Physical oceanography during POLARSTERN cruise ANT-XII/4

The report presents the results of the CTD measurements carried out in the Bellingshausen Sea - an area rare of CTD measurements. The main part of the report consists of the brief description of the CTD data acquisition and processing routines, the vertical profiles of temperature, salinity and density, and of the plots of the distribution of these properties along the hydrographic sections. The final part of the report deals with the notably similar structure of the vertical density distribution at different locations if presented as a function of a non dimensional vertical co-ordinate. It is pointed out that such a distribution could be an asymptotic limit of stationary mixing along neutral surfaces.

Tritium clouds environmental impact in air into the Western Mediterranean Basin evaluation

The paper considers short-term releases of tritium (mainly but not only tritium hydride (HT)) to the atmosphere from a potential ITER-like fusion reactor located in the Mediterranean Basin and explores if the short range legal exposure limits are exceeded (both locally and downwind). For this, a coupled Lagrangian ECMWF/FLEXPART model has been used to follow real time releases of tritium. This tool was analyzed for nominal tritium operational conditions under selected incidental conditions to determine resultant local and Western Mediterranean effects, together with hourly observations of wind, to provide a short-range approximation of tritium cloud behavior. Since our results cannot be compared with radiological station measurements of tritium in air, we use the NORMTRI Gaussian model. We demonstrate an overestimation of the sequence of tritium concentrations in the atmosphere, close to the reactor, estimated with this model when compared with ECMWF/FLEXPART results. A Gaussian “mesoscale” qualification tool has been used to validate the ECMWF/FLEXPART for winter 2010/spring 2011 with a database of the HT plumes. It is considered that NORMTRI allows evaluation of tritium-in-air-plume patterns and its contribution to doses.