skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Preliminary Cyber-Informed Dynamic Branch Conditions for Analysis with the Dynamic Simplified Cyber MELCOR Model

Journal Article · · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society
OSTI ID:23042712
; ; ; ;  [1]
  1. Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185 (United States)

Instrumentation and control of nuclear power is transforming from analog to modern digital assets. These control systems perform key safety and security functions. This transformation is occurring in new plant designs as well as in the existing fleet of plants as the operation of those plants is extended to 60 years. This transformation introduces new and unknown exploits involving both digital asset induced safety issues and security exploits. Traditional the open literature of nuclear power risk assessment tools and cyber security assessment methods have not been modified or developed to address the unique nature of cyber failure modes and of cyber security threats. Starting in 2015, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) embarked on a two year dynamic cyber-risk informed project to facilitate the analysis of unique cyber failure modes and the time sequencing of cyber faults, both malicious and non-malicious, and impose those cyber exploits and cyber faults onto a nuclear power plant accident sequence simulator code to assess how cyber exploits and cyber faults could interact with a plant's digital instrumentation and control (DI and C) system in the absence of digital controls. This will be achieved by coupling SNL's existing dynamic scheduler code (ADAPT), nuclear accident simulator code (MELCOR), and cyber Emulytics code (SCEPTRE) to demonstrate real-time simulation of cyber exploits and their impact on automatic DI and C responses. Studying such potential time-sequenced cyber-attacks and their risks (i.e., the associated impact and the associated degree of difficulty to achieve the attack vector) as they pertain to accident management will provide a risk informed basis for developing effective cyber security controls for nuclear power. This paper will discuss the rationale behind the proposed generic cyber exploits for an abstracted Pressurized Water Reactor that has adopted a unified DI and C System. Other papers related to this project submitted to this conference discuss: - The MELCOR model for this abstracted reactor, called the Dynamic Simplified Cyber (DSC) model, - Modifications to ADAPT to: Extend the framework for multiple simulators, Incorporation of importance measures into dynamic event tree analysis, Sort and reduce the dynamic event tree based upon inputs to or outputs from the tree, and - A feasibility study for using density based clustering methods with dynamic time wrapping to cluster and prune dynamic event trees. (authors)

OSTI ID:
23042712
Journal Information:
Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 115; Conference: 2016 ANS Winter Meeting and Nuclear Technology Expo, Las Vegas, NV (United States), 6-10 Nov 2016; Other Information: Country of input: France; 16 refs.; available from American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (US); ISSN 0003-018X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English