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 a report released Thursday by the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, said many nations do not have the resources to adequately protect their nuclear facilities from insider or cybersecurity attacks.

“In particular countries in close proximity to terrorist groups with vulnerable or unstable economies, the potential for incidents is much higher,” said Debra Decker, the report’s co-author and Stimson Center senior adviser.

West African nations like Nigeria are battling terrorist groups including Boko Haram. In the Middle East, territory in Syria has been taken by the Islamic State. Both countries are considering nuclear power programs, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Attacking a nuclear power plant can disrupt power grids or even cause a nuclear meltdown. Kathryn Rauhut, co-author of the Stimson report, said the Fukushima power plant in Japan — destroyed by a meltdown caused by a tsunami — could also have been vulnerable to cyberterrorism.

“Rather than the tsunami taking out backup power supply, you could just have that engineered through a cyberattack,” she said. “We hope that nobody would ever use planes or weapons of mass destruction again, but you don’t need to do that, you can wreak the same amount of havoc through cyber intrusions.”

Unlike American nuclear power plants, which are strictly monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, international plants do not have any binding safety standards, Decker said…….. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2016/01/28/Report-Nuclear-plants-in-unstable-regions-vulnerable-to-cyberattacks/2321454019965/