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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Recommended Practices for Managing Induced Seismicity Risk Associated with Geologic Carbon Storage

The geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is one method to help reduce or eliminate atmospheric CO 2 emissions. The sequestered CO 2 is originally captured from the atmosphere or from a stationary industrial source and subsequently injected into a deep subsurface porous rock formation. To facilitate the successful deployment of field scale carbon storage projects, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is developing tools and protocols for defensible, science-based frameworks to quantify and mitigate risks associated with the long-term storage of CO 2 . This protocol specifically addresses the risk of induced seismicity due to injection in a geologic carbon storage (GCS) site. This integrated and risk-based protocol is a product of the U.S. DOE Fossil Energy’s National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP), a multi-year collaborative research effort of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). These recommended practices describe a set of 7 steps to evaluate, manage, communicate, and mitigate the risk of induced seismicity at GCS sites. The base methodology of the recommended practices follows a framework similar to the Protocol for Addressing Induced Seismicity Associated with Enhanced Geothermal Systems (Majer et al., 2012), developed for the Geothermal Technology Office of the U.S. DOE. These recommended practices present a framework to systematically assess the induced seismicity risk and quantify the associated uncertainties. These recommendations are based on current research and are sufficiently general to allow for modification and application to a variety of different types of sites. The substance of the recommended practices contained herein includes both technical and non-technical issues, and covers all operational stages of the GCS project lifecycle. They start at the preliminary risk assessment phase, continue through site assessment and characterization, include best practice communication and seismic monitoring plan methodologies, discuss the evaluation and mitigation of seismic hazard and risk, and closes with an exploration of operational management plans, which conclude when the induced seismicity risk abates back to background level. The focus of these recommendations is on actively managing the risks associated with induced seismicity by developing an actionable risk management plan that starts at the project proposal stage and continues through site closure through an iterative assessment and improvement process. The audience of this document is expected to include all interested stakeholders (e.g., operators, project developers, regulators, and the general public) and is expressly written to be accessible to this broad range of partners. This document is intended to disseminate knowledge gained through recent advances in the science of induced seismicity hazard and risk assessments, to provide updates based on recent experience gained by similar corollary injection-induced seismicity cases, and most importantly to establish a uniform framework to carry out a successful induced seismicity risk management plan for carbon storage projects in the future. These recommendations do not directly address any domestic or international regulations or standards. A complementary NRAP report makes recommendations for the assessment and management of environmental subsurface risks associated with unwanted fluid migration at GCS sites (Thomas et al., 2021) and should be referred to in order to address those additional GCS site risks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Recommended Practices for Managing Induced Seismicity Risk Associated with Geologic Carbon Storage

The geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is one method to help reduce or eliminate atmospheric CO 2 emissions. The sequestered CO 2 is originally captured from the atmosphere or from a stationary industrial source and subsequently injected into a deep subsurface porous rock formation. To facilitate the successful deployment of field scale carbon storage projects, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is developing tools and protocols for defensible, science-based frameworks to quantify and mitigate risks associated with the long-term storage of CO 2 . This protocol specifically addresses the risk of induced seismicity due to injection in a geologic carbon storage (GCS) site. This integrated and risk-based protocol is a product of the U.S. DOE Fossil Energy’s National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP), a multi-year collaborative research effort of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). These recommended practices describe a set of 7 steps to evaluate, manage, communicate, and mitigate the risk of induced seismicity at GCS sites. The base methodology of the recommended practices follows a framework similar to the $\textit{Protocol for Addressing Induced Seismicity Associated with Enhanced Geothermal Systems}$ (Majer et al., 2012), developed for the Geothermal Technology Office of the U.S. DOE. These recommended practices present a framework to systematically assess the induced seismicity risk and quantify the associated uncertainties. These recommendations are based on current research and are sufficiently general to allow for modification and application to a variety of different types of sites. The substance of the recommended practices contained herein includes both technical and non-technical issues, and covers all operational stages of the GCS project lifecycle. They start at the preliminary risk assessment phase, continue through site assessment and characterization, include best practice communication and seismic monitoring plan methodologies, discuss the evaluation and mitigation of seismic hazard and risk, and closes with an exploration of operational management plans, which conclude when the induced seismicity risk abates back to background level. The focus of these recommendations is on actively managing the risks associated with induced seismicity by developing an actionable risk management plan that starts at the project proposal stage and continues through site closure through an iterative assessment and improvement process. The audience of this document is expected to include all interested stakeholders (e.g., operators, project developers, regulators, and the general public) and is expressly written to be accessible to this broad range of partners. This document is intended to disseminate knowledge gained through recent advances in the science of induced seismicity hazard and risk assessments, to provide updates based on recent experience gained by similar corollary injection-induced seismicity cases, and most importantly to establish a uniform framework to carry out a successful induced seismicity risk management plan for carbon storage projects in the future. These recommendations do not directly address any domestic or international regulations or standards. A complementary NRAP report makes recommendations for the assessment and management of environmental subsurface risks associated with unwanted fluid migration at GCS sites (Thomas et al., 2021) and should be referred to in order to address those additional GCS site risks

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Time domain probabilistic seismic risk analysis using ground motion prediction equations of Fourier amplitude spectra

Modeling of Fourier amplitude spectra (FAS) of seismic motions has gained much attention in engineering seismology. In the past few years, several ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) and inter-frequency correlation structure of FAS have been established. Due to many preferable characteristics of FAS, probabilistic seismic hazard/risk analysis is rapidly changing from ergodic, spectrum acceleration Sa(T 0 )-based approach to non-ergodic, site-specific, FAS-based approach. This paper presents time domain intrusive framework for probabilistic seismic risk analysis using GMPE of FAS. Herein, methodology for time domain stochastic ground motion modeling based on GMPEs of FAS is presented in some detail. The simulated uncertain motions are modeled as a random process and represented by polynomial chaos Karhunen-Loève expansion. The random process excitations are further propagated into the uncertain structural system using Galerkin stochastic finite element method (SFEM). Probabilistic evolution of structural response is solved, and such solution is used to develop seismic risk for any damage state. The presented framework is illustrated through seismic risk analysis of a four-story building subjected to possible earthquakes from two strike slip faults. The influences of the epistemic uncertainties in source stress drop Δσ and site attenuation κ0 on seismic risk are investigated. The need for non-ergodic seismic risk analysis with source-specific and site specific characterizations is emphasized.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hydrogen Transportation and Distributed Energy Systems Seismic Risk Assessment for Cascadia Subduction Zone Airport Facilities

Portland International Airport in Oregon is exploring operating a fleet of 28 fuel cell electric buses to support airport operations and possibly provide backup power during outages. In this report, we evaluate the risk of hydrogen deployment at an airport considering the potential for seismic activity. We present a seismic risk assessment for pressurized piping for a generic hydrogen refueling station at the airport. Only pressurized piping was considered in the risk analysis because of its vulnerability and availability of fragility information unlike the other components. Seismic capacity of other components should be included as more information becomes available.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

​​Hydrogen Transportation and Distributed Energy Systems Seismic Risk Assessment for Cascadia Subduction Zone Airport Facilities​

Portland International Airport in Oregon is exploring operating a fleet of 28 fuel cell electric buses to support airport operations and possibly provide backup power during outages. In this report, we evaluate the risk of hydrogen deployment at an airport considering the potential for seismic activity. We present a seismic risk assessment for pressurized piping for a generic hydrogen refueling station at the airport. Only pressurized piping was considered in the risk analysis because of its vulnerability and availability of fragility information unlike the other components. Seismic capacity of other components should be included as more information becomes available. To characterize the seismic hazard, we considered the initiating event frequency of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake event based on data from the literature. Seismic stressors that translate to the site from an earthquake event are expressed as peak ground acceleration. Site disturbance is characterized as a function of soil conditions, represented by different shear wave velocity values, which affect how seismic waves propagate and impact structures. Pipe fragility curves as a function of seismic capacity were used to correlate ground acceleration and failure probability. These fragility characteristics were combined with site-specific soil conditions to calculate the probability of pipe rupture during a seismic event. It should be noted that multiple simultaneous failures due to an earthquake event as a common cause are not considered. Some epistemic uncertainties such as self-exciting shocks, aftershocks, and the time variant nature of the ground motion are not considered either.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Project Lifetime Approach to the Management of Induced Seismicity Risk at Geologic Carbon Storage Sites

The geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is one method that can help reduce atmospheric CO 2 by sequestering it into the subsurface. Large-scale deployment of geologic carbon storage, however, may be accompanied by induced seismicity. We present a project lifetime approach to address the induced seismicity risk at these geologic storage sites. This approach encompasses both technical and nontechnical stakeholder issues related to induced seismicity and spans the time period from the initial consideration phase to postclosure. These recommendations are envisioned to serve as general guidelines, setting expectations for operators, regulators, and the public. They contain a set of seven actionable focus areas, the purpose of which are to deal proactively with induced seismicity issues. Although each geologic carbon storage site will be unique and will require a custom approach, these general best practice recommendations can be used as a starting point to any site-specific plan for how to systematically evaluate, communicate about, and mitigate induced seismicity at a particular reservoir.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Variability of near-fault seismic risk to reinforced concrete buildings based on high-resolution physics-based ground motion simulations

Broadband physics-based simulated earthquake ground motions are utilized to characterize the regional-scale seismic risk to modern reinforced concrete (RC) structures. A highly dense dataset of ground motions covering a 100-km urn:x-wiley:00988847:media:eqe3413:eqe3413-math-0001 40-km domain was generated using kinematic fault rupture models with varying rupture characteristics to represent shallow crustal earthquakes and resolved up to frequencies of 5 Hz. Over 40,000 nonlinear response history simulations of short- and mid-rise RC special moment frame buildings were conducted using simulation models that are capable of representing nonlinear behavior and component deterioration effects. The spatial variability of structural risk within a single earthquake scenario and between different rupture scenarios is examined, and the regions of strongest directivity effects and highest structural demands are identified. The structural demands may vary by factor of up to 8.0 at very short distances from the fault, and the large dispersion in the demands decreases significantly beyond a distance of 15 km. The interstory drift and member rotation demands are substantially impacted by important features of the geological structure and the characteristics of the rupture scenarios, particularly the presence of localized high-slip regions. The frequency characteristics of the structures are found to play an important role in determining the effects of near-fault ground motions on the structural response and expected damage. The results of this study suggest that the simulated ground motions, particularly those generated using the hybrid rupture approach, may offer reasonable structural risk estimates for low-frequency structures and conservative estimates for high-frequency structures.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Cubic-meter scale laboratory fault re-activation experiments to improve the understanding of induced seismicity risks

Abstract To understand fluid induced seismicity, we have designed a large-scale laboratory experiment consisting of a one-cubic-meter sandstone with an artificial fault cut and fluid-injection boreholes. The sandstone block is assembled in a true triaxial loading frame and equipped with 38 piezoelectric sensors to locate and characterise acoustic emission events. The differential stress on the artificial fault is increased in stages to bring it towards a critically stressed state. After each stage of differential stress increase, fluids are injected at low pressures through boreholes to test the potential of fault re-activation. In addition, a high-pressure injection was conducted that created a hydraulic fracture from the injection borehole towards the artificial fault. The newly generated fluid pathway resulted in an activation of the complete block through a stick–slip movement. We compare acoustic emission measurements from the laboratory experiment with seismicity observations from the field-scale CO 2 injection at Decatur, Illinois, U.S., and conclude that the existence of fluid pathways plays a decisive role for the potential of induced seismicity.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Assessing Seismic Risk for CO2 Geologic Storage: Comparative Analysis of the Delaware Basin and Basin and Range Province Projects

ABSTRACT: Effective management of induced seismicity is critical for safe and sustainable CO2 storage. This study evaluates fault slippage risks in the Delaware Basin (Texas) and Basin and Range Province (Utah), integrating geological, operational, and geomechanical parameters to assess fault stability and seismic hazard mitigation. In the Delaware Basin, two sites were analyzed under an injection rate of 20,000 bbl/day over 25 years. One site showed low fault slip risk, while the other exhibited higher reactivation potential due to proximity to critically stressed faults. Sensitivity analysis revealed that increased pore pressure significantly heightened slip potential, highlighting the necessity of precise pressure control and real-time monitoring. In the Basin and Range Province, fault stability was evaluated at Neck of the Desert, Escalante Desert, Parowan, and Beaver sites under injection rates of 8,750 bbl/day per site over 30 years. Minimal fault slip risk was observed at Neck of the Desert and Escalante Desert sites, whereas Parowan and Beaver sites exhibited elevated slip potential due to semi-critically stressed faults sensitive to modest pore pressure increases. The findings demonstrate that fault slippage analysis, combined with sensitivity analysis of pore pressure and friction coefficients, is essential for understanding seismic risks. Continuous monitoring, adaptive injection management, and rigorous geomechanical analysis are key strategies for minimizing induced seismicity in CO2 sequestration projects.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Cost- and Risk-Based Seismic Design Optimization of Nuclear Power Plant Safety Systems

Seismic analysis, design, and qualification of systems, structures, and components (SSCs) is a significant contributor to the capital cost of a nuclear power plant. To reduce capital costs of advanced nuclear power plants and make commercial nuclear energy more competitive, innovations are needed in their structural design and construction, and not just in the reactor core and associated systems. Seismic isolation has been identified as an important cost-cutting technology that enables standardization of equipment across various sites. This paper develops and demonstrates a cost- and risk-based seismic design optimization of a representative safety system in a nuclear power plant with the dual goals of minimizing overnight capital cost and meeting safety goals. The design optimization can also include component seismic isolation, in which case, the optimized design includes a set of equipment that needs to be seismically isolated to minimize capital cost. The open-source codes MASTODON and Dakota are used for seismic probabilistic risk assessment and design optimization, respectively. A generic nuclear facility with a safety system comprising SSCs that are common to nuclear power plants is considered for the demonstration of the design optimization and is assumed to be located at the Idaho National Laboratory site. Generic costs and seismic design cost functions are assumed for the SSCs of the safety system. The sum of the costs of the SSCs is minimized in the optimization process, while the risk of failure of the safety system is provided as a constraint. Furthermore, results show that the optimization process reduces capital costs significantly while automatically prioritizing the safety of SSCs that contribute most to the risk of the safety system.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Computational Tools and Workflows for Quantitative Risk Assessment and Decision Support for Geologic Carbon Storage Sites: Progress and Insights from the U.S. DOE’s National Risk Assessment Partnership

The 2005 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on CCS raised the profile of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) as an important technology for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CCS is now recognized as a key component of most climate change mitigation scenarios. Since publication of that report the international research, development, and deployment (RD&D) community has advanced key technical aspects, clarified regulatory requirements, explored value chain and infrastructure solutions, and developed incentive paradigms to enable and promote large-scale deployment of CCS. These efforts have included research to better characterize geologic storage resources, to improve injection performance and storage efficiency, to assess and manage subsurface environmental risks, and to advance monitoring technologies to assure system conformance. These efforts have helped to build confidence in the viability of geologic carbon storage (GCS), but stakeholder concerns about long-term risks and liability associated with GCS remain a hurdle to broad acceptance and large-scale deployment of CCS. Since 2010, the U.S. DOE’s National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP) – a research collaboration between five contributing national laboratories – has worked to establish and demonstrate methods and tools to quantify and manage the subsurface environmental risks associated with GCS, amidst uncertainty. This work supports the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Carbon Transport and Storage Program’s goal of advancing safe and secure commercial-scale GCS deployment. To address the technical challenge of simulating the physical response of the GCS site to large-scale CO2 injection, NRAP has adopted an approach that relies on coupling computationally efficient reduced-order and/or data-driven proxy models of important system components (i.e., storage reservoir, sealing caprock, leakage pathways, intermediate formations, overlying groundwater aquifers, and the atmosphere) in integrated assessment framework. That integrated model of the physical system is complemented with fit-for purpose functionality to support site characterization and risk-related decisions. The recently released NRAP Phase II toolset includes the Open-Source Integrated Assessment Model (NRAP-Open-IAM) for evaluation of trends in leakage risk and potential impact, tools to support monitoring design optimization (Designs for Risk Evaluation and Management – DREAM v3.0 and Passive Seismic Monitoring Tool - PSMT), and tools for state of stress evaluation (State-of-Stress Analysis Tool - SOSAT) and forecasting induced seismicity risk. The NRAP team has also released a pair of reports describing conceptual workflows to incorporate physics-based, quantitative risk assessment into many of the design, planning, operation, and closure decisions for GCS projects. An online catalogue highlights published studies where these tools and methods are demonstrated. In this presentation, the utility of these products to assess risks and address key stakeholder questions will be highlighted through examples, and related insights about the safety and security of geologic carbon storage in qualified storage sites will be discussed. The prospect of rapid, large-scale deployment of GCS technology to aggressively reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions requires careful consideration of interference between multiple commercial-scale storage projects within a basin. Going forward, NRAP is expanding and adapting site-scale risk quantification tools and methods to enable assessment of risks and inform management decisions for basin-scale deployment. Increasingly, this work will leverage next-generation approaches for surrogate modelling, fast prediction, and advanced visualization enabled by machine learning and artificial intelligence to promote virtual learning, scenario evaluation, and augment risk-based decision making.

quantitative risk assessment, geologic carbon stor↗
DOE OSTI2025

Impact of representative ground motion level on seismic PSA with the boundary between overestimation and underestimation

One commonly used approach in seismic probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) is the discrete method. This method follows the standard PSA framework and can be applied to various models, such as multi-unit models, while reducing computational costs using standard software. However, due to the inability to subdivide intervals infinitely, the discrete method approximates with a finite number of subintervals. In practice, different numbers of subintervals are applied, and the representative ground motion level is selected based on expert judgment. When employing a smaller number of subintervals, it is important to take caution to prevent underestimation. This study analyzes the impact of the representative ground motion level on seismic risk. It confirms that underestimation can occur with a small number of subintervals depending on the representative ground motion level. This study also proposes a method for determining the boundary of underestimation and overestimation. The method is demonstrated through examples, providing a mathematical foundation for selecting appropriate representative ground motion levels. By avoiding underestimation, this research helps prevent the oversight of significant risk contributors and enhances the understanding of seismic risk.

99 - GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Induced seismicity potential based on probabilistic geomechanics for the San Juan Basin CarbonSAFE project

Although geologic carbon sequestration projects have yet to induce — or may never induce — a damaging earthquake, experiences from other deep injection industries such as hydraulic fracturing, enhanced geothermal systems, and saltwater disposal suggest that effective quantitative seismic risk assessment is necessary for deep saline carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects. One such imminent CCS project is the San Juan Basin CarbonSAFE Phase III program. We use Monte Carlo probabilistic geomechanical analyses combined with observations of the geologic and operational parameters of the San Juan Basin site and suggest that this project is of low-induced seismic risk. The primary analysis is split into four sections. First, we assess the literature for faults and past seismicity, and at least five faulting scenarios are directly relevant. Second, we develop and calibrate an integrated earth model for the project site. Third, we perform Monte Carlo simulations that consider reasonable uncertainties of the geomechanical parameters. Of five tested faulting scenarios, only one presents high Coulomb failure functions, but fourth, we determine the risk to be low based on the combined lack of historical seismicity, the geologic framework of the faulting scenario, and the presence of saltwater injection at the same depth as the proposed supercritical carbon dioxide injection. The most sensitive parameters in the geomechanical calculations are the fault dip and the coefficient of friction. The least sensitive are the fault strike and the orientation of the maximum horizontal principal stress.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

MASTODON: An Open-Source Software for Seismic Analysis and Risk Assessment of Critical Infrastructure

Seismic analysis and risk assessment of safety-critical infrastructure like hospitals, nuclear power plants, dams, and facilities handling radioactive materials involve computationally intensive numerical models and coupled multiphysics scenarios. They are also performed in a strict regulatory environment that requires high software quality assurance standards, and in the case of safety-related nuclear facilities, a conformance to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Nuclear Quality Assurance (NQA-1) standard. This paper introduces the open-source finite-element software, MASTODON (Multi-hazard Analysis of Stochastic Time-Domain Phenomena), which implements state-of-the-art seismic analysis and risk assessment tools in a quality-controlled environment. MASTODON is built on MOOSE (Multi-physics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment), which is a highly parallelizable, NQA-1 conforming, coupled multiphysics, finite-element framework developed at Idaho National Laboratory. MASTODON is capable of fault rupture and source-to-site wave propagation using the domain reduction method, nonlinear site response, and soil-structure interaction analysis, implicit and explicit time integration, automated stochastic simulations, and seismic probabilistic risk assessment. When coupled with other MOOSE applications, MASTODON can also solve strongly and weakly coupled multiphysics problems. This paper presents a summary of the capabilities of MASTODON and some demonstrative examples.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Economic assessment of seismic monitoring for underground hydrogen storage

Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) plays a key role in the energy landscape. However, like other subsurface engineering technologies, UHS may cause leakage into the groundwater or atmosphere and possibly induce local seismicity. To reduce these risks, seismic monitoring could be a viable technique to track the UHS plume, detect leakages, and locate induced seismicity events. Seismic monitoring has been proposed to safely monitor UHS, but research in this area is still new and requires field studies. Lab and theoretical studies have demonstrated the validity of seismic monitoring for UHS. Therefore, it is imperative to analyze the economic feasibility of seismic monitoring for UHS. Hence, we develop a cost model and open-source Python code for seismic monitoring that considers types of seismometers, comprehensive operational scenarios, detection thresholds, and long-term leakage monitoring. A case study is further provided to validate the cost model on reservoir simulations of UHS. We find that the levelized cost for a 10-year operating UHS site will range on the order of ∼0.003 $\$$/kg. The methods developed in this study could also be applied to the monitoring of groundwater, gas, and/or wastewater injection.

08 HYDROGEN↗