TITLE:
Tsunami Impacts on Nuclear Power Plants along Western Coast of India Due to a Great Makran Earthquake: A Numerical Simulation Approach
AUTHORS:
Mohd Zuhair, Shahnawaz Alam
KEYWORDS:
Tsunami Modeling, TUNAMI N2, Nuclear Power Plants, Makran Subduction Zone
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.8 No.12,
December
15,
2017
ABSTRACT: The major seismicity source in the northern Arabian Sea is the Makran Subduction
Zone (MSZ) that defines the tectonic boundary between the Arabian
plate and the Eurasian plate, located offshore Iran and Pakistan over which an
instrumentally registered earthquake (Mw 8.1) generated a tsunami on 27 November,
1945. It has caused severe cataclysm to a vulnerable population along
the surrounding coastlines, including India. It has been on a long seismic
quiescence since this last event. The population and industrialization have
exponentially increased along the coastal areas in last half decade. The highly
exposed coastal locations to the tsunamis are the areas where the nuclear
power plants are located. In the present work, a numerical simulation of a
great tsunamigenic earthquake (M 9) is presented that predicts the generation,
propagation, run-up and travel time using TUNAMI N2 for estimating tsunami
impacts along the nuclear power plants of the western coast of India.
TUNAMI N2 code was designed for shallow water wave equations, which uses
the finite-difference method based on staggered-leap frog scheme. Thus, it has
potential to simulate a far-field tsunami with much more accuracy than other
methods. It is observed that the tsunami will strike along the coast of Jaitapur
Nuclear Power Plant (Maharashtra), Tarapur Nuclear Power Plant (Maharashtra),
Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant (Karnataka) and Mithi-Virdi Nuclear
Power Plant (Gujarat) after 210, 215, 225 and 230 minutes, respectively. Results
show that the tsunami run-up is highest for Jaitapur coast (2.32 m). The
Mithi-Virdi coast is the least effected (0.93 m) while Kaiga (2.15 m) and Tarapur
coast (2.12 m) might have faced quite intense tsunami consequences.
The arrival times and run-ups of the tsunami along the coast of different
power plants have been calculated since these parameters are of vital importance in mitigation of the coastal hazard, evacuation planning and installation
of early warning system in order to save the inhabited communities from the
disaster.