NGA-East Earthquake Ground Motion Models Validated by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) just released a report that concludes the NGA-East Ground Motion Characterization Model is robust, captures epistemic uncertainty, and provides regulatory stability for siting evaluations of nuclear facilities in the central and eastern United States (CEUS).

The report “NRC Staff Evaluation of the Next Generation Attenuation for Central and Eastern North America Project (NGA-East) Ground Motion Model Characterization” is a Research Information Letter (RIL) issued by NRC's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research to the NRC regulatory and regional offices. RIL documents typically summarize, synthesize, and/or interpret significant research information relevant to a given technical area, provide new or revised information, and discuss how that information may be used in regulatory activities. This RIL specifically provides a detailed description of the NGA-East Ground Motion Characterization Model development, highlights the sensitivity analyses performed by the NRC technical staff, validates the unique approaches used in the development of the NGA-East ground motion models, and advises on the stability of the model.

The NGA-East project was a 10-year multidisciplinary project started in 2008, coordinated by PEER. and jointly sponsored by the U.S. NRC, U.S. Department of Energy, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Dr. Yousef Bozorgnia, the Director of NHR3 Center, was the Principal Investigator of the project and Dr. Christine Goulet was the chair of the Technical Integration team. This multidisciplinary project team included over 55 researchers and practicing professionals. The project went through an extensive external review process as formalized under the SSHAC Level 3 framework.

The NRC RIL can be found at: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/research-info-letters/2020/