Evaluating Reception Center Models for Radiation Response Screening Capacity and Throughput Predictions.

Area of Science:

• Public Health Preparedness
• Emergency Management
• Nuclear Safety

Background:

• Nuclear reactor jurisdictions must demonstrate population screening capacity during incidents.
• Screening capacity is measured by reception center throughput.
• Current practices often rely on smaller exercises and modeling due to resource constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the applicability and realism of existing radiation screening throughput models.
• To compare mathematical models with discrete event simulation for capacity estimation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mathematical model for throughput estimation.
• Employed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's SimPLER discrete event simulation model.
• Compared model predictions against timing data from a large-scale radiation screening exercise.

Main Results:

• The FEMA model overestimated actual throughput by 41.2%.
• The SimPLER model provided identical throughput values to the actual exercise.
• FEMA and SimPLER models predicted 50% and 3.8% higher throughputs than total exercise throughput, respectively.

Conclusions:

• Discrete event simulation models, exemplified by SimPLER, offer more accurate predictions.
• SimPLER demonstrated superior realism in estimating radiation screening and reception center throughput capacity.
• Mathematical models like FEMA may not accurately reflect real-world screening capacities.