This was the second presentation of MEIS company held at International Atomic Energy Agency in the frame of MODARIA II programme. The aim was to determine the qualitative and quantitative methods that will enable validation of weather forecast modelling results with the abundant measured data from the Šoštanj database (a historical data base of air pollution tracer experiment in Šoštanj, Slovenia). The validation methods are different from those used in other fields of meteorology, because of specific problems related to air pollution modelling. These questions and methods are among important ones in this project. Feedback from top researchers in this specific field of environmental nuclear safety is very valuable for our further work. The methodology proposal was accepted by IAEA and the work is on-going in MODARIA II.
B.04 Guest lecture
The research in this project is of applied nature and it is focused on areas of potential use to the Krško Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) to assess the consequences of dispersion of emissions into the atmosphere in the event of an accident. As NPP is located in a meteorologically very complex terrain, their employees, who are potential users of dispersion tools, also need to have a more detailed knowledge and understanding of this issue. While working in the Environmental and Radiological Protection team, Ana Mary Hlebec completed her studies at the University of Environmental Protection in Velenje. In agreement with her employer NPP, she chose the topic "Comparison of the quality of various weather data and models for radiation dose estimation at regular emissions from Krško nuclear plant" for her master thesis under the supervision of Dr. Maria Zlata Božnar, a member of the project team. The work addressed different possible approaches to dispersion estimation from potential sources from the NPP: the use of different types of meteorological data and models. She also drew on the material and experience of the project team. In this way, some of the specific knowledge being developed in the Masters project has been very successfully transferred to the Nuclear group at NPP. Learning during the process of producing a Masters thesis is certainly also much more effective in the long term than the usual courses that MEIS organises for NPP environmental staff. The Masters Thesis Committee gave the thesis a score of 10.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 23637557Modelling the dispersion of pollution in the atmosphere immediately after a nuclear accident is key to taking the proper measures to protect the population. This article shows the modelling of pollutant dispersion in the atmosphere. Since the meteorologically measured data at the time of the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents are deficient, IAEA MODARIA is using the Šoštanj 1991 data set to validate the modelling (it was a well-measured industrial pollution experiment using a non-radioactive tracer. The Šoštanj 1991 data set comprises a roughly three-week list of meteorological and dispersion events for a 15 km x 15 km area over highly complex terrain. We demonstrate the validation of a weather forecast using this data set. How well the predicted wind fields matched the actual wind is evaluated graphically and statistically for 5 ground-level meteorological stations and for SODAR measurements at altitudes up to 1000 m above the basin floor. How well the temperature fields matched the actual temperatures is evaluated for 5 locations of ground-level meteorological stations, situated on the basin floor and on the peaks of nearby hills, comprising rural and urban locations. In the end we validated the pressure, precipitation and global solar radiation at a single ground-level meteorological station. The established deficiencies in weather forecasts for these meteorological variables are a main cause of errors in dispersion modelling.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 33024551