Radiological Assessments
Westlakes Scientific Consulting are experts in radiological impact assessment to humans from environmental discharges and disposals. Members of staff at WSC sit on National Dose Assessment Working Group (NDAWG) and ICRP working groups, keeping at the forefront of developments in dosimetry.
Over the last 15 years WSC have used state-of-the-art radiological protection advice, concepts and procedures to assess individual and collective doses for the:
- civil nuclear industry (e.g. reactors, fuel production and reprocessing),
- radio-pharmaceutical,
- ore mining,
- commercial laboratories and government departments, executive agencies and devolved administrations.
Robust assessments have been conducted in response to potential litigation, public concerns, compliance with legislation (e.g. RSA and Euratom treaty Article 37) and BPEOs. WSC include the latest recommendations by the ICRP, the HPA and other international bodies (such as the US-EPA)
WSC are able to calculate dispersion and the accumulation of radioactivity in the environment and foodstuffs with both proprietary and bespoke modelling codes. WSC have experience in developing, sensitivity testing and validating models.
A range of models used at WSC for radiological assessment purposes include:
- EAS - emergency assessment software developed by WSC for Sellafield Ltd
- MARISA – a dispersion model that has dose assessment capability
- PC-CREAM – commercially available software for collective dose estimation
- UKADMS
- R91
- LandFOOD
- MONDRIAN
- MIKE21
- MODFLOW
- POSEIDON
- VERSE
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WSC skills and experience in radiological assessment include:
- completed post-closure assessments, with timescales of the order of thousands of years, for the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg and for other nuclear facilities with in-situ contamination
- developed and validated biosphere and site scale groundwater flow models
- calibration and validation of our models with environmental monitoring data collected from the field
- use of geo-referenced input data in models
- integration of modelling systems and their outputs within commercial GIS packages
- compilation of habit data for BNFL and the Food Standards Agency
- development of parameter datasets on both food consumption and occupational/leisure activities
- carried out occupational exposure reconstruction work in mining and smelting industries.
- development of uncertainty analysis methods
- produced numerous peer-reviewed publications
- management of a statutory 85Kr monitoring programme for Sellafield Limited
- review of the environmental monitoring and radiological impact assessment reports for Sellafield
- conducted direct assessments of external radiological dose using a portable gamma-spectrometer to measure off-site 41Ar
The radiological assessment services that WSC can offer include:
- Radiological and conventional environmental impact assessments.
- Radiological assessment of natural emissions from industrial processes.
- Model validation using discharge information on krypton and argon.
- Interpretation of particle size analysis of dust particles at a mining site and predictions of levels of contaminants inhaled by workers.
- Historical reconstruction from environmental records of airborne pollutants in different plants of a complex industrial site, and from these, estimating cumulative exposures of plant workers to heavy metals and naturals.
- Investigating the impact of a sealock gate on the hydrodynamics and sediment transport of an estuary.
- Interpretation of monitoring methods and results supplied by customers in a number of industry sectors.
- Radiological dose assessment, food chain, surface and ground water, and aerial dispersion modelling services.
- Development of bespoke assessment tools.
- Numerical model review and model inter-comparisons.
- Model validation.
- Expert elicitation of parameter values, probabilistic and uncertainty analysis.
Contact
For more information about radiological assessment services or to discuss how we could provide you with the radiological assessments you need, please contact: env.assessments@westlakes.ac.uk
Alternatively, please contact the Environmental Science Administration Office: esadm@westlakes.ac.uk (Tel: 01946 514094).
