Risk assessment of potential catastrophic accidents for transportation of special nuclear materials through Turkish Straits

Turkish Straits Region (TS) comprises of two straits, Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and the Marmara Sea. It is a historical marine trade route between the former Soviet countries and the western world. From the perspective of special nuclear materials transportation, this route can also be a nuclear materials trade route due to the nuclear policy of former Soviet countries and world nuclear market. In addition, TS can also be an optional route of integrated transportation ways for the shipping states that pursue to reach the destination points using the Black Sea countries or the North-Eastern Part of Turkey. Consequently maritime transportation of special nuclear materials has arisen as a critical concept for TS, where the risks should be understood and analyzed effectively. Accordingly, this study will aim at conducting a risk assessment for the TS from the special nuclear material transportations perspective via two hypothesized scenarios which are (i) ship collision accident in the case of special nuclear materials (SNM) Transportation through TS (ii) ship fire accident in the case of nuclear smuggling through TS with oil tanker. These scenarios are modelled and analyzed via RADTRAN 5 code and the results are presented in the paper.

► RADTRAN is applied for Turkish Straits (TS).
► Potential catastrophic accidents at TS with given assumptions result with low risk level.
► Total exposed persons after accident in Bosphorus and Dardanelles are 6840 million and 91,000 respectively.