Calculation of the external effective dose from a radioactive plume by using Monte Carlo dose kernel integration

The radiological impact of emissions of radioactive substances from accelerator facilities is characterized by a dominant contribution of the external exposure from short-lived radionuclides in the plume. Ventilation outlets of accelerator facilities are often at low emission heights and receptors reside very close to stacks. Simplified exposure models are not appropriate and integration of the dose kernel over the radioactive plume is required. By using Monte Carlo integration with certain biasing, the integrand can be simplified substantially and an optimum spatial resolution can be achieved. Moreover, long-term releases can be modeled by sampling real weather situations. The mathematical formulation does not depend on any particular atmospheric dispersion model and the applicable code parts can be designed separately, which is another advantage. The obtained results agree within ±10% with results calculated for the semi-infinite cloud model by using detailed particle transport codes and human phantoms.