The Tornado Risk in Eastern Canada - A MONTECARLO Approach

Abstract

In the United States, a tornado design requirement was imposed a nuclear power plants in 1967. This requirement precipitated considerable study on the probability of tornado strikes and the consequent damage. As a data base, records of thousands of tornadoes which occurred in the U.S. in the last 50 years were available. Unfortunately, no such data base exists for tornadoes and other extreme atmospheric events in Canada.

It is the purpose of this paper to report a a theoretical study employing a Monte Carlo technique to simulate the tornado environment for a hypothetical site. This exercise concluded that a site the size of a large nuclear park such as Bruce can be traversed by a tornado every 500 years. The results are very preliminary since very little Canadian data or meteorological considerations have been involved. The results do, however, show that the frequency of a tornado strike is in the order of 10^-3 events/annum and is therefore of concern in the safety assessment of nuclear facilities.