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In an effort to get ahead of this threat, the , an independent regulatory agency, on Friday released a new set of reporting requirements. The increased information will aid in the NRC’s “analysis of the reliability and effectiveness” of cybersecurity programs for nuclear power reactors, according to a Federal Register notice.

Heightened awareness of this threat is increasingly important as governments start to target nuclear plants in their burgeoning offensive cyber programs. It’s widely believed the U.S. and Israel were behind a 2010 cyberattack that crippled nearly one-fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.More recently, South Korea accused North Korea of hacking into one of its nuclear plants. The intrusion exposed sensitive data, but didn’t endanger the plant’s reactors.

A recent report also warned that the nuclear industry is in a “culture of denial” over these hacking risks.

Chatham House, an international affairs think tank, spent 18 months interviewing top nuclear officials and investigating nuclear power plants around the world. The results were not comforting.

“Cybersecurity is still new to many in the nuclear industry,” Caroline Baylon, the report’s author,told the Financial Times earlier this month. “They are really good at safety and, after 9/11, they’ve got really good at physical security. But they have barely grappled with cyber.” Many plants still have control systems linked to the Internet, for example, exposing nuclear reactors to potential digital hijackings.

Overall, the report found 50 cyber incidents at nuclear plants, some of which nearly led to meltdowns. For instance, the safety system at an Alabama nuclear plant was overwhelmed with network traffic, almost triggering a catastrophe……http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/258663-white-house-updates-nuclear-plants-cyber-requirements