GPU-Based Parallel Computation in Real-Time Modeling of Atmospheric Radionuclide Dispersion André Pinheiro, Filipe Desterro, Marcelo Santos, Claudio Pereira and Roberto Schirru 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 dis- persion and its consequences to environment, ARDS process information about source term (nuclear material released), weather conditions and geographical fea- tures. 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. Keywords GPU Á Parallel computing Á Atmospheric radionuclide dispersion A. Pinheiro Á F. Desterro Á M. Santos Á R. Schirru Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Programa de Engenharia Nuclear COPPE, Centro de Tecnologia, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro 21941 901, Brazil e mail: apinheiro99@gmail.com R. Schirru e mail: schirru@lmp.ufrj.br C. Pereira (&) Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear Rua Helio de Almeida, 75, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro 21941 906, Brazil e mail: cmnap@ien.gov.br © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 I.L. Nunes (ed.), Advances in Human Factors and System Interactions, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 497, DOI 10.1007/978 3 319 41956 5 29 323