Environmental Modelling for Radiation Safety

EMRAS - Environmental Modelling for Radiation Safety

The IAEA's EMRAS Programme was launched at its First Combined Meeting which was held at the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna from 1 to 5 September 2003. EMRAS continued some of the work of previous international programmes in the field of radioecological modelling. The activities of EMRAS focused on areas where uncertainties remain in the predictive capability of environmental models, notably in relation to the consequences of releases of radionuclides to particular types of environment (e.g. urban and aquatic environments) restoration of sites with radioactive residues and impact of environmental radioactivity on non-human species.

Five Combined Meetings of the EMRAS Programme were held at the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna:

First Combined Meeting 1 to 5 September, 2003 78 participants from 24 countries
Second Combined Meeting 8 to 11 November, 2004 84 participants from 24 countries
Third Combined Meeting 21 to 25 November, 2005 106 participants from 31 countries
Fourth Combined Meeting 6 to 10 November, 2006 101 participants from 32 countries
Fifth Combined Meeting 5 to 9 November, 2007 99 participants from 30 countries

Final Combined Meeting

The EMRAS Programme concluded with its Fifth (and final) Combined Meeting, held from 5 to 9 November, 2007. Documents

Seven Working Groups were established and operated within the EMRAS Programme:

Theme 1 - Radioactive Release Assessment

  • Working Group 1 - Revision of IAEA Technical Report Series No. 364 “Handbook of parameter values for the prediction of radionuclide transfer in temperate environments” working group
  • Working Group 2 - Modelling of tritium and carbon-14 transfer to biota and man working group
  • Working Group 3 - The Chernobyl I-131 release: model validation and assessment of the countermeasure effectiveness working group.
  • Working Group 4 - Model validation for radionuclide transport in the aquatic system “Watershed-River” and in estuaries working group.

Theme 2 - Remediation of sites with radioactive residues

  • Working Group 1 - Modelling of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) releases and of the remediation benefits for sites contaminated by extractive industries (U/Th mining and milling, oil and gas industry, phosphate industry, etc) working group
  • Working Group 2 - Remediation assessment for urban areas contaminated with dispersed radionuclides working group

Theme 3 - Protection of the environment

Theme 1 Working Groups 1 to 4 concentrated on the assessment of radioactive release while Theme 2 Working Groups 1 and 2 considered the issues of restoration of sites with radioactive residues. Additionally, Theme 3, Working Group 1 concentrated on the area of protection of the environment.

| Last update: Tuesday, December 9, 2014.