7TROPICAL Typhoon Intensification and Nuclear Power Plant Vulnerability in Korea Under Climate Change

Studies suggest that warm ocean waters fuel typhoon intensification. Such implies that in the advent of global warming, future typhoon intensity is likely to increase which poses a great threat to critical facilities such as South Korea’s Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). However, to date, existing climate models struggle to accurately quantify typhoon intensity due to limitations in their spatial and temporal resolution. Here we employ two multiple regression models to assess the potential influence of climate change on typhoon intensity near South Korea’s four major NPPs: Gori, Wolsong, Hanul, and Hanbit. We utilized the Maximum Potential Intensity (MPI) from CMIP6 models to locate the future Lifetime Maximum Intensity (LMI) occurrences. Then we used the projected LMI along with the projected future environment such as the sea surface temperature, MPI, and vertical wind shear as input to a typhoon decay model to estimate the future typhoon intensity over the Korean Peninsula. Our model projects a positive shift in the distribution of maximum intensities of typhoons approaching the Korean Peninsula, which translates to an increase in typhoon intensities relative to the control environment ranging from 5.36% in SSP126 to 15.17% in SSP585 scenarios. Alarmingly, projected increases within 150 km from the NPP location could reach up to 17.48% from the control under the SSP585 scenario. Our findings serve as crucial information for policymakers and NPP operators to come up with effective mitigation strategies and ensure the safety of the NPPs against the looming risks of intensifying typhoons.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant (RS-2023-00237121) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant by the Korea government (Ministry of Science and ICT) (No. RS-2022-00144325), and part of the project titled “Development of technology to predict potential maximum intensity of tropical cyclone for nuclear power plant sites", funded by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd. (KHNP).