Russian Hackers Have Penetrated US Energy And Nuclear Companies

PO2 Richard C. - I suspect a nuclear plant would be harder to get at than say a refinery just due to the increased scrutiny, so I'm glad to hear confirmation. ;)

SPC Kevin Ford - Nuclear plants work under the security philosophy that being a hard target is a deterrent when there are softer targets for terrorists to consider. It's not to throw anybody under the bus, but even a major release from a chemical plant isn't the same level of devastating threat that a nuclear release would be. As for the electrical grid, unfortunately we know how vulnerable that could be just because of its configuration and number of access points.

PO2 Richard C. I was recently speaking with a guest at our B&B from Norway (I believe) and he worked in the nuclear industry. He was telling us that in the '80s they thought there was a problem with their plants because they were detecting increased levels of radiation. They couldn't find anything wrong and then they realized the radiation was outside their plants. What they were detecting was Chernobyl before the Soviets acknowledged what happened.

Remember that scenario well. It was probably Sweden, since Norway doesn't have any commercial reactors, and the two (four?) research reactors they have are pretty small. The USNRC got all kinds of reports from all over the world before to the Russians finally 'fessed up. A nuclear engineer friend of mine was supposed to go to Chernobyl when the international nuclear community finally was asked to participate, but he was called off for some reason that I don't remember. He wasn't particularly upset about the call-off.