Environmental protection by a framework code for risk analysis

All activities about treatment and management of radioactive wastes, modalities of limitation of their releases into the environment, are disciplined in Italy by Decree 230/95 and its integrative modifications. Environmental questions are really difficult to solve because of the complicated relationships among many contributing factors, both natural and man-made. Each nuclear installation must manage and check up its own environmental surveillance net-work, thanks to which it is possible to examine the main critical pathways of the radioactivity in the environment and food chains. APAT verifies, approves and acquires all reference data from this environmental network in order to use in anomalous situations, to confirm or eventually to modify previewed results by mathematical models, that are been employed for the evaluation of the concentrations in the environmental matrices and doses to the critical groups, in consequence of radioactive releases. The purpose of this work is to characterize, through dynamic models, typical scenes about areas interested in industrial and nuclear power plants. It has been possible to estimate the release and transport of the chemical elements throughout the environment, and to predict associated exposure and risk, using a framework software developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). The characterization of the area on which the structure insists, built up environment, population and vocation of the territory, contributes to the punctual analysis and allows to estimate and to prevent the risk from sources of ionizing radiations.