Blockchain Could Be Key to Nuclear Material Safeguards

A key advantage of blockchain technology is the excellent data integrity provided by the cryptographic linking of blocks together with self-referential hashes. Defrauding the ledger by editing a committed block breaks this chain and requires an impractical amount of computing power to rebuild with the fraudulent entries.

The decentralized nature of blockchain storage makes data immediately available and easily accessible. The blockchain is updated as soon as a transaction is accepted and multiple copies of the ledger are distributed amongst all nodes, which builds resilience into the network should it ever be compromised.

Although blockchain provides a strong system for tracking nuclear material where the digital record cannot be amended – a simple open blockchain does not offer confidentiality by default, since all parties can read the ledger hosted on their nodes.

This is a problem since certain information regarding nuclear security, or intellectual property used for clean energy or nuclear medicine, needs to be kept private for good reasons.

The solution is for information related to nuclear safeguards to be encrypted on the ledger, and during transit when uploaded to and downloaded from the blockchain.

Not only that, but encryption used must guarantee the long-term protection of data for the full lifetime of the underlying asset, which may extend into timescales of thousands of years for nuclear waste management. In this context the high integrity and availability of blockchain records really come to the fore.

The key advance of SLINMAC is to investigate how end-to-end encryption, which is essential for blockchain to fulfill nuclear security requirements, impacts the auditability of the system. SLINMAC uses a multicast encryption protocol, which allows for multiple organizations to decrypt the same piece of information and also verify each other’s access. This is important when the same report must be distributed between nuclear facilities, the State regulatory authority and the IAEA.

The idea of using blockchain to track nuclear material is in an early stage of research and we welcome the opportunity to discuss SLINMAC at the symposium, as well as the more general concepts. This work builds on the first blockchain demo of a safeguards information system, called ‘SLUMBAT’, which we presented at the previous 2018 Safeguards Symposium, and which led to the SLAFKA project between UNSW, the Finnish national regular STUK, and the Stimson Centre in 2020.

Increased global nuclear energy is widely acknowledged by the IPCC as being important to meet decarbonization targets over the next 30 years and beyond. To accommodate the increasing number of safeguards transactions required for this to happen, the safeguards community will need new technology, like blockchain, to scale its efficiency, without compromising security and auditability

We believe that technology like SLINMAC can advance the level of confidence in the nuclear industry as a whole, while providing a new point of engagement for exciting technical cooperation between the nuclear safeguards, blockchain, and information security communities. 

We want to ensure that nuclear energy is being produced in a safe way, and this is in part dependent on the security of information relating to nuclear material, combined with the transparency and auditability of the nuclear supply chain.

SLINMAC is showing part of what this future could look like.

Marcus Borscz is Taste of Research Student, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, UNSW Sydney. Dr. Edward Obbard is UNSW Nuclear Engineering Program Coordinator, UNSW Sydney.