Rancho Seco building wake effects on atmospheric diffusion

A series of 23 paired gaseous tracer releases at the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Station in 1975 was the third of several tests designed to investigate the diffusion characteristics of the atmosphere under conditions of low windspeed and temperature inversion. This test also evaluated the effects of flow around buildings upon dilution of pollutants. Gaseous tracers were laterally dispersed about six times more than the expected amounts from Pasquill--Gifford curves of sigma-y. Most of this increase could be related to observed variance of the horizontal wind direction (meandering). For ground-level releases the effective sigma-z values were 16 times greater than the corresponding values from the Pasquill--Gifford curves. Measured ground-level axial concentrations were about 75 times smaller than predicted by the Gaussian diffusion equation for a ground-level release when Pasquill--Gifford values of sigma-y and sigma-z were used.