Risk Assessment for Nuclear Terrorism Probability and Its Application on a Hypothetical Nuclear Facility

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Engineering
• Risk Analysis
• Security Studies

Background:

• Nuclear safety and security, while overlapping, have distinct objectives: safety addresses unintentional accidents, while security focuses on intentional malicious events.
• The Potential Facility Risk Index (PFRI) framework, initially for security, has been adapted to integrate probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) for a holistic view of nuclear facility risks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel risk assessment model within the PFRI framework to quantify the probability of nuclear terrorism.
• To integrate nuclear safety and security risk assessments into a unified framework for decision-makers.

Main Methods:

• Developed a risk assessment model combining historical nuclear terrorism data for threat frequency, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for target attractiveness, and the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) dataset for adversary motivation.
• Applied the model to a hypothetical nuclear facility to calculate nuclear terrorism probability.

Main Results:

• The developed model successfully calculated a nuclear terrorism probability of 8.97 × 10⁻³ y⁻¹ for the hypothetical facility.
• The methodology yields results in the same risk unit as traditional safety risk assessments, facilitating direct comparison.

Conclusions:

• The proposed systematic methodology enables the derivation of nuclear terrorism probability, enhancing the comprehensive understanding of nuclear facility risks.
• This integrated approach provides decision-makers with a unified perspective on both nuclear safety and security, laying the foundation for future risk management advancements.