The University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), Kentucky Research Consortium for Energy and Environment and UK College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences are collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to characterize past seismic activity and evaluate future seismic hazard at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PDGP).
The Seismic Characterization Project (SCP) is crucial to the future of nuclear energy redevelopment at the PGDP. UK's SCP partners include world-class subject matter experts from Collier Geophysics, Lettis Consultants International, Kentucky Geological Survey, Explor®, STRYDE, GeoTomo, Chase-Cascade Drilling and Tricord Inc. The DOE Portsmouth Paducah Project Office awarded UK $6.8 million to conduct the investigation and build upon previous seismic studies completed at and near the site. Rodney Andrews, Ph.D., CAER director, serves as principal investigator on the project.
The PGDP is owned by the DOE and was constructed in 1952 as the primary national facility to produce enriched uranium for the nation's nuclear weapons program and later nuclear fuel for commercial power plants and the nuclear Navy. The PGDP's uranium enrichment activities ceased in 2014.
DOE currently manages decontamination and decommissioning of its industrial enrichment facilities and concurrently oversees environmental monitoring and remediation activities, waste management and depleted uranium conversion. Plans call for the re-use of the PGDP's 3,500 acres. Redevelopment of the site will require demolition and a landfill disposal facility for the obsolete PDGP buildings and industrial infrastructure.
The PGDP is located approximately 10 miles west of Paducah, Kentucky, near the northern end of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, which has a considerable influence on the seismic hazard for the central United States. State and federal regulations require future nuclear facilities and related landfills to conduct detailed seismic siting and seismic hazard assessments. The SCP will provide an in-depth characterization of current and historic seismic activity to model predicted ground-motion site response from any future earthquakes. This detailed analysis will enable engineers to design and construct seismically resilient infrastructure.
The SCP is being conducted in two phases. Phase 1 is focusing on landfill permitting compliance at a 100-acre location on the PGDP reservation. A team of national and international experts will use advanced seismic and geological tools to look deep below the ground surface and evaluate whether any active earthquake faults are present.
The team will also study soil and rock layers near the surface through drilling and trenching and build a seismic timeline going back 11,000 years. The goal is to verify that no earthquakes large enough to displace the ground surface have occurred beneath the landfill site.
Phase 2 SCP activities will tie the Phase 1 work into larger regional seismic hazard characterizations within the northern Mississippi Embayment area of Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee, the Fluorspar Area fault complex of southern Illinois and the Wabash River valley of southern Illinois and Indiana.
For a more detailed and technical description of Phases 1 and 2, visit: https://ukrcee.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Seismic_characterization_25.pdf.
This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management under Award Number DE-EM0005320. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.
