Protecting U.S. Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack: Re-assessing the Current “Design Basis Threat” Approach

This paper reviews the current thinking on threat assessment at nuclear facilities in the United States. It surveys and compares the risk assessment methods used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Department of Defense (DOD), and it explores alternative and complementary approaches. All three agencies rely on some form of the design basis threat (DBT) as the foundation of their physical protection strategy. We identify shortcomings in the DBT approach, but also in the proposed alternatives.