distant sources. We find that for atmospheric transport and dispersion problems on a scale of 1000 km or more, emission data with subdaily temporal resolution is generally not necessary. However, when the source-receptor distance decreases, time-resolved emission data become more important. The required temporal resolution of emission data thus depends on the transport scale of the problem. In the context of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, where forty noble gas stations will monitor the whole globe, daily emission data are generally sufficient, but for certain meteorological conditions, better temporally resolved emission data are required.
KW - ATM
KW - CTBT
KW - Medical isotope production facilities
KW - Radioxenon monitoring
UR - http://ecm.sckcen.be/OTCS/llisapi.dll/open/31585888
U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvrad.2017.11.027
DO - 10.1016/j.jenvrad.2017.11.027
M3 - Article
SN - 0265-931X
VL - 182
SP - 117
EP - 127
JO - Journal of environmental radioactivity
JF - Journal of environmental radioactivity
ER -