Proposed Classifications and Implementation Pathways for Nuclear Reactor Remote Operations

Despite widespread adoption in other industries, the concept of remote operations is new to the commercial nuclear power industry. Proposed advanced and small modular reactor (A/SMR) technologies that rely on inherent behaviors and passive safety systems to respond to safety events have enabled the discussion of possible remote operation of these conceptual reactor facilities. Reactor developers have expressed interest in varying levels of remote operation for new reactor designs from the current use of remote monitoring to full control of a reactor from a remote facility, as evidenced by NRC pre-application document filings and developer-produced literature [1]. Definite plans for the licensing of a remote-controlled reactor facility are stymied by a lack of regulatory clarity and challenges in meeting regulatory requirements for both the safety and security of the reactor. Specifically, A/SMR developers plan to rely on the passive safety of their designs for remote operation, but have not fully characterized the applicable security challenges that such a deployment concept presents.
To highlight these remote-controlled nuclear-facility security challenges, previous work structured remote nuclear operations into hierarchical classes, with corresponding security-measure requirements to provide a common platform to hold discourse on how to design, incorporate, and regulate remote operations for nuclear reactors [2]. Proposed in [2] were five classes of remote operation, each distinguished by the degree of remote control and remote access to systems, structures, and components (SSCs) classified by regulatory requirements within the reactor facility as well as the physical- and cybersecurity considerations that would apply at each class of remote operation. Categorizing remote-operation activities into classes defined by regulatorily defined SSC classifications establishes a common framework to distinguish what measures of both physical- and cybersecurity are necessary for each class of remote-operation activity. However, what this previous work did not assess was the viability or practicality of implementation for each remote operations class. This paper fills this gap by assessing which classes of remote operation may be possible to implement both from a physical- and cybersecurity perspective.