Sellafield site earthquake liquefaction assessment

Overview

Nuclear safety-related structures in the UK such as those sited at Sellafield are required to be designed to resist extreme hazards including those associated with a rare 1-in-10,000 year earthquake. The earthquake liquefaction hazard therefore needs to be considered on nuclear sites in the UK.

Such a study was carried out for Sellafield in the 1980’s, but Sellafield Ltd considered that a new seismic liquefaction vulnerability assessment for Sellafield needed to be carried out, taking into account the latest developments from technical literature and the significant additional geotechnical and geological information from the large number of new exploratory hole logs that have been constructed since that time. This presentation outlines the methodology utilised in the new study, presents its results and conclusions, and compares them with those of the previous assessments.