Assessing cybersecurity of the US power grid

Mission critical

On August 19, 2006, operators of the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama manually shut down the plant’s unit three reactor after its two main coolant pumps – whose continuous operation is needed to prevent a meltdown – simultaneously failed. Investigators later determined that the pumps had failed because of a ‘data storm’ on the plant’s internal computer network. For reasons that remain unclear, but that may have included a hardware glitch or faulty design, excessive traffic flooded the