GPU-based parallel computation in real-time modeling of atmospheric radionuclide dispersion

Abstract

Atmospheric radionuclide dispersion systems (ARDS) are important tools to predict the impact of radioactive releases from Nuclear Power Plants and guide people evacuation from affected areas. To predict radioactive material dispersion and its consequences to environment, ARDS process information about source term (nuclear material released), weather conditions and geographical features. ARDS are basically comprised by 4 modules: Source Term, Wind Field, Plume Dispersion and Doses Calculations. Wind Field and Plume Dispersion modules are the most computationally expensive, requiring high performance computing to achieve adequate precision in acceptable time. This work focuses on the development of a GPU-based parallel Wind Field module. The program, based on Extrapolated from Stability and Terrain (WEST) model, is under development using C++ language and CUDA libraries. In comparative case study between some parallel and sequential calculations, a speedup of 40 times could be observed.