Impact of changing the wet deposition schemes in ldx on 137-cs atmosperic deposits after the fukushima accident

TL;DR

This study evaluates how different wet deposition schemes in the ldX atmospheric model affect Cs-137 deposition predictions after the Fukushima accident, using higher resolution meteorological data to improve accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces an updated analysis of wet deposition schemes with high-resolution meteorological data, focusing on their impact on Cs-137 deposition modeling post-Fukushima.

Findings

Wet deposition scheme choice significantly influences deposition patterns.

Higher resolution meteorological data improves model accuracy.

No single best scheme identified due to varying evaluation criteria.

Abstract

The Fukushima-Daiichi release of radioactivity is a relevant event to study the atmospheric dispersion modelling of radionuclides. Actually, the atmospheric deposition onto the ground may be studied through the map of measured Cs-137 established consecutively to the accident. The limits of detection were low enough to make the measurements possible as far as 250km from the nuclear power plant. This large scale deposition has been modelled with the Eulerian model ldX. However, several weeks of emissions in multiple weather conditions make it a real challenge. Besides, these measurements are accumulated deposition of Cs-137 over the whole period and do not inform of deposition mechanisms involved: in-cloud, below-cloud, dry deposition. In a previous study (Qu{\'e}rel et al., 2016), a comprehensive sensitivity analysis was performed in order to understand wet deposition mechanisms. It has been shown that the choice of the wet deposition scheme has a strong impact on assessment of deposition patterns. Nevertheless, a ``best'' scheme could not be highlighted as it depends on the selected criteria: the ranking differs according to the statistical indicators considered (correlation, figure of merit in space and factor 2). A possibility to explain the difficulty to discriminate between several schemes was the uncertainties in the modelling, resulting from the meteorological data for instance. Since the move of the plume is not properly modelled, the deposition processes are applied with an inaccurate activity concentration in the air. In the framework of the SAKURA project, an MRI-IRSN collaboration, new meteorological fields at higher resolution (Sekiyama et al., 2013) were provided and allow to reconsider the previous study. An update including these new meteorology data is presented. In addition, the focus is put on the deposition schemes commonly used in nuclear emergency context.