Speaker
Description
A multipurpose health physics code was developed to provide a comprehensive and reliable computational framework for the assessment of radiation dose and associated health risk to individuals and populations. The system supports both retrospective analyses (post-event reconstruction of exposure and dose) and prospective evaluations (predictive assessments for planned or hypothetical release scenarios).
The code is designed to simulate environmental transport, fate, and exposure pathways associated with radionuclides released to the environment, as well as exposures arising from pre-existing environmental contamination. It accommodates a broad spectrum of source terms, including acute and chronic releases to atmospheric, aquatic, and terrestrial compartments. Specifically, the model handles releases to air, deep and surface water bodies, and deep and surface soil layers. In addition, it accounts for residual contamination in soil, surfaces, and other environmental media.
During the years, the soil transfer model underwent substantial refinement. The number of soil layers and internal compartments was increased to improve vertical resolution and to better represent physical heterogeneity within the soil column. In parallel, both the physical conceptualization and the numerical implementation of soil transport processes were revised and extended. These improvements included enhanced treatment of radionuclide migration, inter-layer exchange, radioactive decay and ingrowth, and time-dependent redistribution mechanisms.
More recently, the model has been further expanded to support exposure assessments involving terrestrial food chains. In particular, modules were implemented to evaluate radionuclide transfer from soil to crops and animal products, thereby enabling the assessment of ingestion doses arising from contaminated plant-based and animal-derived foodstuffs. These extensions significantly broaden the applicability of the code to comprehensive environmental and human health risk assessments.