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Impact of Monthly Radioxenon Source Time-Resolution on Atmospheric Concentration Predictions

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Abstract

The general characterisation of the global radioxenon background is of interest for the verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Since the major background sources are only a few isotope production facilities, their source term has an emphasized influence on the worldwide monitoring process of radioxenon. In this work, two different datasets of source terms are applied through atmospheric transport modelling, to estimate the concentration at two radioxenon detection stations in Germany and Sweden. One dataset relies on estimated average annual emissions; the other includes monthly resolved measurements from an isotope production facility in Fleurus, Belgium. The quality of the estimations is then validated by comparing them to the radioxenon concentrations that have been sampled at two monitoring stations over the course of 1 year.

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Acknowledgments

The authors highly acknowledge the support by the National Scientific Committee Technology of INFN for the ERMES project, and the European Commission under the FP7 programme for the EUMEDGRID project (Grant RI-246589). The authors are grateful to IRE, Belgium, for the provision of data, specifically Benoît Deconninck, and to the Grid Lab of INFN and the Department of Physics of University of Roma Tre, specifically to Federico Bitelli.

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Correspondence to Michael Schöppner.

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Schöppner, M., Kalinowski, M., Plastino, W. et al. Impact of Monthly Radioxenon Source Time-Resolution on Atmospheric Concentration Predictions. Pure Appl. Geophys. 171, 699–705 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-012-0499-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-012-0499-z

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