They can achieve these enhancements through better designs, higher levels of automation and smaller operating crews. But those same design choices could expand the opportunity for cyber and insider threats. INL is working to accelerate innovation in nuclear cybersecurity so tomorrow’s reactors are not only safe and efficient, but secure and resilient.

Securing Digital Nuclear

“Digital technology has become inseparable from nuclear operations,” said Charlie Nickerson, a nuclear cybersecurity specialist at INL. “Every plant in operation today relies on a mix of sensors, control systems and data streams that would have been unthinkable three decades ago.”

This digital transformation has created efficiencies in monitoring and controlling reactors, but it has also expanded the potential attack surface for adversaries.

Modern power reactor designs rely on high levels of automation and smaller operating crews, giving each operator broader authority over critical systems. They also lean more heavily on remote access, secure data transfer and supply chains that stretch across borders. Each of these choices strengthens the business case for nuclear power but introduces new sources of risk operators must manage.

Traditional compliance-based approaches to cybersecurity cannot keep pace with this new reality.

“Regulations are essential, but they were designed for a different era,” Nickerson said. “Meeting checklists alone will not prepare operators for adversaries who study systems, adapt quickly and combine cyber tactics with traditional sabotage tools.

“What is needed is innovation in how we simulate threats, how we build systems to prevent unauthorized access, how we detect them earlier in the attack life cycle and how we train people to respond,” Nickerson said.

Walking partners through realistic attacks, INL’s nuclear cyber team helps uncover hidden vulnerabilities, sharpen perspectives and look to build solutions that secure the future of nuclear energy.
Source: INL

This is the role INL has chosen. By combining immersive environments with structured frameworks, the nuclear cyber team is building the tools that allow operators and decision makers to see the future of cyber risk and act on it today.

Strength of Test Benches

Those tools end up born inside the lab’s test bench environments.

These are not classroom lectures or tabletop discussions. They are environments where nuclear operators, cybersecurity professionals and decision makers confront real-world attacks in controlled conditions.

“Each test bench forces participants to see how a vulnerability unfolds during exploitation, what signals might have revealed it earlier and how defenses can be strengthened,” Nickerson said.

The INL team’s spent fuel pool cooling system replicates cooling systems for spent fuel at commercial nuclear power plants, making the stakes clear. That is because a cyberattack that disrupts flow or disables sensors could put safety at risk.

Participants test what happens when systems fail, then practice detection and recovery strategies that emphasize consequence-driven engineering and thinking. Moreover, the experience drives home why cybersecurity is not abstract in a nuclear plant. It is directly tied to safety.

Another test bench mirrors the camera surveillance systems used at facilities.

The exercise is instantly familiar to anyone who has seen a heist film. A participant loops video footage so the security display shows a repeating image while a mock adversary gains access behind the scenes. This demonstrates how attackers blend digital system compromises with physical intrusions.

The result is a strong lesson in the importance of verifying what a system shows against what is actually happening.

These and other test benches at INL form more than a collection of exercises and pieces of equipment. To that end, each environment becomes a laboratory to stress-test ideas, refine detection strategies and help cross-disciplinary teams learn to anticipate the creativity of adversaries.

The outcome: Better-trained operators and a stronger foundation for building tools, practices and technologies that will secure nuclear energy for decades to come.

Steps to Secure Process

Each test bench feeds into a deliberate process INL built to help operators, vendors and regulators turn a single vivid experience into lasting change. The process has four steps: simulation, framework, application and return.

Step 1 is the simulation approach

The experience begins inside environments that recreate nuclear systems under cyberattack. The spent fuel pool test bench, for example, forces participants to see what happens when sensors fail or controls are disrupted. The surveillance bench shows how an attacker might distort data transmissions by looping a video feed while an intruder moves through a facility undetected. These moments create a shared memory through a common experience that everyone in the room can reference later, whether they are engineers, cybersecurity analysts or decision makers.

Step 2 is the framework

INL takes the drama from the exercise and distills it into structure. “Each scenario is mapped against the adversary lifecycle, showing reconnaissance, delivery, exploitation and actions on target step by step,” Nickerson said. Participants then discuss where they missed protection and detection opportunities.

This is where varied scenarios and threat types end up considered together. For example, an insider may provide access, but an outsider may weaponize it. “The goal is to create a framework that integrates both perspectives while blending behavioral cues with technical data, with the end goal of helping partners build defenses that match the reality of modern threat capabilities,” Nickerson said.

Step 3 is the application

The next step takes place outside the lab. Operators, vendors and decision makers carry the experiences and frameworks back to their home facilities. A regulator may adapt inspection criteria. A plant operator may revise a procedure for verifying surveillance feeds. A vendor may adjust the way remote access tools are configured.

These are small but concrete changes, seeded by the memory of the exercise and shaped by the framework that followed, but the process does not end there. INL applies these same lessons working with partners to design new test scenarios, build new test benches, validate new ideas and expand the cycle of innovation. The application phase is not a handoff; it is the beginning of a collaborative loop that keeps INL and its partners moving ahead of adversaries.

Step 4 is the return

Partners come back and bring new ideas, revised procedures or even prototype technologies to test on INL’s benches. This is where innovation accelerates. Instead of waiting for an adversary to prove whether the adjustment closes the gap, partners see it play out in a safe environment. They can test a new detection tool, stress test a revised response plan and validate a vendor’s design. The results show whether the change closes a gap, introduces new trade-offs, or maintains the safety and efficiency that advanced designs promise.

The outcome is not just a sharper workforce. It is a cycle that accelerates industry learning and innovation. Each loop compresses years of trial and error into weeks of experimentation.

“Participants leave not only with stories of simulated breaches, but with frameworks they can apply, solutions they can test and confidence that security does not have to come at the cost of safety and efficiency,” Nickerson said. “The benches are not just training environments. They are proving grounds where the future of cybersecurity is rehearsed, refined and proven.”