Numerical simulation for a long-range dispersion of a pollutant using Chernobyl data

A Lagrangian particle model has been developed and applied to a long-range atmospheric dispersion. The developed numerical model has been tested by comparing its predictions with the 137Cs air concentrations recorded over European areas during the Chernobyl accident. Sensitivity studies were performed to investigate the numerical accuracy according to a variation of the parameters such as the mixing height and diffusion coefficient in the model. From a comparative study, the calculated concentration distributions were more sensitive to a variation of the mixing height than to the changes of the diffusion coefficient values. Also, the calculated concentrations agreed with the time series of the measured ones at some sampling points.