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The impact of the Chernobyl power-plant accident in 1986 gave a major impetus to dispersion modelling activities around that time, especially in those countries directly impacted by the radioactive cloud. In the United Kingdom, the greatest contamination occurred in upland areas across the western half of the country where intense convective rainfall had intercepted the plume (most notably, in NW Wales, Cumbria and SW Scotland). Significant quantities of radionuclides were deposited locally in these upland grassland environments. The Met Office provided specialist forecasts during the incident (based essentially on trajectory techniques); however no operational long-range dispersion model was available for use at that time. Hence central government sanctioned us with developing an emergency-response modelling capability to provide detailed predictions of the transport and deposition of radioactive materials that might arise from any similar events in the future. The Met Office Nuclear Accident ModEl (abbreviated to NAME) was in use by 1988 with a major upgrade (NAME II) operational from 1994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]