Potential reduction of the ingestion dose after nuclear accidents due to the application of selected countermeasures.

The dynamic food chain model ECOSYS-87 is used to estimate the mitigating effect of selected countermeasures after radioactive contamination of farmland. The considerations focus on the most probably relevant countermeasures in the first 2 years following the accident such as storage of food, food bans, application of derived intervention levels, changes in the processing of foodstuffs, and changes in the feeding regimes of domestic animals. The effect of countermeasures is quantified in terms of potential collective dose saved or, if possible, as individual dose saved. The effectiveness of countermeasures depends on a variety of situation-specific factors which have to be taken into account before any interventions are applied. Such factors are the season during which the deposition occurs, the radionuclide composition of the deposit, and the practicability of the countermeasure in a given situation