Aerosol migration near Chernobyl: Long-term data and modeling

Airborne particles from a polluted area can pose a long-term health hazard to residents nearby. However, the long-term prediction of aerosol migration has never been successful. We show in the present paper that a recently proposed model (Hatano and Hatano, 1997, Atmospheric Environment 31, 2297-2303) successfully reproduces data of the aerosol concentration measured near Chernobyl over a decade. The time dependence of the resuspension factor is also reproduced very well. In fitting our theoretical formula to the data, we obtain values of the fitting parameters that provide important information on the emission quantity and removal processes of nuclides from the accident. We show that 2200 days of measurement after the accident should be enough to predict the concentration in the air 10 years later. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.