Report addresses earthquake risks to power plants
Washington – A new seismic report provides information for nuclear facilities in the central and eastern regions of the United States to to help reassess their earthquake risk.
Released Jan. 31 by the Electric Power Research Institute, Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the report is part of an effort to apply lessons learned from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The project includes a new seismic model that can be used by power plants in the central and eastern United States to determine the likelihood of different levels of earthquake-caused ground motions. The report indicates the largest ground motions could occur near New Madrid, MO, and Charleston, SC.
NRC said seismic information should be considered along with an individual plant’s design and safety features to determine specific risks to the facility.
Post a comment to this article
Safety+Health welcomes comments that promote respectful dialogue. Please stay on topic. Comments that contain personal attacks, profanity or abusive language – or those aggressively promoting products or services – will be removed. We reserve the right to determine which comments violate our comment policy. (Anonymous comments are welcome; merely skip the “name” field in the comment box. An email address is required but will not be included with your comment.)