The PREPARE project aimed to close gaps that had been identified in nuclear and radiological preparedness following the first evaluation of the Fukushima disaster. Among others, the project addressed the review of existing operational procedures for dealing with long lasting releases, cross border problems in monitoring and food safety and further developed missing functionalities in decision support systems ranging from improved source term estimation and dispersion modelling to the inclusion of hydrological pathways for European water bodies. In addition, as the management of the Fukushima event in Europe was far from optimal, a so called Analytical Platform has been developed exploring the scientific and operational means to improve information collection, information exchange and the evaluation of such types of disasters. This was achieved through a collaboration of industry, research and governmental organisations in Europe.

NCSR Demokritos was WP Leader in the topic of upgrading atmospheric dispersion modelling in Decision Support Systems (DSSs). In this framework an inverse modelling methodology has been developed, validated and integrated in the DSS RODOS to calculate an unknown “source term” (i.e., the amount of radionuclides released by an accident in the atmosphere) based on assimilation of radiation measurements in a dispersion model. In the same WP, the atmospheric dispersion modelling of particulate matter in RODOS has been improved through detailed modelling of dry and wet deposition.

NSRD Demokritos contributed also in the development of the Analytic Platform by designing crowd sourcing tools, organized in two services: the Web Content Discovery Service and the Ask the Expert Service.

Partners:
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany (Coordinator)
• Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire, France
• Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, Norway
• VUJE Inc., Slovak Republic
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
• National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos”, Greece
• Health Protection Agency, United Kingdom
• Ukrainian Center of Environmental and Water Projects, Ukraine
• Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz, Germany
• Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Spain
• Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Belgium
• Institute da Radioprotection et de Sureté Nucléaire, France
Etc.

Publications
W. Raskob, T. Schneider, F. Gering, S. Charron, M. Zheleznyak, S. Andronopoulos, G. Heriard-Dubreuil and J. Camps (2016) “Innovative integrative tools and platforms. Key results of the PREPARE European Project”, Radioprotection 51(HS2), S59-S61 (2016), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/radiopro/2016032
I. Kovalets, S. Andronopoulos, R. Hofman, P. Seibert and I. Ievdin (2016) “Advanced method for source term estimation and status of its integration in JRODOS”, Radioprotection 51(HS2), S121-S123 (2016), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/radiopro/2016046
S. Andronopoulos, T. Schichtel, G. Efthimiou and J.G. Bartzis (2016) “Updates of the atmospheric dispersion models inside the Local Scale Model Chain of RODOS regarding particles”, Radioprotection 51(HS2), S101-S103 (2016), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/radiopro/2016041
S. Andronopoulos (2016) “Overview of WP4: extension of atmospheric dispersion and consequence modelling in Decision Support Systems”, Radioprotection 51(HS2), S93-S95 (2016), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/radiopro/2016039