Definition
Nuclear reactors provide several key societal benefits – including electricity generation and industrial/medical isotope production – that need to be protected against malicious activities.
Introduction
Nuclear technologies provide a range of benefits to the society. These benefits include reduced carbon emission electricity production, seawater desalination, generating radionuclides to serve various medical needs (including cancer treatments), and advanced technological development. As such, these activities and facilities are assessed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be critical because:
a significant incident or failure…would likely result in extremely high economic costs, major onsite and/or offsite property damage, and evacuations…[as well as] long-term cleanup costs and economic damage to the local region. (DHS 2015, p. 9)
Therefore, to ensure these benefits are realized, facilities hosting these technologies fall under the purview of the US Department...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Bunn, M. (2005). Incentives for nuclear security. In Proceedings of the 46th annual meeting of the institute of nuclear materials management (INMM). Phoenix: INMM.
Holt, M., & Andrews, A. (2014). Nuclear power plant security & vulnerabilities, Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress RL34331.
International Atomic Energy Agency. (2017a). Member States’ competent authorities. https://nucleus.iaea.org/RRDB/RR/ReactorSearch.aspx.
International Atomic Energy Agency. (2017b). Nuclear security series. https://www.iaea.org/resources/nuclear-security-series.
International Atomic Energy Agency. (2018a). Research reactor database. https://nucleus.iaea.org/RRDB/RR/ReactorSearch.aspx.
International Atomic Energy Agency. (2018b). The database on nuclear power reactors. IAEA’s Power Reactor Information System. https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/home.aspx.
MacFarlane, A. (2016). “How to Protect Nuclear Plants from Terrorists” U.S. News & World Report, April 13. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-13/how-to-protect-nuclear-plants-from-terrorists.
National Academies of Sciences. (2016). Chapter 3: Research reactors and their uses. In Reducing the use of highly enriched uranium in civilian research reactors. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Solodov, A.A., Williams, A.D., Al Hanaei, S., and Goddard, B. (2018) Analyzing the threat of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to nuclear facilities. Security Journal, 31(1), 305-324.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2015). Nuclear reactors, materials, and waste sector-specific plan: An Annex to the NIPP 2013. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/nipp-ssp-nuclear-2015-508.pdf.
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (2017). Physical protection. https://www.nrc.gov/security/domestic/phys-protect.html.
World Institute for Nuclear Security. (2018). Category: Best practice Guides. https://www.iaea.org/resources/nuclear-security-series.
Further Reading
Behrens, C., & Holt, M. (2005). Nuclear power plants: Vulnerability to terrorists. Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress RS21131.
International Atomic Energy Agency. (2011). Nuclear security recommendations on physical protection of nuclear material and nuclear facilities (INFCIRC/225/Revision 5). Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency.
U.S. Code of Federal Regulations. (2017). Part 73 – Physical Protection of Plants and Materials (10 C.F.R. 73).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Williams, A.D. (2019). Critical Infrastructure: Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector. In: Shapiro, L., Maras, MH. (eds) Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_92-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_92-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Law and CriminologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences