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Nuclear facilities face credible and persistent threats, although these are not constant. The nature of threats and their potential impact will change over time, both as the national security situation changes and as the facility transitions from periods of planning and construction, operation, shut down and finally decommissioning.
As a nuclear site progresses through its life cycle, sensitive materials are both added and removed. However, nuclear facilities may face a range of threats even before sensitive materials enter the site. For example in the 1980s, Rodney Wilkinson, an employee at the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in South Africa, was sympathetic to the African National Congress (ANC) party and its fight against apartheid rule. Wilkinson passed plans of Koeberg to the ANC, and later used his insider access to sabotage the facility. Four bombs were used – one on each of the two reactor heads; one on the containment building; and one on electric cables under the control room. The facility was attacked in December 1982, weeks before nuclear fuel was scheduled to be loaded into the reactors. Koeberg’s symbolism of the apartheid government made it a target.
Similar motivation drove the Basque Separatist group ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’ (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna; ETA) to bomb Spanish nuclear power projects in the 1970s. Here, nuclear installations and personnel were targeted due to the project’s association with state authority.
According to the IAEA, ‘The lifetime of a nuclear facility extends from the earliest planning stages through to its decommissioning…Nuclear security measures are also important during commissioning and operation; and they should not cease at decommissioning, as they are important in addressing the protection of the remaining quantities of nuclear material or other radioactive material, which has accumulated during the operations stage’.
Even within the stages of a nuclear facility’s life cycle, there is likely to be variation in the threats faced. Internally, this may come from specialist works requiring additional contractors to be on-site, or if security measures are being replaced and temporary systems are put in place to offset such disruption. Threats may also change due to be external changes. For example, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, severe financial constraints led to a breakdown in security at sites storing nuclear and radiological material across the former Soviet Union. This breakdown contributed to the flurry of incidents of nuclear and radiological smuggling in the 1990s.
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