A dynamic model for evaluating radionuclide distribution in forests from nuclear accidents

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986 caused radionuclide contamination in most countries in Eastern and Western Europe. A prime example is Belarus where 23% of the total land area received chronic levels; about 1.5 x 10(6) ha of forested lands were contaminated with 40--190 kBq m-2 and 2.5 x 10(4) ha received greater than 1,480 kBq m-2 of 137Cs and other long-lived radionuclides such as 90Sr and 239,240Pu. Since the radiological dose to the forest ecosystem will tend to accumulate over long time periods (decades to centuries), we need to determine what countermeasures can be taken to limit this dose so that the affected regions can, once again, safely provide habitat and natural forest products. To address some of these problems, our initial objective is to formulate a generic model, FORESTPATH, which describes the major kinetic processes and pathways of radionuclide movement in forests and natural ecosystems and which can be used to predict future radionuclide concentrations. The model calculates the time-dependent radionuclide concentrations in different compartments of the forest ecosystem based on the information available on residence half-times in two forest types: coniferous and deciduous. The results show that the model reproduces well the radionuclide cycling pattern found in the literature for deciduous and coniferous forests. Variability analysis was used to access the relative importance of specific parameter values in the generic model performance. The FORESTPASTH model can be easily adjusted for site-specific applications.