INGESTION DOSE MODEL FOR TRANSPORTATION RISK ASSESSMENT

Risks of transporting radioactive materials can be estimated using the program and code RADTRAN (Neuhauser, et al., 2000; Weiner, et al., 2009). Potential radiation doses to various receptors are calculated by RADTRAN, including doses from routine, incident-free transportation and from transportation accidents. If radioactive material is released from a transportation vehicle in an accident, agricultural products in the plume footprint could be contaminated. This paper discusses a method for calculating radiation doses from ingestion of such radioactively contaminated food stuffs. Transportation of radioactive materials occurs throughout the United States, so that agricultural products along many transportation corridors could be affected. This paper discusses a method for calculating radiation doses from ingestion of such radioactively contaminated food stuffs. However doses from ingesting agricultural crops contaminated from a traffic accident would be very small compared to natural background radiation.