An essential part of a safety analysis to evaluate the risks of a liquid hydrogen (LH2) containing system is theunderstanding of cryogenic pool spreading and its vaporization. It represents the initial step in an accidentsequence with the inadvertent spillage of LH2, e.g., after failure of a transport container tank or the rupture ofa pipeline. This stage of an accident scenario provides pertinent information as a source term for thesubsequent analysis steps of atmospheric dispersion and, at presence of an ignition source, the combustion ofthe hydrogen-air vapor cloud. A computer model LAUV has been developed at the Research Center Juelich,which is able to simulate the spreading and vaporization of a cryogenic liquid under various conditions suchas different grounds (solid, water). It is based on the so-called shallow-layer differential equations taking intoaccount physical phenomena such as ice formation, if the cryogen is spilled on a water surface. Thepresentation will give a description of the computer model and its validation against existing experimentaldata. Furthermore calculational results will be analyzed describing the prediction and quantification of theconsequences of an LH2 spill for different cases. They also include the comparison of an LH2 spillage versusthe corresponding release of other cryogens such as liquid natural gas, liquid oxygen, and liquid nitrogen.