New cybersecurity standards for IACS of the nuclear power industry in China

Abstract

As of June 2022, China has ranked second with respect to the number of nuclear power plants (NPPs) under construction and in operation in the world. It’s expected that China's installed nuclear power capacity will reach about 70 million kilowatts by 2025. At present, industrial control systems of China's new NPPs have adopted digital industrial ones, and existing NPPs are gradually evolving from a mixture of digital and analog to full digital technology, which has brought great challenges to the cyber security of nuclear power plants. The cyber attack on the industrial control systems of NPPs may not only lead to interruptions in the production process, but also may cause nuclear safety incidents. Therefore the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China and relevant industry regulatory departments have respectively developed national and industry level standards regarding the cybersecurity of industrial control systems of nuclear power plants in recent years. This report introduces China's new standards on the cyber security of industrial control systems in NPPs, analyzes their relationship with relevant international standards, puts forward the issues that need to be considered regarding the coordination of those standards, and provides reference for the subsequent development of new international standards.