Publications

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Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is providing training and consultation activities on security planning and design for the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Central Research Institute (KHNPCRI). As part of this effort, SNL performed a literature review on computer security requirements, guidance and best practices that are applicable to an advanced nuclear power plant. This report documents the review of reports generated by SNL and other organizations [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nuclear Energy Institute, and International Atomic Energy Agency] related to protection of information technology resources, primarily digital controls and computer resources and their data networks. Copies of the key documents have also been provided to KHNP-CRI.

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The current wave of small modular reactor (SMR) designs all have the goal of reducing the cost of management and operations. By optimizing the system, the goal is to make these power plants safer, cheaper to operate and maintain, and more secure. In particular, the reduction in plant staffing can result in significant cost savings. The introduction of advanced reactor designs and increased use of advanced automation technologies in existing nuclear power plants will likely change the roles, responsibilities, composition, and size of the crews required to control plant operations. Similarly, certain security staffing requirements for traditional operational nuclear power plants may not be appropriate or necessary for SMRs due to the simpler, safer and more automated design characteristics of SMRs. As a first step in a process to identify where regulatory requirements may be met with reduced staffing and therefore lower cost, this report identifies the regulatory requirements and associated guidance utilized in the licensing of existing reactors. The potential applicability of these regulations to advanced SMR designs is identified taking into account the unique features of these types of reactors.

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Physical security analyses for nuclear reactors have historically sought to ensure that there is an acceptably low probability of success for a "design basis" adversary to accomplish a theft or sabotage objective, even for the adversary's most advantageous path. While some have used probabilistic risk assessment to characterize these risks, the lack of a validated attack frequency, among other things, has made this difficult. Recent work at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) characterizes a facility's security risk for a scenario in terms of level of difficulty an adversary would encounter in order to be reasonably sure of success (the Risk Informed Management of Enterprise Security (RIMES) methodology). Scenarios with lower levels of difficulty can then be addressed through design changes or improvements to the physical protection system. This work evaluates the level of difficulty of a number of attack scenarios for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), and provides insight to help designers optimize the protection of their facilities. The methodology and general insights are described here.

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Safeguards and security systems for nuclear facilities include material control and accounting (MC&A) and a physical protection system (PPS) to protect against theft, sabotage and other malevolent human acts. The insider threat is most often addressed as part of the evaluation of a facility's PPS. A PPS is evaluated using probabilistic analysis of adversary paths on the basis of detection, delay, and response timelines to determine timely detection. Because insider adversaries have access to, knowledge of, and authority for facility operations, the PPS actually provides minimal protection against the insider threat. By monitoring and tracking critical materials, MC&A activities are an important protection element against inside adversaries. Timely detection for MC&A activities, however, has been difficult to determine so that for the most part, the effectiveness of these activities has not been explicitly incorporated in the insider threat evaluation of a PPS. This paper presents research on a new approach to incorporate MC&A protection elements explicitly within the existing probabilistic path analysis methodology. MC&A activities, from monitoring to inventory measurements, provide many, often recurring opportunities to determine the status of critical items, including detection of missing materials. Human reliability analysis methods for nuclear power plant operations are used to determine human error probabilities to characterize the detection capabilities of MC&A activities. An object-based state machine paradigm was developed to characterize the path elements and timing of an insider theft scenario as a race against MC&A detection that can move a facility from a normal state to an alert state having additional detection opportunities. Event sequence diagrams describe insider paths through the PPS and also incorporate MC&A activities as path elements. To address the insider threat, this work establishes a probabilistic basis for timely MC&A detection and methods to evaluate the effectiveness of MC&A activities explicitly within the existing path analysis methodology. © 2012 IEEE.

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Nuclear fuel reprocessing plants contain a wealth of plant monitoring data including material measurements, process monitoring, administrative procedures, and physical protection elements. Future facilities are moving in the direction of highly-integrated plant monitoring systems that make efficient use of the plant data to improve monitoring and reduce costs. The Separations and Safeguards Performance Model (SSPM) is an analysis tool that is used for modeling advanced monitoring systems and to determine system response under diversion scenarios. This report both describes the architecture for such a future monitoring system and present results under various diversion scenarios. Improvements made in the past year include the development of statistical tests for detecting material loss, the integration of material balance alarms to improve physical protection, and the integration of administrative procedures. The SSPM has been used to demonstrate how advanced instrumentation (as developed in the Material Protection, Accounting, and Control Technologies campaign) can benefit the overall safeguards system as well as how all instrumentation is tied into the physical protection system. This concept has the potential to greatly improve the probability of detection for both abrupt and protracted diversion of nuclear material.

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Given the uncertain future of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository for final disposal of used light water reactor fuel, the tactical strategy is to store used nuclear fuel (UNF) at utility sites in either pool or dry cask storage systems. Although no time threshold has been defined, the current recommendation for long-term management of UNF is 300 years. This presents possible regulatory and technical issues for both storage safety and security. This paper discusses ongoing work in address security for long-term storage of UNF. Previous work focused on an assessment of security requirements for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy. In addition, it has been determined that the dose rates for UNF will fall below the current 100 rem/hour self-protection threshold after 70 to 120 years. Work continues to address issues associated with maintaining security for long-term storage of UNF. Extending the self-protection concept and plans for performing assessments of the long-term security risk will be discussed. This work is part of a larger effort to develop concepts for a demonstration UNF storage site and to develop a technical basis for long-term storage of UNF and the associated transportation.

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Material control and accountability (MC&A) operations that track and account for critical assets at nuclear facilities provide a key protection approach for defeating insider adversaries. MC&A activities, from monitoring to inventory measurements, provide critical information about target materials and define security elements that are useful against insider threats. However, these activities have been difficult to characterize in ways that are compatible with the path analysis methods that are used to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of a site's protection system. The path analysis methodology focuses on a systematic, quantitative evaluation of the physical protection component of the system for potential external threats, and often calculates the probability that the physical protection system (PPS) is effective (PE) in defeating an adversary who uses that attack pathway. In previous work, Dawson and Hester observed that many MC&A activities can be considered a type of sensor system with alarm and assessment capabilities that provide reccurring opportunities for "detecting" the status of critical items. This work has extended that characterization of MC&A activities as probabilistic sensors that are interwoven within each protection layer of the PPS. In addition, MC&A activities have similar characteristics to operator tasks performed in a nuclear power plant (NPP) in that the reliability of these activities depends significantly on human performance. Many of the procedures involve human performance in checking for anomalous conditions. Further characterization of MC&A activities as operational procedures that check the status of critical assets provides a basis for applying human reliability analysis (HRA) models and methods to determine probabilities of detection for MC&A protection elements. This paper will discuss the application of HRA methods used in nuclear power plant probabilistic risk assessments to define detection probabilities and to formulate "timely detection" for MC&A operations. This work has enabled the development of an integrated path analysis methodology in which MC&A operations can be combined with traditional sensor data in the calculation of PPS effectiveness. Explicitly incorporating MC&A operations into the existing evaluation methodology provides the basis for an effectiveness measure for insider threats, and the resulting PE calculations will provide an integrated effectiveness measure that addresses both external and insider threats. The extended path analysis methodology is being further investigated as the basis for including the PPS and MC&A activities in an integrated safeguards and security system for advanced fuel cycle facilities. Copyright © 2011 by ASME.