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| Title | Reconstructing the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP). A unique database of Cs-137 deposition over Europe. | |
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| Author 1 | Nikolaos Evangeliou | |
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| Subject | Atmosphere | |
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| Abstract | 30 years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) accident, its radioactive releases still remain of great interest mainly due to the long half-lives of many radionuclides emitted. Observations from the terrestrial environment, which hosts radionuclides for many years after initial deposition, are important for health and environmental assessments. Furthermore, such measurements are the basis for validation of atmospheric transport models and can be used for constraining the still not accurately known source terms. However, although the “Atlas of cesium deposition on Europe after the Chernobyl accident” (hereafter referred to as “Atlas”) has been published since 1998, less than 1% of the direct observations of 137Cs deposition has been made publicly available. The remaining ones are neither accessible nor traceable to specific data providers and a large fraction of these data might have been lost entirely. The present paper is an effort to rescue some of the data collected over the years following the CNPP accident and make them publicly available. The database includes surface air activity concentrations and deposition observations for 131I, 134Cs and 137Cs measured and provided by Former Soviet Union authorities the years that followed the accident. Using the same interpolation tool as the official authorities, we have reconstructed a deposition map of 137Cs based on about 3% of the data used to create the Atlas map. The reconstructed deposition map is very similar to the official one, but it has the advantage that it is based exclusively on documented data sources, which are all made available within this publication. In contrast to the official map, our deposition map is therefore reproducible and all underlying data can be used also for other purposes. The efficacy of the database was proved using simulated activity concentrations and deposition of 137Cs from a Langrangian and a Euleurian transport model. The database consists of deposition density observations of 137Cs (n = 11,334) (in Bq/m2). Evangeliou, N., Hamburger, T., Talerko, N., Zibtsev, S., Bondar, Y., Stohl, A., Balkanski, Y., Mousseau, T. A., & Møller, A. P. (2016). Reconstructing the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) accident 30 years after. A unique database of air concentration and deposition measurements over Europe. Environmental Pollution, 216, 408–418. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2016.05.030 | |
| Temporal coverage | 1986/5/6-5/12 | |
| Spatial coverage | 36.13 N ~ 71.63 N, 10.28 W ~ 170.28 E | |
| File format | Delimited | |
| Language | English | |
| Discovery metadata record | ||
| Publisher | Center for Research in Radiation, Isotopes, and Earth System Sciences, University of Tsukuba | |
| Publication year | 2025 | |
| Publication date | 23rd of November | |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | 10.34355/NILU.00321 Data Download (182KB) | |
| Short DOI | ||
| Citation text | Evangeliou, N. (2025). Reconstructing the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP). a unique database of CS-137 deposition over Europe. [Dataset]. Center for Research in Radiation, Isotopes, and Earth System Science, University of Tsukuba. https://doi.org/10.34355/NILU.00321 | |
| Serial at center | 00321 | |
| Serial at each Univ./Institute | NILU0002 | |
| Key word 1 | Chernobyl data | |
| Key word 2 | Public datasets | |
| Key word 3 | Radiocesium | |
| Key word 4 | 137Cs | |
| Remarks | ||