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Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for two potential nuclear power plant sites in Tunisia

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Abstract

As part of a feasibility study for a potential electronuclear power plant in Tunisia, a new seismic catalogue and a new seismic source model have been proposed, for Tunisia and adjacent areas. These findings are used in this study to evaluate the seismic hazard for two selected nuclear power plant sites: Marsa-Douiba in the north and Skhira in the southeast. The investigations and the assessment are conducted at a regional scale. The location of these sites and the choice of a regional review extent allow us to consider the entire Tunisian territory as the study area and also to conduct the hazard evaluation at a ‘national level’. In this study, a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis is performed using the R-CRISIS software, and a logic tree is developed to capture uncertainties related to the characterisation of both seismic sources and ground-motion. First, a hazard map of Tunisia for the return period of 475 years is generated to compare it with the ones obtained within previous studies. Then, the 10,000-year return period is considered, and the recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency are applied to determine the uniform hazard spectrums and perform disaggregation for the selected sites.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been carried out in collaboration with Institut National de la Météorologie (INM), which is the National Institute of Meteorology. The authors wish to thank the INM group: Samir Ben Abdallah, Kheredine Attafi and Atef Bouallegue for the scientific discussion and for their valuable comments on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Génie Civil, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Tunis, Université de Tunis El Manar, B.P. 37, Le Belvédère, 1002, Tunis, Tunisia

    Emna Jarraya, Sami Montassar & Othman Ben Mekki

  2. Institut National de la Météorologie (INM), B.P. 156, Tunis-Carthage, 2035, Tunis, Tunisia

    Hassene Hamdi

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  1. Emna Jarraya
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  2. Sami Montassar
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Emna Jarraya, Sami Montassar, Othman Ben Mekki, and Hassene Hamdi contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript

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Correspondence to Emna Jarraya.

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Responsible Editor: Abdullah M. Al-Amri

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Jarraya, E., Montassar, S., Ben Mekki, O. et al. Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for two potential nuclear power plant sites in Tunisia. Arab J Geosci 14, 167 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-06536-2

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