• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.1108-1115
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• 2024

Assuring physical security for Micro Modular Reactors (MMRs) will be key to their licensing. Economic constraints however require changes in how the security objectives are achieved for MMRs. A promising new approach is the so-called performance based (PB) approach wherein the regulator formally sets general security objectives and leaves it to the licensee to set their own specific acceptance criteria to meet those objectives. To implement the PB approach for MMRs, one performs a consequence-based analysis (CBA) whose objective is to study hypothetical malicious attacks on the facility, assuming that intruders take control of the facility and perform any technically possible action within a limited time before an offsite security force can respond. The scenario leading to the most severe radiological consequences is selected and studied to estimate the limiting impact on public health. The CBA estimates the total amount of radionuclides that would be released to the atmosphere in this hypothetical scenario to determine the total radiation dose to which the public would be exposed. The predicted radiation exposure dose is then compared to the regulatory dose limit for the site. This paper describes application of the CBA to four different MMRs technologies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.139-147
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• 2016

Nuclear energy is considerably cheap and clean compared to other fossil fuels. Yet, there are rising safety concerns of nuclear power plants including the possibility of radiation releasing nuclear accidents. In light of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011, Japan has been re-evaluating their existing energy policies and increasing the share of alternative energy. This paper first tracks the major historical changes of energy policy in Japan by time period. Next, energy security, reignited concerns and alternative energy are covered to examine Japan's energy security situation and its transition after the Fukushima disaster. Lastly, a short survey based on thematic analysis was conducted in South Korea and Japan to understand the public awareness of nuclear. This paper postulates that the case of Fukushima will contribute to establish and operate a safe-future nuclear program in South Korea, given that the country is not only geographically neighbouring Japan but also the world's fourth largest producer of nuclear energy.

• Journal of National Security and Military Science
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• s.5
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• pp.173-202
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• 2007

After successful nuclear tests Pakistan launched a more severe surprise attack toward India than before. It is highly possible that North Korea will adopt this Pakistan military strategy if it is armed with nuclear weapons. The North Korean forces armed, with nuclear bombs could make double its war capability through strengthening aggressive force structure and come into effect on blocking reinforcement of the US forces at the initial phase of war time. Therefore we may regard that Pyongyang's nuclear arming is a major one of various factors which increase possibility of waging a conventional warfare or a nuclear war. North Korea's high self-confidence after nuclear arming will heighten tension on the Korean Peninsula via aggressive military threat or terror toward South Korea, and endeavor to accomplish its political purpose via low-intensity conflicts. For instance, nuclear arming of the Pyongyang regime enforces the North Korean forces to invade the Northern Limit Line(NLL), provoke naval battles at the West Sea, and occupy one or two among the Five Islands at the West Sea. In that case, the South Korean forces will be faced with a serious dilemma. In order to recapture the islands, Seoul should be ready for escalating a war. However it is hard to imagine that South Korea fights with North Korea armed with nuclear weapons. This paper concludes that the Pyongyang regime after nuclear arming strongly tends to occupy superiority of military strategy and wage military provocations on the Korean Peninsula.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.73-82
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• 2018

In this work, a hardware based cryptographic module for the cyber security of nuclear power plant is developed using a system engineering approach. Nuclear power plants are isolated from the Internet, but as shown in the case of Iran, Man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM) could be a threat to the safety of the nuclear facilities. This FPGA-based module does not have an operating system and it provides protection as a firewall and mitigates the cyber threats. The encryption equipment consists of an encryption module, a decryption module, and interfaces for communication between modules and systems. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-128, which is formally approved as top level by U.S. National Security Agency for cryptographic algorithms, is adopted. The development of the cyber security module is implemented in two main phases: reverse engineering and re-engineering. In the reverse engineering phase, the cyber security plan and system requirements are analyzed, and the AES algorithm is decomposed into functional units. In the re-engineering phase, we model the logical architecture using Vitech CORE9 software and simulate it with the Enhanced Functional Flow Block Diagram (EFFBD), which confirms the performance improvements of the hardware-based cryptographic module as compared to software based cryptography. Following this, the Hardware description language (HDL) code is developed and tested to verify the integrity of the code. Then, the developed code is implemented on the FPGA and connected to the personal computer through Recommended Standard (RS)-232 communication to perform validation of the developed component. For the future work, the developed FPGA based encryption equipment will be verified and validated in its expected operating environment by connecting it to the Advanced power reactor (APR)-1400 simulator.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.995-1001
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• 2020

With the development of digital instrumentation and control (I&C) devices, cyber security at nuclear power plants (NPPs) has become a hot issue. The Stuxnet, which destroyed Iran's uranium enrichment facility in 2010, suggests that NPPs could even lead to an accident involving the release of radioactive materials cyber-attacks. However, cyber security research on industrial control systems (ICSs) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems is relatively inadequate compared to information technology (IT) and further it is difficult to study cyber-attack taxonomy for NPPs considering the characteristics of ICSs. The advanced research of cyber-attack taxonomy does not reflect the architectural and inherent characteristics of NPPs and lacks a systematic countermeasure strategy. Therefore, it is necessary to more systematically check the consistency of operators and regulators related to cyber security, as in regulatory guide 5.71 (RG.5.71) and regulatory standard 015 (RS.015). For this reason, this paper attempts to suggest a template for cyber-attack taxonomy based on the characteristics of NPPs and exemplifies a specific cyber-attack case in the template. In addition, this paper proposes a systematic countermeasure strategy by matching the countermeasure with critical digital assets (CDAs). The cyber-attack cases investigated using the proposed cyber-attack taxonomy can be used as data for evaluation and validation of cyber security conformance for digital devices to be applied, and as effective prevention and mitigation for cyber-attacks of NPPs.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.1077-1088
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• 2019

As the cyber threats of nuclear power plants become more necessary to systematically prepare against the cyber attack, the international community and the domestic government are urged to apply proper security controls for Critical Digital Assets (CDA) through cyber security regulatory guidelines. In this study, we suggests the application of security controls to develop the regulatory requirements of the graded approach through the analysis of domestic and foreign cyber security regulation guidelines and best practices for digital assets directly related to nuclear accidents. In order to apply the regulatory requirements based on the consequence(impact of infringement) of the regulated facility, which is a basic consideration of the graded approach, we will classify two methods and describe details of each method. By reanalyzing existing security controls, it is introduced that the method of demanding digital assets directly related to accident to enhance security controls required for existing CDA or develop additional security controls and requiring minimum security controls for CDA that are not directly related to accident.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3327-3334
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• 2021

Present electric grids are advanced to integrate smart grids, distributed resources, high-speed sensing and control, and other advanced metering technologies. Cybersecurity is one of the challenges of the smart grid and nuclear plant digital system. It affects the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), for grid data communication and controls the information in real-time. The research article is emphasized solving the nuclear and smart grid hardware security issues with the integration of field programmable gate array (FPGA), and implementing the latest Time Authenticated Cryptographic Identity Transmission (TACIT) cryptographic algorithm in the chip. The cryptographic-based encryption and decryption approach can be used for a smart grid distribution system embedding with FPGA hardware. The chip design is carried in Xilinx ISE 14.7 and synthesized on Virtex-5 FPGA hardware. The state of the art of work is that the algorithm is implemented on FPGA hardware that provides the scalable design with different key sizes, and its integration enhances the grid hardware security and switching. It has been reported by similar state-of-the-art approaches, that the algorithm was limited in software, not implemented in a hardware chip. The main finding of the research work is that the design predicts the utilization of hardware parameters such as slices, LUTs, flip-flops, memory, input/output blocks, and timing information for Virtex-5 FPGA synthesis before the chip fabrication. The information is extracted for 8-bit to 128-bit key and grid data with initial parameters. TACIT security chip supports 400 MHz frequency for 128-bit key. The research work is an effort to provide the solution for the industries working towards embedded hardware security for the smart grid, power plants, and nuclear applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.780-787
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• 2018

This article presents a security module based on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to mitigate man-in-the-middle cyber attacks. Nowadays, the FPGA is considered to be the state of the art in nuclear power plants I&C systems due to its flexibility, reconfigurability, and maintainability of the FPGA technology; it also provides acceptable solutions for embedded computing applications that require cybersecurity. The proposed FPGA-based security module is developed to mitigate information-gathering attacks, which can be made by gaining physical access to the network, e.g., a man-in-the-middle attack, using a cryptographic process to ensure data confidentiality and integrity and prevent injecting malware or malicious data into the critical digital assets of a nuclear power plant data communication system. A model-based system engineering approach is applied. System requirements analysis and enhanced function flow block diagrams are created and simulated using CORE9 to compare the performance of the current and developed systems. Hardware description language code for encryption and serial communication is developed using Vivado Design Suite 2017.2 as a programming tool to run the system synthesis and implementation for performance simulation and design verification. Simple windows are developed using Java for physical testing and communication between a personal computer and the FPGA.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.60
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• pp.227-251
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• 2019

National interest in nuclear safety continues to increase. One of the policies that the government is pursuing is to change a temporary position to a permanent position for irregular special security guards of Nuclear power plants. At this point in time, it is urgent to discuss the method of their physical fitness test because duties of special security guards such as arrest and self-defense, unarmed defensive tactics, proficiency with semiautomatic rifle, etc, demands a lot of physical fitness. The purpose of this study is to analyze the physical fitness tests of police, firefighters and soldiers in Korea, US and Japan through literature review. After that, a new fitness test method suitable for special security guards of nuclear power plants was derived through expert meetings. This study also suggested a guideline to analyze the fitness test results so that the developed fitness method can be introduced to the field. For this purpose, physical fitness tests were conducted on 74 subjects. Based on the results of the experiment, the expected records of special security guard fitness tests were presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1355-1364
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• 2019

A recently published nuclear forensics methodology for source discrimination of separated weapons-grade plutonium utilizes intra-element isotope ratios and a maximum likelihood formulation to identify the most likely source reactor-type, fuel burnup and time since irradiation of unknown material. Sensitivity studies performed here on the effects of random measurement error and the uncertainty in intra-element isotope ratio values show that different intra-element isotope ratios have disproportionate contributions to the determination of the reactor parameters. The methodology is robust to individual errors in measured intra-element isotope ratio values and even more so for uniform systematic errors due to competing effects on the predictions from the selected intra-element isotope ratios suite. For a unique sample-model pair, simulation uncertainties of up to 28% are acceptable without impeding successful source-reactor discrimination. However, for a generic sample with multiple plausible sources within the reactor library, uncertainties of 7% or less may be required. The results confirm the critical role of accurate reactor core physics, fuel burnup simulations and experimental measurements in the proposed methodology where increased simulation uncertainty is found to significantly affect the capability to discriminate between the reactors in the library.