Transport of radioactive materials in convective clouds

Publisher Summary After the Chernobyl accident, highly radioactive particles were found at longer distances than expected. It was because either the maximum effective release height was considerably larger than previously reported or the convective currents of warm air lifted the particles upwards to layers, where different wind conditions prevail. During the early stages of the accident, convective uplift may have transported radioactive materials from lower air layers, originally transported to Sweden, to higher air layers in which materials were transported to Finland. The radiological consequences might have been different had the accident occurred in the day time, when convective clouds would have been present near Chernobyl. The present long-range transport and dispersion models developed for radioactive substances are not necessarily adequate to describe the radiological hazards, as long as convective updraft in cumulonimbus clouds is not included in the models.