Use of offshore wind farms to increase seismic resilience of Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

One of the challenges faced by the engineering profession is to meet the energy requirement of an increasingly prosperous world. Nuclear power was considered as a reliable option until the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) disaster which eroded the public confidence. This short paper shows that offshore wind turbines (due to its shape and form, i.e. heavy rotating mass resting at the top of a tall tower) have long natural vibration periods (>3.0 s) and are less susceptible to earthquake dynamics. The performance of near-shore wind turbines structures during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake is reviewed. It has been observed that they performed well. As NPPs are often sited close to the sea, it is proposed that a small wind farm capable of supplying emergency backup power along with a NPP can be a better safety system (robust and resilient system) in avoiding cascading failures and catastrophic consequences.