July 3, 2025

When people think of a nuclear incident, what often comes to mind is the meltdown of a nuclear powerplant, such as the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. However there are many other accidents that still result in loss of life and high costs for remediation and may not get the same amount of public attention. As of 2014, there have been over 100 serious nuclear accidents and incidents. Failures due to leaks, floods and faulty wiring can overcome safety mechanisms and allow radiation leaks at powerplants and laboratories, and accidents during the transport of radioactive material can also result in the release of radioactive material. This is why a robust system to monitor and forecast the travel of a radiological material release in the atmosphere is important.

On June 17, the NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office’s Air Resource Laboratory (ARL) signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation (EPA ORIA). This agreement will improve the Federal government’s ability to respond to nuclear incidents affecting the lives, property and economic interests of people and businesses in the U.S. 

Both NOAA and EPA have extensive experience supporting domestic and foreign nuclear incident preparedness and response and provide technical and resource support to the Department of Homeland Security for domestic nuclear and radiological incidents. ARL is one of the World Meteorological Office’s Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers (RSMC), which conducts regular exercises preparing for real nuclear incidents. ARL’s expertise in forecasting the trajectory and concentrations of airborne materials using its HYSPLIT model is a critical component for understanding where and how to respond to emergency incidents.

One of the EPA’s contributions to this collaboration is a network of radiological monitoring stations across the U.S. ARL can use the data from these stations to improve the accuracy of the HYSPLIT model specifically for forecasting the path of travel and to create backward paths to show where a nuclear material release may have occurred. This will ultimately be used by the EPA, other national agencies and state and local governments in developing emergency and national security plans for a multitude of potential situations.