Publications

During the summer and fall of 2021, several functional area drills were held that focused on exercising Consequence Management’s (CM) ability to extract and use data from RadResponder for the purpose of answering intermediate-phase questions presented as technical inject requests for information (RFI) in Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) Consequence Management Operational System (COSMOS) software. The scenario chosen was that of Northern Lights 2016 (NL16) which was a large-scale nuclear power plant (NPP) release exercise in the state of Minnesota. The NL16 data was extracted from the Radiological Assessment and Monitoring System (RAMS) event where it was created and was reformatted for implanting to a new RadResponder event. Next, the beta-version of a laboratory sample data simulator was used to generate more sample data that was injected to the event. Five “mini-drills” were devised with each prompt defined by a data-based need. For each drill, a team of assessment and NARAC scientists worked the problem using the drill prompt and the available data in RadResponder. The teams held a kickoff meeting, had several days to work the problem, and then reported their results as well as observations in a hotwash. Several areas for improvement in both the software and process were identified during the course of these drills. This report will document the process of addressing each RFI and the discovered gaps in both software capability and methodology so that they can be considered for future development and investment by the CM and NIRT programs.

This report documents the findings of an assessment of the Turbo FRMAC© software’s ability to implement International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidance for calculating operational intervention levels (OIL) for nuclear and radiological emergencies. This assessment is a continuation of previous work that considered IAEA OIL1 and OIL2 for evacuation and relocation protective actions. The IAEA OIL and U.S. Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC) derived response and intervention level methodologies were compared for ingestion and skin and thyroid monitoring pathways. This comparison revealed significant differences in IAEA versus FRMAC handling of these pathways, which precluded an assessment of Turbo FRMAC’s ability to implement the IAEA approach.

Abstract not provided.