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NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) -19.1% to its lowest level in more than a month after a Hunterbrook Capital published a critical report on the company, saying the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement is conducting an "active and ongoing" investigation into the company.
The SEC cautioned that its decision "should not be construed as an indication by the Commission or its staff that any violations of law have occurred."
"Hunterbrook is a known short-seller that has a vested interest in sensationalizing information to manipulate the stock market," NuScale said in a statement emailed to Seeking Alpha. "We are unaware of any SEC investigation into NuScale or any reason for such an investigation."
NuScale Power (SMR), which has positioned itself as a pioneer in small modular reactor technology, has seen its market capitalization more than triple over the past six months to $2B-plus.
Approval of NuScale's (SMR) reactor by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is crucial for the company, given that NuScale has indicated it does not anticipate commercializing an earlier, 50 MW version of its reactor that was the first small modular reactor to be certified by the NRC.
VANDALIA, OHIO -Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Ohio Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.)
FirstEnergy was the company behind the largest political bailout and bribery scandal in Ohio history, which funneled $61 million in dark money bribes to Ohio lawmakers in order to pass a $1.3 billion nuclear and coal bailout at the expense of every Ohio family that pays utility bills.
This week, Sludge reported that Donald Trump’s top known campaign money bundler advised FirstEnergy on its contributions to a dark money group that pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in Ohio’s House Bill 6 bailout scandal.
Trump’s top money bundler is named Geoff Verhoff. As Sludge reported, Verhoff is a “senior adviser at public affairs firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, has bundled more than $3.6 million this year for Trump 47 Committee, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission.”
Verhoff also pleaded the Fifth when called to testify at Householder’s trial last March on his role in FirstEnergy’s Ohio bribery scheme.
From Sludge: “Verhoff was one of four individuals who was present at an October 2018 meeting where a FirstEnergy lobbyist paid a bribe to former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. According to the testimony of the government’s cooperating witness, former FirstEnergy lobbyist Juan Cespedes, during the meeting lobbyist Robert Klaffky slid an envelope containing a $400,000 check under the hand of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. In response to the check, Cespedes said, Householder, gave ‘very strong verbals and nonverbals that he would introduce’ the FirstEnergy bailout legislation. The check was written out to Generation Now, a dark money nonprofit controlled by Householder that later pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in the matter.”
The article is full of details and is worth getting a subscription to read in full. Sludge reports on money in politics — that dark toxin poisoning our body politic alongside gerrymandering, as we’ve discussed previously.
Verhoff is just one of two FirstEnergy-connected lobbyist bundlers working to gather money for Trump to be reelected, according to the article. Verhoff also served as vice-chair of the RNC finance committee from 2017-2021. The Akin group Verhoff is part of got $68 million for their FirstEnergy work, Sludge reported, and Verhoff got $675 an hour from FirstEnergy.
Ohioans deserve answers and accountability, and public servants who serve the public instead of themselves. But I fear that the pattern of elected officials serving themselves at the expense of the public appears to be standard operating procedure among some politicians.
Some politicians try to soothe their conscience that giving aways billions of dollars worth of public money and resources in exchange for millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions is just business as usual and everybody does it and it’s just fine. They’re lying to themselves.
They’re selling themselves out and shamelessly ripping off working families in the process. They’re failing their most basic responsibility to protect the public welfare. This is not normal and it is not acceptable.
But prominent politicians are getting increasingly brazen.
NRC Withdraws Enforcement Action After Puerto Rico Firm Properly Disposes of Nuclear Gauge
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has withdrawn a civil penalty issued to a Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, firm after it complied with an agency order by properly disposing of a portable nuclear gauge and completing the decommissioning of its site.
The NRC notified Almonte Geo Services Group in November that the agency was proposing a $17,500 fine for the company’s failure to dispose of or transfer a nuclear gauge in its possession within a specified time period. Such gauges contain small amounts of radioactive material and are used for purposes that include measuring the density of soil at construction sites.
In May, Almonte Geo Services informed the NRC that the gauge had been transferred to a contractor for disposal. The NRC verified that the gauge was received by the authorized facility. Almonte Geo Services also requested that its NRC license be terminated.
“The goal of the NRC enforcement action was to ensure the company met its obligation to properly transfer or dispose of the gauge and thereby prevent the material from falling into the wrong hands. Almonte Geo Services also needed to complete the decommissioning of its site,” Region I Administrator Ray Lorson said. “We have now confirmed that has occurred and therefore are withdrawing the order imposing the civil penalty in recognition of those actions.”
NRC Proposes $9,000 Fine for Connecticut Hospital for Improper Handling and Transfer of Nuclear Materials
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a $9,000 civil penalty for Yale-New Haven Hospital for violations involving the improper handling and transfer of NRC-licensed nuclear materials. The hospital, in a written response to the NRC, did not contest the violations.
In December 2023, the hospital, located in New Haven, Connecticut, notified the NRC that an unused vial of lutetium-177 had been recovered at a lead-disposal facility after setting off radiation alarms. The vial holding the isotope, which is used for targeted nuclear medicine therapy for certain types of tumors and prostate cancer, was inside a lead transfer container when it was discovered. It did not have any external contamination and was not damaged. In addition to the vial, several empty lead containers with external lutetium-177 contamination were also found.
Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection staff responded to the disposal facility, conducted radiological surveys and determined the vial came from Yale-New Haven Hospital. The hospital’s radiation safety officer retrieved the materials the same day. No radiation overexposures are believed to have occurred.
Subsequent NRC inspections found that a nuclear medicine technologist earlier in December had gathered materials from storage in a nuclear medicine hot lab at the hospital. The technologist failed to properly perform radiation checks on the exterior of the items or to check the containers for internal contents. The containers were then transported to the disposal facility, where they set off an alarm at the weigh station, leading to the response actions.
Based on the NRC’s reviews, the agency identified two violations: a failure to appropriately dispose of NRC-licensed materials; and a failure to appropriately monitor the materials prior to disposal.
“In this case, there was a breakdown when it came to thoroughly checking the transfer containers for radiation prior to their removal from the hospital,” NRC Region I Administrator Raymond Lorson said. “Ensuring NRC-licensed materials are properly handled is essential when it comes to protecting workers, the public and the environment.”
The hospital has instituted corrective actions that include using a standard operating procedure for radioactive waste decay during the storage and disposal of such materials and another for the disposal of lead materials. Nuclear medicine staff at the facility would be required to undergo training on these new procedures and attest to compliance.
NRC Will Hold Public Meeting August 1 To Discuss Potential Restart of Palisades Nuclear Plant
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a hybrid public meeting that will include the agency’s update on the plant’s readiness to potentially resume operation and a presentation from Holtec International on restart-related activities.
The meeting will be held at the Grand Upton Hall, Lake Michigan College, 2755 E. Napier Ave., in Benton Harbor. Information for attending virtually or by phone can be found in the meeting notice.
Palisades permanently ceased operations in May 2022. In early 2023, Holtec International, the Palisades license holder, expressed interest in returning the plant to an operational status. The NRC created the Palisades Restart Panel to guide staff efforts to review, inspect, and determine if Palisades could be safely returned to operation.
The presentations will be followed by a question and comment session for attendees to engage with panel members on the NRC’s presentation. In-person attendees will be given priority to speak. Additional information on a potential Palisades restart can be found on the NRC’s website.
It’s not just toxic chemicals. Radioactive waste was also dumped off Los Angeles coast
A research expedition led by UC Santa Barbara came across old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. (David Valentine / ROV Jason) BY ROSANNA XIASTAFF WRITER FEB. 21, 2024 5 AM PT
For decades, a graveyard of corroding barrels has littered the seafloor just off the coast of Los Angeles. It was out of sight, out of mind — a not-so-secret secret that haunted the marine environment until a team of researchers came across them with an advanced underwater camera.
Speculation abounded as to what these mysterious barrels might contain. Startling amounts of DDT near the barrels pointed to a little-known history of toxic pollution from what was once the largest DDT manufacturer in the nation, but federal regulators recently determined that the manufacturer had not bothered with barrels. (Its acid waste was poured straight into the ocean instead.)
Now, as part of an unprecedented reckoning with the legacy of ocean dumping in Southern California, scientists have concluded the barrels may actually contain low-level radioactive waste. Records show that from the 1940s through the 1960s, it was not uncommon for local hospitals, labs and other industrial operations to dispose barrels of tritium, carbon-14 and other similar waste at sea.
“This is a classic situation of bad versus worse. It’s bad we have potential low-level radioactive waste just sitting there on the seafloor. It’s worse that we have DDT compounds spread across a wide area of the seafloor at concerning concentrations,” said David Valentine, whose research team at UC Santa Barbara had first discovered the barrels and sparked concerns of what could be inside. “The question we grapple with now is how bad and how much worse.”
This latest revelation from Valentine’s team was published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology as part of a broader, highly anticipated study that lays the groundwork for understanding just how much DDT is spread across the seafloor — and how the contamination might still be moving 3,000 feet underwater.
A man wearing an orange hard hat and life vest holds a device made of clear tubes while standing on the deck of a ship. David Valentine, whose team at UC Santa Barbara has been researching the legacy of DDT dumping in the deep ocean, prepares to collect more sediment samples from the seafloor. (Austin Straub / For The Times) Public concerns have intensified since The Times reported in 2020 that dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, banned in 1972 following Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” is still haunting the marine environment in insidious ways. Scientists continue to trace significant amounts of this decades-old “forever chemical” all the way up the marine food chain, and a recent study linked the presence of this once-popular pesticide to an aggressive cancer in California sea lions.
Dozens of ecotoxicologists and marine scientists are now trying to fill key data gaps, and the findings so far have been one plot twist after another. A research team led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography just recently set sail to help map and identify as many barrels as possible on the seafloor — only to discover a multitude of discarded military explosives from the World War II era.
And in the process of digging up old records, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that from the 1930s to the early 1970s, 13 other areas off the Southern California coast had also been approved for dumping of military explosives, radioactive waste and various refinery byproducts — including 3 million metric tons of petroleum waste.
Massive dumping ground of WWII-era munitions discovered off Los Angeles coast
In the study published this week, Valentine found high concentrations of DDT spread across a wide swath of seafloor larger than the city of San Francisco. His team has been collecting hundreds of sediment samples as part of a methodical, large-scale effort to map the footprint of the dumping and analyze how the chemical might be moving through the water and whether it has broken down. After many trips out to sea, they still have yet to find the boundary of the dump site, but concluded that much of the DDT in the deep ocean remains in its most potent form.
Further analysis, using carbon-dating methods, determined that the DDT dumping peaked in the 1950s, when Montrose Chemical Corp. of California was still operating near Torrance during the pesticide’s postwar heyday — and prior to the onset of formal ocean dumping regulations.
Clues pointing to the radioactive waste emerged in the process of sorting through this DDT history.
Jacob Schmidt, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in Valentine’s lab, combed through hundreds of pages of old records and tracked down seven lines of evidence indicating that California Salvage, the same company tasked with pouring the DDT waste off the coast of Los Angeles, had also dumped low-level radioactive waste while out at sea.
The company, now defunct, had received a permit in 1959 to dump containerized radioactive waste about 150 miles offshore, according to the U.S. Federal Register. Although archived notes by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission say the permit was never activated, other records show California Salvage advertised its radioactive waste disposal services and received waste in the 1960s from a radioisotope facility in Burbank, as well as barrels of tritium and carbon-14 from a regional Veterans Administration hospital facility.
Old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. A research expedition led by UC Santa Barbara came across old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. (David Valentine / ROV Jason) Given recent revelations that the people in charge of getting rid of the DDT waste sometimes took shortcuts and just dumped it closer to port, researchers say they would not be surprised if the radioactive waste had also been dumped closer than 150 miles offshore.
“There’s quite a bit of a paper trail,” Valentine said. “It’s all circumstantial, but the circumstances seem to point toward this company that would take whatever waste people gave them and barge it offshore … with the other liquid wastes that we know they were dumping at the time.”
Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist who was not affiliated with the study, said that generally speaking, some of the more abundant radioactive isotopes that were dumped into the ocean at the time — such as tritium — would have largely decayed in the past 80 years. But many questions remain on what other potentially more hazardous isotopes could’ve been dumped.
The sobering reality, he noted, is that it wasn’t until the 1970s that people started to take radioactive waste to landfills rather than dump it in the ocean.
He pulled out an old map published by the International Atomic Energy Agency that noted from 1946 to 1970, more than 56,000 barrels of radioactive waste had been dumped into the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side. And across the world even today, low-level radioactive waste is still being released into the ocean by nuclear power plants and decommissioned plants such as the one in Fukushima, Japan.
Screenshot of a black and white map from a 1999 International Atomic Energy Agency report. In a 1999 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency titled “Inventory of radioactive waste disposals at sea,” a grainy map shows that at least 56,261 containers of radioactive waste were dumped into the Pacific Ocean from 1946 to 1970. (International Atomic Energy Agency) “The problem with the oceans as a dumping solution is once it’s there, you can’t go back and get it,” said Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity. “These 56,000 barrels, for example, we’re never going to get them back.”
Mark Gold, an environmental scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council who has worked on the toxic legacy of DDT for more than 30 years, said it is unsettling to think just how big the consequences of ocean dumping might be across the country and the world. Scientists have discovered DDT, military explosives and now radioactive waste off the Los Angeles coast because they knew to look. But what about all the other dump sites where no one’s looking?
“The more we look, the more we find, and every new bit of information seems to be scarier than the last,” said Gold, who called on federal officials to act more boldly on this information. “This has shown just how egregious and harmful the dumping has been off our nation’s coasts, and that we have no idea how big of an issue and how big of a problem this is nationally.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), in a letter signed this week by 22 fellow members of Congress, urged the Biden administration to commit dedicated long-term funding to both studying and remediating the issue. (Congress has so far allocated more than $11 million in one-time funding that led to many of these initial scientific findings, and an additional $5.2 million in state funding recently kicked off 18 more months of research.)
“While DDT was banned more than 50 years ago, we still have only a murky picture of its potential impacts to human health, national security and ocean ecosystems,” the lawmakers said. “We encourage the administration to think about the next 50 years, creating a long-term national plan within EPA and [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to address this toxic legacy off the coast of our communities.”
As for the EPA, regulators urged the growing research effort to stay focused on the agency’s most burning questions: Is this legacy contamination still moving through the ocean in a way that threatens the marine environment or human health? And if so, is there a potential path for remediation?
EPA scientists have also been refining their own sampling plan, in collaboration with a number of government agencies, to get a grasp of the many other chemicals that had been dumped into the ocean. The hope, they said, is that all these research efforts combined will ultimately inform how future investigations of other offshore dump sites — whether along the Southern California coast or elsewhere in the country — could be conducted.
“It’s extremely overwhelming. … There’s still so much we don’t know,” said John Chesnutt, a Superfund section manager who has been leading the EPA’s technical team on the ocean dumping investigation. “Whether it’s radioactivity or explosives or what have you, there’s potentially a wide range of contaminants out there that aren’t good for the environment and the food web, if they’re really moving through it.” Newsletter
...“Significant operational incidents persisted at WIPP following the safety stand-down in April,” the report read. “The (Department of Energy) Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) is considering formal mechanisms to transmit to SIMCO its concerns about the trend of unsafe work practices at WIPP. The Board’s staff will continue monitoring progress with improving the safety culture at WIPP.”
Meanwhile, the DNFSB sent a letter to the U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, raising concerns that the final design of a rebuild of WIPP’s ventilation system known as the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) did not demonstrate its ability to properly function in the underground, in environments with combustion products from fire and salt amid mining activities.
Construction on the SSCVS was completed in May, and it was being commissioned via various tests as the $486 million project was prepared for operations, increasing available airflow in the WIPP underground from 170,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) to 540,000 cfm. The DNFSB said the “tentative date” for SIMCO to take over the system’s operations from its subcontractor was Aug. 26, 2024. The DOE was preparing a response to the DNFSB’s letter on the SSCVS...
US senators urge Biden admin to not fund nuclear fuel reprocessing
July 18, 2024 at 03:39 pm EDT
WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) - Two Democratic U.S. senators have urged the administration of President Joe Biden to not fund proposals for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, saying such plants produce weapons-usable nuclear material and could encourage other countries to fund them abroad.
WHAT HAPPENED
Senators Jeff Merkley and Edward Markey, both Democrats, said in a letter dated Wednesday that reprocessing plants violate U.S. nuclear security policy which states that civil nuclear research and development must focus on approaches that avoid producing and accumulating weapons-usable nuclear material. They sent the letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Christopher Hanson.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
Many nonproliferation experts oppose reprocessing because they say its supply chain could be a target for militants seeking to seize plutonium and other materials for use in a crude nuclear bomb.
Former President Gerald Ford halted reprocessing in 1976, citing proliferation concerns. Former President Ronald Reagan lifted a moratorium in 1981, but high costs and security concerns have prevented plants from opening.
The lawmakers, co-chairs of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, did not name any projects. But ARPA-E, a Department of Energy agency, is funding reprocessing projects.
The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Granholm said when the ARPA-E funding was announced that recycling nuclear waste "can significantly reduce the amount of spent fuel at nuclear sites, and increase economic stability for the communities leading this important work."
ARPA-E has said concerns about proliferation related to the handling of dangerous nuclear materials during reprocessing are "precisely the challenges" the program aims to address.
KEY QUOTE
"The reprocessing of plutonium that would be undertaken at these plants would create security and proliferation risks that far outweigh any ostensible energy benefits," the senators said in the letter. "Furthermore, such projects would be vulnerable to attacks by nefarious actors who seek to exploit the infrastructure and nuclear fuel at these plants to threaten U.S. nationals and interests." (Reporting by Timothy Gardner Editing by Marguerita Choy)
MassDEP DENIES HOLTEC DUMPING PERMIT BUT IT'S NOT OVER YET!
HOLTEC MAY APPEAL THE DECISION
CONTINUES TO USE EVAPORATION FOR DISCHARGE
NO EVAPORATION!
NOT ONE DROP!
Click on letter for full document.
MassDEP has fully denied Holtec the state Surface Water Discharge Permit to dump over a million gallons of radioactive and chemically contaminated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. We applaud Governor Healey and her administration for upholding the Ocean Sanctuaries Act which confirms Holtec's plan to discharge into Cape Cod Bay is illegal. However, Holtec plans to appeal.
In signing the MA/Holtec Settlement Agreement with the Commonwealth, Holtec agreed to comply with relevant state regulations-the Ocean Sanctuaries Act [under 'waste' definition] which also prohibits not only liquid but 'gaseous materials". We now need the state to enforce the full law!
In 2022, fter dumping radioactive wastewater into Barnegat Bay as oyster farmers were preparing the bay beds, Holtec acknowledged evaporation was dangerous.
"Evaporation releases higher levels of radioactive materials
due to the concentration and lack of dilution
when the water becomes a gas."
-Holtec representative Joseph Delmar
Now it's ok to evaporate into our communities and bay?
JOIN US ON MONDAY, July 22 at 5:30 PM to SPEAK OUT RALLY/NDCAP 6:30 PM
RALLY ON TOWN HALL GREEN
Speakers include:
Mary Lampert, Pilgrim Watch/SOBMA
Melissa Ferretti, Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe:
Our communities have long understood the profound connection between the land and our well-being. Today, I urge us all to recognize the grave dangers posed by nuclear waste. This hazardous material threatens not only our environment but also the health and safety of future generations. It is imperative that we take immediate and decisive action to mitigate these risks and protect our sacred lands. Together, we can advocate for safer, more sustainable practices that honor our commitment to the natural world and ensure a healthier future for all.
Beth Casoni, Executive Director, MA Lobstermen's Association:
The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association does not support the dumping or evaporation of ANY contaminated water from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant into Cape Cod Bay. The scores of commercial fishermen that earn their livelihood on these clean and pristine waters depend upon the State and Federal Government’s to protect our oceans and must mandate Holtec to dispose of the contaminated water by trucking it to a facility that can safely dispose of it.
Dr. Peter Moyer, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility:
As an Emergency physician and board member of GBPSR, Dr. Moyer will describe the radioactive elements in the wastewater and causal relationship with cancers emphasizing the particular vulnerability of pregnant women and their fetuses as well as children and explain how, along with water, dangerous radioactive isotopes would be released into the air and their potential harm to plant workers and surrounding neighbors as well as Cape Cod Bay.
Angelina Sanfilipo, Executive Director, MA Fishermen's Partnership
Rosemary Shields, League of Women Voters of the Cape Cod Area
Chris Nord, Citizens Awareness Network
Dr. Barry Potvin, Plymouth Board of Health
Original Music by Jo-anne and John Wilson-Keenan
Bring your sign and spirit to stop Holtec!
IN THE NEWS
State Won't Let Holtec Dump Radioactive Wastewater Into Cape Cod Bay by Fred Thys-Plymouth Independent
The state has denied Holtec Decommissioning International permission to dump up to 1.1 million gallons of treated radioactive wastewater from the former Pilgrim nuclear power station into Cape Cod Bay.
Holtec has a contract to decommission the Pilgrim plant in Manomet, which stopped generating electricity in 2019. As part of its plan, the New Jersey-based company asked the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for a modification of its permit that would allow it to dump the wastewater.
On Thursday, the DEP rejected that request.........,
Company Can't Dump Nuclear Plant Wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, Mass Rules by Roberto Scalese WBUR
Massachusetts will not allow the company decommissioning the former Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to discharge treated nuclear wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.
The state's Department of Environmental Protection shot down the plan in a final decision published Thursday. According to the department, they cannot allow plant owner Holtec to discharge the water because Cape Cod Bay is protected under the state's Ocean Sanctuaries Act....
MASS.GOV NOTICE: The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) today denied the permit modification sought by Holtec Decommissioning International, LLC, to discharge up to 1.1 million gallons of industrial wastewater from the former Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into Cape Cod Bay. Cape Cod Bay is a protected ocean sanctuary as defined under the Massachusetts Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which prohibits the dumping or discharge of industrial wastes into protected state waters.
Sellafield nuclear power plant (NPP) has experienced cybersecurity issues. Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.
As nuclear power establishes itself as an ever more important source of energy for nations across the world, cybersecurity risks are also becoming increasingly menacing, according to a new report by UK think tank Chatham House.
The Sellafield NPP debacle was a conspicuous case of nuclear cybersecurity going awry.
The site on the English coast has been hacked multiple times by actors with close ties to Russia and China since 2015 but this was “consistently covered up by senior staff”, the Guardian reported last December.
According to the Guardian, information and data on Sellafield’s most sensitive activities could have been fed back to foreign parties through “sleeper malware” that has lurked in the background of its computer systems for as long as ten years.
While Sellafield is used primarily as a nuclear waste and decommissioning site, rather than for active nuclear production, the site has the world’s largest stores of plutonium, a highly reactive metal used to make nuclear weapons. It also contains a set of emergency planning documents that detail the steps the UK Government would take should the country come under foreign attack, meaning foreign hackers could have accessed the “highest echelons of confidential material at the site”.
The case therefore illustrated how not only energy security, but national security can be comprised by nuclear cybersecurity threats.
According to Chatham House’s ‘Cybersecurity of the civil nuclear sector’ report, there are several reasons the nuclear power industry is particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches.
An unprepared and oblivious industry
Firstly, a lot of the existing nuclear power infrastructure is dated and does not possess up-to-date cybersecurity technology.
Chatham House notes that, currently, many nuclear plants rely on software that is “built on insecure foundations and requiring frequent patches or updates” or “has reached the end of its supported lifespan and can no longer be updated”. The think tank pointed out that civil nuclear industries are thus playing catch up with other critical national infrastructure (CNI) industries when it comes to cybersecurity.
The fact that nuclear infrastructure is considered to be CNI also makes it an attractive target for hackers. As demonstrated by the Sellafield incident, nuclear sites can have implications beyond energy, including national security. Foreign actors could target another state’s nuclear industry to not only jeopardise the state’s energy security but also gain a military advantage, says Chatham House.
Another vulnerability highlighted by the report is the industry’s reliance on ‘security by obscurity’. Hubristic systems managers have often neglected adequate security measures due to the assumption that ICT (information and communication technology) systems in older NPPs are too small-scale to have well-known vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
The SMR threat
The Chatham House report also details how the uptake of small modular reactors (SMRs) could lead to increased cybersecurity risks.
Due to their diminutive size, SMRs can be deployed in disparate areas that lack the physical conditions necessary for the deployment of large-scale energy infrastructure. The inherent versatility of the advanced technology has made it popular among governments across the world as they seek to widen access to more forms of renewable energy.
However, SMR-centred nuclear infrastructure would look different to that of traditional reactors, requiring different security measures.
For one, there will be a larger number of SMRs in more locations due to their easily deployable nature. It might not be practical to have staff at each site, with operators instead opting to run the facility by a central computer system without human presence. Increased reliance on cloud systems to run infrastructure is bound to enhance the cybersecurity risks, Chatham House says.
Furthermore, SMRs present additional supply chain pinch-points for cybersecurity, as the materials for SMRs tend to be prefabricated by a larger number of varying suppliers than in traditional nuclear plants, according to Chatham House.
Combination of cyber and physical threats
Chatham House notes that while NPPs are not designed to operate in war zones, they do have several layers of physical safety built in to protect reactors from kinetic threats. However, physical threats combined with cybersecurity breaches could create far more menacing risks for plant operators that could overwhelm operating staff and enable unauthorised access to nuclear materials.
For instance, in Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, this combination of threats was realised at the Vinca research reactor, where research staff feared that highly enriched uranium fuel could be stolen. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was forced to carry out several inspections between 1995 and 1999. The plant was saved, but for some time the threat nearly escalated into catastrophe.
More recently, the Zaporizhzhia NPP has raised similar concerns. Since November 2022, Russia has controlled the NPP, which sits on the front line of Russian-occupied Ukraine. “Reckless attacks” on the power plant have “significantly increased the risk of a major nuclear accident”, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council in April, although Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of carrying out the attacks.
Where does the industry go from here?
While no single legal regime addresses cyber threats to nuclear infrastructure, international law can provide safeguards against what is often a cross-border threat.
Chatham House recommends that states “develop strategies to both enhance the enforcement of international law in cyberspace and ensure accountability for unlawful cyber operations, including those targeting civil nuclear facilities”. Such strategies could include reforming existing treaties or laws to address cyber-nuclear, establishing an international cybersecurity management strategy and creating national computer emergency response teams specialised in industrial control systems.
With states rushing to grapple with rapaciously evolving cyber technologies, nuclear regulators may have their work cut out safeguarding the digital side of their industry. As the world becomes increasingly digitalised, and more reliant on decentralised, cloud-based systems, it is fair to expect cybersecurity to become a pressing issue for regulators in the near future.
