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1		-The constitutive obligation of governments is to be utilitarian.
2		-Robert Goodin 90, professor of philosophy at the Australian National University college of arts and social sciences, “The Utilitarian Response,” pgs 141-142, BE
3		-My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct.
4		-No act- omission distinction for governments. Sunstein 05 :
5		-In our view, any effort to distinguish between acts and omissions goes wrong by overlooking the distinctive features of government as a moral agent. If correct, this point has broad implications for criminal and civil law. Whatever the general status of the act/omission distinction as a matter of moral philosophy, the distinction is least impressive when applied to government, because the most plausible underlying considerations do not apply to official actors. The most fundamental point is that unlike individuals, governments always and necessarily face a choice between or among possible policies for regulating third parties. The distinction between acts and omissions may not be intelligible in this context, and even if it is, the distinction does not make a morally relevant difference. Most generally, government is in the business of creating permissions and prohibitions. When it explicitly or implicitly authorizes private action, it is not omitting to do anything or refusing to act. Moreover, the distinction between authorized and unauthorized private action – for example, private killing – becomes obscure when government formally forbids private action but chooses a set of policy instruments that do not adequately or fully discourage it. If there is no act-omission distinction, then government is fully complicit with any harm it allows, so decisions are moral if they minimize harm. All means based and side constraint theories collapse because two violations require aggregation.
6		-This means some side constraint will always be violated, so the government should minimize violations.
7		-You should default to util if I win defense on their standard—we naturally want to make the world better.
8		-Walter Sinnott-Armstrong 14 American philosopher. He specializes in ethics, epistemology, and more recently in neuroethics, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of cognitive science, "Consequentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed),
9		-Even if consequentialists can accommodate or explain away common moral intuitions, that might seem only to answer objections without yet giving any positive reason to accept consequentialism. However, most people begin with the presumption that we morally ought to make the world better when we can. The question then is only whether any moral constraints or moral options need to be added to the basic consequentialist factor in moral reasoning. (Kagan 1989, 1998) If no objection reveals any need for anything beyond consequences, then consequences alone seem to determine what is morally right or wrong, just as consequentialists claim.
10		-Normal means entails phase out, shifting to climate friendly energy, and alleviating negative economic effects of removing nuclear power
11		-CCNE 13 Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy, Organization Aiming at Fundamental Reform of Nuclear Energy Policy, “Our path to a nuclear-free Japan: an interim report Executive Summary,” October 2013
12		-3.2 Review of nuclear liability regime The current compensation scheme for nuclear damage is defective and therefore should be reformed. There is a need for a new system to provide sufficient compensation for the damage caused by nuclear accidents and to provide relief for all the accident victims. The Nuclear Liability Law should be amended so that nuclear operators are liable for all damage compensation, thus factoring the risk of nuclear accidents into market calculations. As for compensation for damage caused by the disaster at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, the aim should be full compensation, with aid in the form of active government involvement to deal with the current crisis as an exception. 3.3 An energy system for a sustainable society Existing energy policy should be radically reviewed, with a view to shifting the energy system to one that will lead to a sustainable society. An energy shift should be strongly promoted through policies concerning both supply and demand sides of power generation. This shift should have the following objectives: 1. Achieve a total shutdown of all nuclear power plants: speedily establish a society that can flourish without any nuclear power plants. 2. Mitigate climate change: mitigate climate change because of its long-term and catastrophic consequences; bring energy policy in line with long-term measures on global warming. 3. Achieve energy self-sufficiency (both at the national and regional levels): reduce dependence of Japan’s energy supply on other countries and achieve national energy security; promote the use of local distributed energy, and strive to achieve energy independence at the local level. 3.4 Easing impacts on electricity supply and on the economy In the course of phasing out nuclear power, appropriate measures should be applied to alleviate short-term impacts on power supply. In order to meet current electricity demand without nuclear power generation, use of fossil fuels has increased. However, it is desirable that serious efforts be made to reduce absolute power demand. To this end, a power-saving plan with clear targets combined with varying electricity prices depending on the consumption rate should be considered. It is often argued that two factors are pressing the management of electric utilities: increasing cost of procuring fossil fuel, and costs related to nuclear power plants – for maintenance and safety precautions. By phasing out nuclear power, the latter cost will no longer be incurred. Adverse impacts on the economy can be further alleviated with policies promoting electricity saving and the introduction of renewable energy. To recapitulate, the vision is twofold: on the one hand, power consumption will be curbed with serious power-saving plans; while on the other hand local distributed renewable energy business will stimulate the local economy. To ease economic impacts on municipalities with nuclear power plants and other affiliated industries, it is important to understand the reasons why those local authorities hosted nuclear power plants in the first place. A good understanding of such matters will be the key to effectively facilitating support policies that can revive primary industry (agriculture, forestry and fishing), that make full use of resources available in the regions, and that promote local-led energy policy, especially focusing on renewable energy sources. 3.5 Decommissioning of nuclear stations and liquidation of electric utilities and related nuclear energy companies The following proposal is offered in regard to the “decommissioning process” and management issues associated with electric power companies. It is addressed to TEPCO and the eight other general electric utilities2 operating nuclear power plants in Japan. Generally, taking responsibility for mismanagement ultimately implies going bankrupt. The electric power industry is a public-utility industry. In Japan, however, private companies have been in charge of this industry. As long as the electric companies are private enterprises, they cannot avoid taking responsibility as private businesses.
13		-Nuclear reactors and waste disposal sites cause massive death rates for workers and people living nearby. Alldred et al 09 Mary Alldred and Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Environmental Injustice in Siting Nuclear http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/final-pdf-ej-nuke-siting-wi-Alldred_08-0544.pdf
14		-In stages (2)–(5) of the nuclear fuel cycle, tens of millions of radiation workers, including nearly two million in the United States, also have faced EIJ. US nuclear-facility owners legally may expose workers to annual radiation doses up to 50 times higher than those allowed for members of the public, although there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation. Yet radiation workers typically receive no hazard pay or compensating wage differential. Often they also do not voluntarily accept dangerous nuclear jobs but take them because of economic necessity, because government falsification of worker radiation doses has mislead them, or because flawed radiation standards, flawed risk disclosure, and flawed workplace-radiation monitoring cause them to underestimate risks. Yet the risks are substantial. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) shows roughly 1 additional fatal cancer each time 60 people are exposed to the maximum-allowable, annual occupational-radiation dose of 50 mSv. US nuclear-waste policies in stages (8)–(9), radioactive waste transport/storage, likewise have already caused EIJ (as serious contamination at Hanford, Maxey Flats, Sa- vannah River, and other cases have shown), and EIJ also is likely when future waste-containment canisters fail— long before the million years that (the US National Academy of Sciences says) nuclear wastes must be completely secured. Because the US government has falsified and manipulated data on radioactive-waste risk (much of which will be borne by Appalachian, Latino, and Native-American populations, who live in higher proportions near existing and proposed nuclear-waste-storage sites), United Nations and nuclear-industry studies warn that the US government may underestimate future waste- repository-radiation doses by 9–12 orders of magnitude. Yet even if proposed future US nuclear-waste standards are met, their leniency likely will impose EIJ on future generations. After 10,000 years, they would allow expo- sures of 100 millirems/year (limits 1,000 percent higher than current standards for US Department of Energy fa- cilities). They also use only mean or average dose to as- sess regulatory compliance. This means that, provided that the average person’s exposure is no more than 100 millirems, many other people would be allowed to receive higher, even fatal, doses.8,26
15		-Transporting nuclear waste exposes large population centers to radiation- this also takes out any dump site CP. Kyne et al 2 Dean Kyne, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Bob Bolin, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, “Emerging Environmental Justice Issues in Nuclear Power and Radioactive Contamination,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, July 12, 2016
16		-The primary concern of activists, tribes, and communities opposing these two sites is the sheer volume of nuclear waste that will traverse highways and railways through population centers in transit from nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons sites 12. New DOE plans referenced above would still require the large scale movement of wastes through population centers. Given the recent history of oil train accidents in North America, legitimate concerns exist as to the environmental and human health consequences should a highway or rail accident result in the release of highly toxic radioactive material in a population center. While the DOE asserts that it is “impossible” for canisters containing highly radioactive materials to rupture, the recent fire and container breach at the WIPP site suggests otherwise. Currently, with no site open to accept high level or transuranic waste, nuclear waste transportation safety issues are temporarily reduced. Of course, Yucca mountain remains a federal mandate under the NWPAA, however ill-advised the location appears in site characterization studies 17. The tail end of the nuclear fuel cycle—specifically permanent, safe burial—remains an unsolved technical problem, a deeply controversial political issue, and a significant transgenerational environmental justice concern.
17		-Only a ban can resolve risks. Lucas 12 Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and a member of the cross-party parliamentary environment audit committee, “Why we must phase out nuclear power,” The Guardian, February 17, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power Fukushima, like Chernobyl 25 years before it, has shown us that while the likelihood of a nuclear disaster occurring may be low, the potential impact is enormous. The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether. Some countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now foresee Germany sourcing 100 of its power needs from renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90 majority. The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power, while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots movements opposing nuclear power have been springing up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens. The European level response has been to undertake stress tests on nuclear reactors across the union. However, these stress tests appear to be little more than a PR exercise to encourage public acceptance in order to allow the nuclear industry to continue with business as usual. The tests fail to assess the full risks of nuclear power, ignoring crucial factors such as fires, human failures, degradation of essential infrastructure or the impact of an airplane crash.
18		-Nuclear power cyber security threats are growing steadily. Baylon, Brunt, and Livingstone 15
19		-Caroline Baylon with Roger Brunt and David Livingstone
20		-Recent high-profile cyber attacks on nuclear facilities have raised new concerns about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants. In 2010, the emergence of the Stuxnet worm heralded the advent of a new era in cyber warfare. In a cyber attack on the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility and Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, the Stuxnet worm caused the partial destruction of around 1,000 centrifuges (Shubert, 2011). This was the most highly sophisticated publicly known cyber attack on a nuclear facility to date, demonstrating an unprecedented level of technical capabilities. On a lesser scale, South Korea’s state-run nuclear operator was the subject of a cyber attack in December 2014 which saw the theft of sensitive information, including the blueprints of at least two nuclear reactors and electrical flow charts (Kim and Cho, 2014). Non-cyber security-related serious incidents, such as the damage inflicted on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 11 March 2011 (von Hippel, 2011), serve as a stark reminder of the economic and social consequences of a major disruption to or disablement of a nuclear power plant’s essential systems, in this case the reactor cooling systems. Over 100,000 people within a radius of 20 km were evacuated and those within a radius of 20–30 km were instructed to shelter before later being advised to evacuate on a voluntary basis. Restrictions were placed on the distribution and consumption of food and the consumption of drinking water (IAEA, 2015). Large areas of prime agricultural land continue to be uninhabitable; and the nuclear operator and the Japanese government still have to cope with the task of controlling the radiation release and clearing the radioactive contamination. The wider consequences of the accident included the shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan at the time, leading to significant energy supply problems for the population. The ramifications were felt elsewhere too: for example, the German federal government ordered the shutdown of eight of the 17 German nuclear reactors and immediately pledged to close the rest by 2022 (Breidthardt, 2011). box 1: Known cyber security incidents at nuclear facilities Other incidents include Ignalina nuclear power plant (1992) As early as 1992, a technician at the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania intentionally introduced a virus into the industrial control system. He claimed this was in order to highlight the cyber security vulnerabilities of such plants, although this did not stop the police from arresting him. It also illustrates the dangers of the insider threat – in this case little harm was caused, but someone with malicious intent could have provoked a serious incident. Speaking about it at a conference three years later, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Valentin Sobolev warned: ‘An interconnection between nuclear terrorism and cyber terrorism could have a global catastrophic nature … The hacking of a computer at the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania could have resulted in a disaster similar to that in Chernobyl’ (NTI, 2006; Bukharin 1997). Davis-Besse nuclear power plant (2003) In January 2003, the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio was infected by the Slammer worm (also called W32/ SQLSlam-A or Sapphire). Slammer spread rapidly to computers across the internet by exploiting a vulnerability in the Microsoft SQL 2000 database server software. The worm scans and sends itself to random IP addresses; if it reaches a machine that is running Microsoft SQL 2000, it infects that machine and begins scanning and sending itself anew. Slammer found its way to Davis-Besse by first infecting a consultant’s network. From there it infected the corporate network of First Energy Nuclear, which operates the plant. First Energy Nuclear’s corporate network was connected directly to a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system at Davis-Besse so that it could remotely monitor the plant, without any type of firewall. Once on the corporate network, Slammer could thus make the jump onto the SCADA system. It then generated a large amount of traffic that overwhelmed the system. The safety parameter display system (SPDS), which collects and displays data about the reactor core from the coolant systems, temperature sensors and radiation detectors, was unavailable for almost five hours. Fortunately, Davis-Besse’s reactor was not in operation at the time, but the same scenario could have occurred if it had been. A patch for the Microsoft SQL 2000 vulnerability, which had been released six months earlier, would have prevented infection by Slammer, but neither the corporate network nor the SCADA system had been patched (Kesler, 2011). 4 | Chatham House Cyber Security at Civil Nuclear Facilities: Understanding the Risks Background: the Nature of the Threats Browns Ferry nuclear power plant (2006) In August 2006, the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama experienced a malfunction of both the reactor recirculation pumps (which use variable-frequency drives to control motor speed and are needed to cool the reactor) and the condensate demineralizer controller (a type of programmable logic controller or PLC). Both of these devices contain microprocessors that send and receive data over an ethernet network, but this makes them susceptible to failure if they receive too much traffic. (Ethernet functions by sending data to every device on the network; the network devices then have to examine each packet to determine if the packet is destined for them or if they can ignore it.) At Browns Ferry, it seems that the network produced excess traffic that caused the reactor recirculation pumps and condensate demineralizer controller to fail. The plant’s Unit 3 then had to be manually shut down in order to avoid a meltdown (Kesler, 2011). Although this was not a cyber attack, the incident reveals the impact that the failure of just one or two devices can have on a plant. It also suggests that if a hacker were to cause a recirculation pump to fail, it could seriously disrupt plant operations. Such an attack mounted in combination with infection by a worm like Slammer could disable not just the recirculation pumps but also the sensors that warn plant personnel of a problem – which would pose a serious threat (Kesler, 2011). Hatch nuclear power plant (2008) In March 2008, the Hatch nuclear power plant in Georgia experienced a shutdown as an unintended consequence of a contractor update. An engineer from Southern Company, the contractor that manages the plant’s technology operations, installed an update to a computer on the plant’s business network. The computer was connected to one of the plant’s industrial control system networks, and the update was designed to synchronize data between the two. As a result, when the engineer restarted the computer he had updated, the synchronization reset the control system’s data to zero for a brief moment. However, the plant’s safety system incorrectly interpreted the temporary zero value of the water level to mean that there was insufficient water to cool the reactor core, putting the plant’s Unit 2 into automatic shutdown for 48 hours (Krebs, 2008). This demonstrates that nuclear owner-operators often do not understand the full ramifications of connecting their business networks to a plant’s industrial control systems. Although in this instance the update’s unforeseen consequences did not put the plant in danger (although it did trigger a costly shutdown), it shows how a hacker might make a change to a plant’s business network that, either unintentionally or intentionally, could have a significant impact on industrial control systems (Kesler, 2011). Natanz nuclear facility and Bushehr nuclear power plant – Stuxnet (2010) First exposed publicly in June 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm infected both the Natanz nuclear facility and the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, partially destroying around 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz. It is believed to have been designed by the US and Israeli governments and specifically targeted to disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment programme (Anderson, 2012). The worm most likely spread initially when infected USB flash drives were introduced into these facilities, which thus became infected despite being ‘air gapped’ (i.e. fully separate from the public internet). Stuxnet infects computers that run the Microsoft Windows operating system, taking advantage of vulnerabilities in the system that allow it to obtain system-level access. (The worm also makes use of falsified certificates so that the files it installs appear to come from a legitimate company, thus deceiving antivirus software.) Once it has infected a machine, Stuxnet checks to see if that computer is attached to a Siemens Step 7 SCADA system, as used by Iranian nuclear facilities. If the computer is not attached to such a system, then no payload is activated. Instead, Stuxnet continues to replicate itself on other computers. One way it does this is by taking advantage of another set of vulnerabilities in print spoolers to spread to networks with shared printers. And of course it continues to spread through USB flash drives. If the computer is attached to such a Siemens system, then Stuxnet’s payload is activated and it reprogrammes the system’s PLCs, which control centrifuges used to enrich nuclear fuel, so that they spin too fast and eventually break apart. At the same time, it also sends false feedback to make it appear as if the system is running properly (Falliere et al., 2011). Stuxnet was aimed at preventing the acquisition of a nuclear weapons programme, not causing an explosion or inflicting civilian casualties, but its unprecedented capabilities show the destructive potential of such technologies if used for more nefarious purposes, and have heralded a new era in cyber attacks as other countries race to develop offensive cyber capabilities. Unnamed Russian nuclear power plant – Stuxnet (circa 2010) Stuxnet is also believed to have infected a Russian nuclear power plant during ‘the Stuxnet time’, around 2010. This incident was revealed by Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab, during a question-and-answer session after a 2013 talk. He reported that a friend who was working at the nuclear plant at the time told him that the plant’s internal network – which was air gapped – was ‘badly infected by Stuxnet’. The plant has not been identified. Chatham House | 5 Cyber Security at Civil Nuclear Facilities: Understanding the Risks Background: the Nature of the Threats As Kaspersky pointed out, this incident shows the unintended consequences that state-sponsored malware can have. Even though Stuxnet was narrowly targeted, it still infected at least one other plant. He added: ‘Unfortunately, it’s very possible that other nations which are not in a conflict will be victims of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure’ (Kaspersky, 2013). This incident also confirms that an air gap is no guarantee of protection. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. commercial network (2014) In December 2014, hackers infiltrated and stole data from the commercial network of Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co., which operates 23 of South Korea’s nuclear reactors (Cho, 2014). The hackers gained access by sending phishing emails to the owner-operator’s employees, some of whom clicked on the links and downloaded the malware. The hackers obtained the blueprints and manuals of two reactors, most likely belonging to the Gori and Wolseong nuclear power plants, as well as electricity flow charts, personal data belonging to some 10,000 of the company’s employees, and radiation exposure estimates for inhabitants in the surrounding area. The data were leaked over Twitter from an account purported to belong to the head of an anti-nuclear group in Hawaii; the hackers also warned Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. to shut down three reactors or face ‘destruction’. The owner-operator ignored the ultimatum, which turned out to be an empty threat (Kim and Cho, 2014). Further blueprints and test data were leaked over Twitter in March 2015, with the hackers demanding money in order not to release more data and intimating that other countries had expressed interest in purchasing the data. Rather than responding, South Korea issued a statement officially blaming North Korea for the attack, citing as evidence that IP addresses used in the phishing attacks were linked to the regime; North Korea has strenuously denied the accusations (Park and Cho, 2015). The incident illustrates the rise in extortion in the nuclear industry. Those interviewed for the project have reported that such incidents, while not often publicly known, are relatively frequent
21		-Terrorists groups use this to their advantage. Leads to increased cyberterrorism. Baylon, Brunt, and Livingstone 15
22		-Caroline Baylon with Roger Brunt and David Livingstone
23		-The range of threat actors The primary set of threat actors that pose a cyber risk to nuclear facilities can be divided into four broad categories: hacktivists; cyber criminals; states (governments and militaries); and non-state armed groups (terrorists). Hacktivists such as radical fringe anti-nuclear power groups might carry out a cyber attack on a nuclear facility to raise awareness of vulnerabilities. Their goal is sabotage or disruption, so such attacks would be likely to involve defacements of websites or low-level attacks on the business network intended to embarrass an operator rather than cause a dangerous incident. Cyber criminal groups are becoming increasingly skilled. Organized criminal groups might steal confidential information belonging to a nuclear facility and then blackmail the facility into paying a ransom to prevent it from being released. Their primary aim is monetary profit (Source 26). The threat from state actors ranging from intelligence agencies to militaries and state-sponsored groups is on the rise (McConnell et al., 2014). These types of attackers tend to instigate long-term campaigns aimed at infiltrating the critical infrastructure of other countries (Source 25). Currently the activities of states occur more in the area of cyber espionage than cyber conflict. According to Source 1: ‘At present, the motivations are primarily commercial, aimed at the theft of sensitive, confidential proprietary data that will give the country an advantage.’ Yet in the longer term, the unintended escalation of cyber skirmishes into cyber conflict is a concern. These same infiltration campaigns are also aimed at acquiring cyber capabilities against the critical infrastructure of other states, including nuclear plants, in the event of a conflict (Source 25). In such a case, the intent of an attack might be to endanger human or environmental safety or, at the very least, to create widespread confusion and fear among an adversary’s population. Terrorists or non-state armed groups are a growing challenge. Some radical extremist groups have already acquired significant capability in the use of social media and, with sufficient financial resources, could develop the capability to carry out a cyber attack on a nuclear plant or employ a ‘hack for hire’ company to do this (BBC, 2011). For example, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), with its sophisticated use of Facebook and websites for recruiting purposes, could potentially pose such a threat. According to Source 10: Radical extremism is also a serious risk, so we can consider it at least equal to a governmental hack attack. If an attacker really wants to penetrate or infiltrate the network, it is a question of time and money. Such groups might wish to build up a picture to support a later coordinated attack intended to sabotage the plant or to remove nuclear material. Or they might wish to use cyber means in order to cause physical destruction. Threats Potential physical targets and impacts There are a number of ways in which cyber attacks might affect nuclear facilities. Some of the most important targets are detailed below. The most basic attacks will target business networks – the corporate networks belonging to the owner-operators of nuclear facilities that contain the information needed to manage the business dimension of the plant. Most attacks on these networks will be aimed at the theft of confidential corporate data that can be used to garner financial benefit. Others might be carried out for reconnaissance purposes, to steal operational information that can be used to conduct a more harmful attack at a later date. Or, as business networks are typically connected to the nuclear facility, some attacks on business networks could serve as a route for attacks on the facility’s industrial control systems. A cyber attack that took one or more nuclear facilities offline could, in a very short time, remove a significant base component to the grid, causing instability. More sophisticated attacks on nuclear plants involve the targeting of industrial control systems themselves and have the potential to be the most harmful. Within the plant itself, the industrial control systems are the most important, notably SCADA systems. While highly complex, these can be thought of as having just three parts. The first consists of the computers that control and monitor plant operations, and that send signals which physically control the second part. This comprises the field devices, such as programmable logic controllers, which control the sensors, motors and other physical components of the plant. The third part consists of the human–machine interface (HMI) computers which display user-friendly data on operations and often run using Windows programmes. Some possible attack scenarios might include the following. A cyber attack on a nuclear plant could cause a widespread loss of power. Nuclear reactors using water in their primary cooling circuit are designed to give a high level of protection to that water, but the water supply that cools the turbines which in turn generate the electricity is not so well protected. Without that water supply, the turbine could be tripped and electricity generation halted, with a serious impact on the power grid. In countries that rely on nuclear energy, power provided by nuclear plants is considered to be the ‘base load’, or a steady and constant source of supply. Other sources of power generation, for example gas-fired electricity generation, can be more responsive to demand and so can be adjusted to meet peaks in demand and to reduce supply when there is a lower requirement for power. Thus a cyber attack that took one or more nuclear facilities offline could, in a very short time, remove a significant base component to the grid, causing instability. According to Source 27: In the US, it’s very easy to have this ripple effect because if those plants go off the grid quickly enough, it’s a pretty significant percentage of the grid’s base load that all of a sudden disappears, which causes the entire grid to become burdened. If you did that to a reasonable number of those larger substations, you could cause a significant grid event. The consequences of a loss of power could be severe. In theory, a cyber attack on a nuclear plant could bring about an uncontrolled release of ionizing radiation. An adversary with sufficient technical knowledge and adequate resources could mount an attack on a nuclear power plant that could trigger the release of significant quantities of ionizing radiation. All nuclear power plants need offsite power to operate safely and all have a standby generator system which is designed to be activated when a loss of mains power occurs. Attacks on the offsite power supply and the on-site backup system could create some of the effects that occurred following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi, although multiple failures of the many safety features at modern nuclear power plants would also need to occur at the same time as that loss of offsite power and the disruption of standby generators. The risk of simultaneous attacks is also a concern. It is possible that different types of attacks could be launched simultaneously against a nuclear plant: for example, a cyber attack might be planned to occur concurrently with a physical, perhaps armed, intrusion on the same plant. Alternatively, there could be a concerted simultaneous cyber attack on a nuclear facility and on other types of critical infrastructure such as regional water systems, the electrical grid or banking systems.
24		-Extinction. Wilson 13
25		-http://users.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/publications/pp936.pdf - Presented to the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Mitigation of Terrorist Actions at the workshop on Saturday August 24th 2013 immediately following the general plenary Seminar on Planetary Emergencies of the World Federation of Sciences held Erice, Sicily in August 20th to August 23rd 2013. The
26		-CYBERTERRORISM is in the news and has been discussed at Erice but never, to my mind, with the openness and clarity that the subject demands. Now we live in an interconnected world and it is possible to affect other computers. It seems that the only hope is to have a computer system which NEVER connects with anyone else, and whose programs are never updated from outside. In addition, one must be sure that no “seed” was implanted when the equipment was made which can be accessed from outside. This is a tall order. As we now stand, it seems that all links to the outside world can be and, in most cases, are recorded, can be used for sabotage, invasions of privacy and so on. To shut down a nation’s electricity grid seems trivial. My preferred method of ten years ago was for each of a group of terrorists to take pot shots at the insulators at isolated transmission line towers in the cross country transmission lines at exactly the same time. This is now out of date! A cyber attack is probably an easier way to cut off a nation’s electricity! Cutting off a nation’s electricity can cause major disruption including major loss of life. The question remains “Can it destroy mankind and make it extinct?” I cannot see a direct connection. Once electricity networks fail, (and arguments between nations on who is responsible for the failures increase) secondary effects leading to extinction by other means might well increase (i.e., release of nuclear bombs or dangerous pathogens) (ref 16).
27		-Offense-defense is key to fairness and real world education.
28		-Nelson 8
29		-Adam F. Nelson, J.D.1. Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Lincoln-Douglas Debate. 2008.
30		-
31		-And the truth-statement model of the resolution imposes an absolute burden of proof on the affirmative: if the resolution is a truth-claim, and the affirmative has the burden of proving that claim, in so far as intuitively we tend to disbelieve truthclaims until we are persuaded otherwise, the affirmative has the burden to prove that statement absolutely true. Indeed, one of the most common theory arguments in LD is conditionality, which argues it is inappropriate for the affirmative to claim only proving the truth of part of the resolution is sufficient to earn the ballot. Such a model of the resolution also gives the negative access to a range of strategies that many students, coaches, and judges find ridiculous or even irrelevant to evaluation of the resolution. If the negative need only prevent the affirmative from proving the truth of the resolution, it is logically sufficient to negate to deny our ability to make truth-statements or to prove normative morality does not exist or to deny the reliability of human senses or reason. Yet, even though most coaches appear to endorse the truth-statement model of the resolution, they complain about the use of such negative strategies, even though they are a necessary consequence of that model. And, moreover, such strategies seem fundamentally unfair, as they provide the negative with functionally infinite ground, as there are a nearly infinite variety of such skeptical objections to normative claims, while continuing to bind the affirmative to a much smaller range of options: advocacy of the resolution as a whole. Instead, it seems much more reasonable to treat the resolution as a way to equitably divide ground: the affirmative advocating the desirability of a world in which people adhere to the value judgment implied by the resolution and the negative advocating the desirability of a world in which people adhere to a value judgment mutually exclusive to that implied by the resolution. By making the issue one of desirability of competing world-views rather than of truth, the affirmative gains access to increased flexibility regarding how he or she chooses to defend that world, while the negative retains equal flexibility while being denied access to those skeptical arguments indicted above. Our ability to make normative claims is irrelevant to a discussion of the desirability of making two such claims. Unless there is some significant harm in making such statements, some offensive reason to reject making them that can be avoided by an advocacy mutually exclusive with that of the affirmative such objections are not a reason the negative world is more desirable, and therefore not a reason to negate. Note this is precisely how things have been done in policy debate for some time: a team that runs a kritik is expected to offer some impact of the mindset they are indicting and some alternative that would solve for that impact. A team that simply argued some universal, unavoidable, problem was bad and therefore a reason to negate would not be very successful. It is about time LD started treating such arguments the same way. Such a model of the resolution has additional benefits as well. First, it forces both debaters to offer offensive reasons to prefer their worldview, thereby further enforcing a parallel burden structure. This means debaters can no longer get away with arguing the resolution is by definition true of false. The “truth” of the particular vocabulary of the resolution is irrelevant to its desirability. Second, it is intuitive. When people evaluate the truth of ethical claims, they consider their implications in the real world. They ask themselves whether a world in which people live by that ethical rule is better than one in which they don’t. Such debates don’t happen solely in the abstract. We want to know how the various options affect us and the world we live in.

EntryDate

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1		-2016-09-17 14:28:51.0

Judge

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1		-Megan Nubel

Opponent

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1		-Brentwood WJ

ParentRound

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1		-0

Round

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1		-1

Team

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1		-Strake Jesuit Herrera Aff

Title

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1		-Sep-Oct - Util AC

Tournament

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1		-Greenhill