27 Feb (NucNet): Japan has made a voluntary contribution of 730,000 US dollars (544,000 euro) to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), which will increase the organisation’s capabilities to monitor the dispersion of radioactivity in the atmosphere.
Toshiro Ozawa, permanent representative of Japan to the International Organisations in Vienna, said one of the reasons for the donation was that Japan had “benefitted greatly” from objective data supplied by the CTBTO following the March 2011 accident at Fukushima-Daiichi.
He said: Our contribution is aimed at allowing the CTBTO to predict the dispersion of radioactivity with even greater precision.”
The CTBTO said that through a method called atmospheric transport modelling (ATM) the earlier movement of airborne radioactive material can be backtracked from where it is detected by a CTBTO radionuclide monitoring station. This method enables the determination of a source region (backward ATM), as was the case with the 2006 nuclear test by North Korea. If, on the other hand, an emission’s location is known, the future travel path of the radioactive material can also be predicted (forward ATM), such as during the Fukushima-Daiichi accident.
For more information see the CTBTO website: www.ctbto.org
