Cyber security for microreactors in advanced energy systems

Author's Biography

Piyush Sabharwall PhD is a Senior Staff Nuclear Research Scientist working in the Nuclear System Design and Analysis Division at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Piyush has more than 14 years’ research and development experience in nuclear/thermal engineering. He serves as the technical lead on DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Microreactor R&D Program and leads the development of gas-cooled cartridge loop for the Versatile Test Reactor. He has helped position INL as an intellectual leader in areas such as verification and validation, development of experimental programmes, small modular reactors, molten salt reactor technology and integrated energy systems. Piyush has authored two books, contributed chapters to technical books on advanced reactors and thermal systems, process heat transfer and published over 120 peer-reviewed publications. He holds an adjunct associate professor appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University and serves on the ASME Heat Transfer Division (K-9 and K-13 committees). He is a member of the advanced (Gen IV) reactor technical advisory group at EPRI. Piyush has consulted for industries both nationally and internationally, building technical expertise while focusing on market studies and economic viability to rebuild the US nuclear industrial infrastructure and position US industry to continue to be a leader in the global energy market.

James Gibb is a Senior Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Analyst at Idaho National Laboratory and conducts Industrial Control System (ICS) cyber security assessments for critical infrastructure entities throughout the USA. James’ experience includes supporting the spectrum of cyber operations to include capability development, network defence, incident investigation and cyber intelligence threat analysis. He has experience in software engineering, advanced forensics analysis, network architecture analysis and adversary-based threat modelling. James holds a Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from North Carolina State University, and a Master’s in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College in Newport, RI. His work experience includes six years at Idaho National Laboratory and 22 years’ service in the US Navy.

Christopher Ritter Christopher S. Ritter is the Group Lead with the Digital and Software Engineering group at Idaho National Laboratory. Ritter’s expertise is in software engineering, software development, leading software teams, systems engineering software integration and database management. Before coming to INL, he was Director of Software Development at SPEC Innovations in Manassas, VA. He served as the chief architect of Innoslate, a popular system engineering tool that leverages elastic cloud technologies and AI/NLP for high scalability and advanced analytics. He also architected the software system and consulted on the data ontology for a centralised mission risk management system for the joint staff at the Pentagon and supported Marine Corps business process reengineering for its capability portfolio management processes. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Kathleen Araújo is the Director of the CAES Energy Policy Institute and Associate Professor of Energy Systems, Innovation and Policy at Boise State University. She advises, teaches and conducts research on better practices and policy relating to disruptive change. Specific areas of focus include international regulation of cyber/nuclear risk, disaster readiness and pivot points in decarbonisation, such as those evaluated in her book Low Carbon Energy Transitions: Turning Points in National Policy and Innovation (Oxford University Press). Kathleen is the book series editor for Routledge’s Studies in Energy Transitions. She also consults for inter-governmental organisations and industry.

Abhinav Gupta is Director of the Center for Nuclear Energy Facilities and Structures (CNEFS) at North Carolina State University. Presently, he also serves as the President of International Association SMiRT. Abhinav’s research has focused on uncertainty quantification and probabilistic methodologies for risk assessment. He has worked on developing new computational and probabilistic models needed for decision support and strategy development in reducing operation, maintenance and construction costs. He received the Outstanding Paper Award at the 2005 ASME-Pressure Vessel and Piping Conference and chaired the highly successful SMiRT 25 conference in 2019. He has served as the chair of ASCE’s Committee on Emerging Computing Technologies, as Associate Editor for the Journal of Structural Engineering, and as a visiting faculty at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 2010, Abhinav was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Teachers at NC State University. Presently, he is working on ARPA-E sponsored projects for data-driven, AI-enabled strategies needed in the development of digital twins for advanced reactors.

Ian Ferguson completed an internship through the US Department of Energy’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships programme at Idaho National Laboratory. Ian holds a BS in nuclear engineering from Oregon State University.

Bri Rolston is a Critical Infrastructure Security Researcher at Idaho National Laboratory specialising in defensive security engineering research and threat response. Bri has more than 20 years’ experience in telecommunications, information technology (IT), industrial automation and control systems (IACS)/operational technology (OT) security research. She periodically switches from research to operations work to stay abreast of security trends and has a wide range of operational security experience, including incident response, threat management, risk analysis and remediation, vulnerability management, secure code development, cloud security and ICS security operations. She has trained several ICS incident response teams including DHS CIRT in 2005, contributed to IACS and OT security standards development for DHS, DOE, NIST, and ISA/IEC, and has a patent for efficient attack path selection and risk analysis. Bri has been extensively involved in the security research community since 2000 and helps organise security conferences such as BSides IF. Her personal research areas of expertise are threat research, attack path prediction, halo effects in exploit development and second-payload detection in IACS/OT attacks.

Ron Fisher PhD is the director of the Infrastructure Assurance and Analysis Division at Idaho National Laboratory. He provides over 20 years’ critical infrastructure protection and resilience experience including serving on President Clinton’s Presidential Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection. Ron’s research activities include developing vulnerability assessment methodology, risk and resiliency analyses and infrastructure interdependencies. The methodologies Ron helped to develop have been conducted at thousands of critical infrastructure facilities throughout the US. He has been the programme manager for critical infrastructure protection activities for the US Departments of Energy, Defense and Homeland Security. Ron has over 300 classified publications and over 150 unclassified publications, including contributions to multiple books, as well as a copyright and trademark in geospatial information technology. Ron received a doctorate degree in organisational development from Benedictine University and has a BS in finance and an MBA.

Jess Gehin joined INL in 2018 as the Chief Scientist for Nuclear Science and Technology and is the acting Director of the Advanced Scientific Computing Division at Idaho National Laboratory. He also serves as the Technical Director of DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Microreactor R&D Program. Jess worked at ORNL from 1992 to 2018 where he held several positions including director of the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL), a DOE Energy Innovation Hub, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and leadership responsibilities for reactor technology integration, nuclear energy programmes and reactor analysis. Jess is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society.

Youssef Ballout is the Division Director of INL’s Reactor Systems Design & Analysis. Youssef Joined INL in December 2018 as the manager of the Fuel Design and Development department. Prior to INL he was the President of Elysium Industries Limited, where he was engaged in leading the design and development of a chloride molten salt fast reactor. Youssef also spent 26 years at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory (NNL)/Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory where he worked on nuclear reactor design, reactor materials, reactor thermal hydraulics and reactor structural performance.