Radioecological software package: an interactive computational system to simulate the behaviour of radionuclides in semi-natural environments

RSP (Radioecological Software Package) is an interactive support system that simulates the behaviour of radionuclides in semi-natural environments and the consequences on the population in terms of the external exposure. RSP consists of three modules: the first one, soil mobility, simulates the vertical transport of radionuclide in soil using the mathematical model RABES. The second module, soil-to-plant transfer, simulates the radionuclide soil-to-plant transfer process using the mean soil concentration in the root zone and values of soil-to-plant transfer factor reported in the literature. Soil properties, vegetation types and environmental conditions are taken into consideration in the simulation process. In the third module, dose assessment, the dose-rate factor in air at a height of 1 m above ground can be calculated for sources distributed in a slab of finite thickness and sources which are exponentially distributed with depth. The calculations are performed using DAGES Model, a Monte Carlo algorithm developed to simulate the photon transport for the soil/air configuration. A free copy of RSP can be downloaded from the web site: http://imasl-apat.unsl.edu.ar.