Ground deformation observed at Kozloduy (Bulgaria) and Akkuyu (Turkey) NPPS by means of multitemporal SAR inteferometry

Περίληψη

The last century was characterized by increasing amount of nuclear energy around Europe. Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) generate about 30% of the electricity produced in European Union. Nonetheless, safety issues have been prominent in the public mind since the accident at Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011. The present work aims at monitoring the ground deformation in the vicinity of Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant (North Bulgaria), as well as in the region of Akkuyu Bay (south Turkey) where a new Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) will be established. This research is conducted by applying advanced Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry (DInSAR) techniques, using satellite SAR images. For the two study areas, data from ERS-1 and 2 and ENVISAT satellites were used covering a period from 1992 to 2000 and from 2003 to 2010 respectively.In order to produce the final deformation map it was applied the Stacking technique, the SVD (Singular Value Decomposition) algorithm and the PS/SBAS (Permanent Scatteres/ Small Baseline) technique, performed using GAMMA software. In spite of the difficulties presented in each case of study, results indicate stability, with a negligible deformation rate which is ranging between -1mm/year to +1.5mm/year, for Kozloduy NPP, and between -1mm/year to +1mm/year for Akkuyu.