Dose assessment on the impact of accidents with Fukushima nuclear meltdown emission levels at the four nuclear power plants in Taiwan

There is a heated debate for including nuclear power as an important source of energies for pursuing net-zero carbon emission in the coming years. An advanced Gaussian trajectory dispersion model is used to evaluate the consequent impacts of nuclear power plant (NPP) accidents with Fukushima nuclear meltdown emission levels occurring at all of the four power plants (NPP1–NPP4) in Taiwan. Our study indicates the exposure pathway emergency planning zone (EPZ) would be as far as 17, 25, 5 and 17 km downwind from NPP1 to NPP4, respectively, for an event occurring on 11 March 2011. Our study indicates that the percentages of the land in Taiwan becoming permanent evacuation zones (PEZs) are as high as 8%, 13%, 2%, and 11% for an event occurring randomly during a year from 11 March 2011 at NPP1 to NPP4, respectively. The mean percentages of the land for Taipei City becoming PEZs are 35%, 71%, 0% and 48%, respectively. The mean percentages of the land for Kaohsiung City becoming PEZ are 4%, 5%, 5% and 3%, respectively. The analysis shows that for pursuing net-zero carbon emission, the conventional nuclear energy might not be a good choice for Taiwan, since about 2–13% of the Island can be inhabited for more than 30 years while a Fukushima-level nuclear meltdown occurs. The methodology and the trajectory model used here can be applied for other countries for quantifying the EPZ and PEZ for each nuclear power plant to substitute a conventional straight-line-type plume model, such as MACCS2.