Assessment in marine environment for a hypothetic nuclear accident based on the database of tidal harmonic constants

Abstract

The eleven nuclear power plants in operation, under construction and a well-planned plant in the east coast of China generally use seawater for reactor cooling. In this study, an oceanic dispersion assessment system based on a database of tidal harmonic constants is developed. This system can calculate the tidal current without a large computational cost, and it is possible to calculate real-time predictions of pollutant dispersions in the ocean. Calculated amplitudes and phases have maximum errors of 10% and 20% with observations, respectively. A number of hypothetical simulations were performed according to varying of the release starting time and duration of pollutant for the six nuclear sites in China. The developed system requires a computational time of one hour for one month of real-time forecasting in Linux OS. Thus, it can use to evaluate rapidly the dispersion characteristics of the pollutants released into the sea from a nuclear accident.

Keywords: Nuclear accident; Oceanic dispersion assessment; Real-time forecasting; Tidal current.