Four Cities Forecast: Iran (May 9, 2011)

Previous posts in this series have been focused on cities in California and Japan.  Here we venture to another part of the seismically active globe, the middle east, and more particularly, Iran.  In recent news items, the government of Iran has proposed building nuclear reactors for power generation.  These would probably be located near the Persian Gulf coast, for proximity to cooling water.

In view of the problems seen at nuclear reactors in Japan following the M9 March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, it seems prudent to determine the level of seismic risk to the proposed reactors in Iran.  In the below calculations we show forecasts for the four cities of Tehran, Tabas, Bebahan, and Bandar-e-Abbas.  The latter two cities are on the Persian Gulf.  Tehran is of course the capital of Iran, and Tabas was the cite of the September 16, 1978 M7.8 earthquake that killed 15,000 persons.  The forecasts shown below are for M>6 earthquakes, for the next 12 months from May 9, 2011, and within 200 km of the four cities shown. 

It can be seen that the highest probabilities for major earthquakes are for cities and regions near the Persian Gulf, not a good prospect for the construction and operation of nuclear reactors.  We note that the coastal regions of Iran are generally observed to have the highest rates of seismic activity.

The tabular data are below.