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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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DOE-NE’s newest fuel consortium includes defense from antitrust laws
The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy is setting up a nuclear fuel Defense Production Act Consortium that will seek voluntary agreements with interested companies “to increase fuel availability, provide more access to reliable power, and end America’s reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and critical materials needed to power the nation’s nuclear renaissance.” According to an August 22 DOE press release, the plan invokes the Defense Production Act (DPA) to give consortium members “defense from antitrust laws when certain criteria are met” and “allow industry consultation to develop plans of action.” DOE-NE is looking for interested companies to join the consortium ahead of its first meeting, scheduled for October 14.
Sang Min Han, Poong Hyun Seong (KAIST)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1088-1094
The aim of this study is to propose initiating threats and their bounding groups in order to identify initiating cyber threats, and to further apply the initiating threats to cyber risk assessment in nuclear power plants (NPPs). NPP are generally thought to be secure from cyber-attacks, as the control/monitoring network and business network in a NPP are separate from the external network. However, consecutive incidents at nuclear facilities have revealed the necessity of cyber risk assessment for NPPs. To determine initiating threats and their bounding groups for NPP, Operational experience report (OER) and repository of industrial security incidents (RISI) database were utilized. Each of the chosen incidents was documented with descriptions based on the following five characteristics: 1) type of attacker, 2) intentionality, 3) access method, 4) access type, and 5) purpose of the attack. The proposed organization of initiating threats and their bounding groups for NPPs represent a valid first attempt to determine such threats based on actual industrial incidents. This advance can also be further applied to describe scenarios and models of NPP cyber-risk assessments.