SAFETY & SECURITY | COVER STORY
multiple, novel, complex, disparate and indirect hazards relating to systemic risks. There may therefore be a need to review, update and optimise existing frameworks and approaches to better respond to evolving hazards. This may include changing mindsets regarding coincident and combined faults and common cause failures, and challenging assumptions around the levels of self-sufficiency that nuclear sites should seek to achieve under emergency conditions. The range of events and consequences that could
Above: The extensive interconnections, mutual dependencies and reliance between the nuclear system and other wider societal systems is the origin of systemic risk. Source: The Institute for Energy Research
It is the balance and interplay of these resiliencies and
exposures, and how this may shift in response to evolving systemic risks, that will determine how the nuclear system may be affected in future. A fundamentally key aspect of this is that the effects of systemic risks and polycrisis could manifest directly and/or indirectly at nuclear sites. For example, a severe storm may directly impact a nuclear site through damage to structures within the site footprint, but this same event may also act on wider societal systems by damaging transport infrastructure or power grids remote from the site. This could impact on the nuclear site (potentially in addition to the direct damage it experiences) via loss of access to key supplies, commodities and personnel, for instance. Additionally, the nuclear system may have a unique role in the wider human system in that it dampens some large- scale systemic risks , for example through the greenhouse gas emissions it averts which reduces the severity of overall climatic changes. However, it also has the potential to compound polycrisis scenarios, for example a nuclear accident induced by the nth order effects of a polycrisis scenario could exacerbate that situation.
Nuclear industry response to systemic risk The world is increasingly shifting towards a future general ‘risk environment’ characterised by volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions. Combined with the multiple, highly visible disruptive global events of recent years, this supports the conclusion that systemic risks are likely to rise in prevalence and likelihood. Given their potential exposure and vulnerability to systemic risks, the nuclear operators, regulators and other stakeholders have a responsibility to develop an understanding of the scope of new and potentially novel hazards. This may also provide the opportunity for the industry to ‘get ahead of the curve’ in anticipating and understanding how these hazards might apply, before impacts potentially start to accumulate. Nuclear industries around the world have extensive
and robust risk management and emergency planning frameworks for different hazards which were developed in, and have proven effective in, the relatively ‘steady state’ world of the past. However, as existing hazards change and new ones develop, the existing basis of nuclear risk assessment could be increasingly challenged in future by
30 | February 2026 |
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emerge from systemic risk and polycrisis are vast and highly uncertain. Therefore, the basis of assessing these hard- to-quantify possibilities should be around underpinned qualitative scenarios which allow credible large-scale events to be causally linked to specific and bounded effects on sites and their specific features. More specifically, a large range of events occurring in the wider societal setting would likely ‘funnel down’ to a smaller subset of consistent, bounded impacts such as the ‘islanding’ of nuclear sites from key systems and commodities. That could then allow events to be ‘translated’ into impacts to systems, structures and components at given nuclear sites. This approach may be best undertaken using interactive digital and visualisation approaches and tools, which could be made available to nuclear operators, regulators, governments and other stakeholders to help assess and identify site-specific risks.
Reflecting on risk Modern global society has reached unprecedented levels of size, interconnectedness and complexity, but has also experienced a rise in instabilities and challenges. The extreme interdependence between the global systems has increased systemic risks, and polycrisis has emerged as a concept which captures how this situation may evolve. Together, these ideas provide an incisive means to describe this growing global predicament. It is possible that the current global trend towards
instability may spontaneously ‘simmer down’, but historical evidence and contemporary analysis suggest this cannot be assumed. In any case, the precautionary principle should drive a responsible industry to prepare for disruptive conditions to extrapolate. If nuclear technology is to continue to play a critical role, this will need to be addressed. Approaches and tools that will help all parts of the nuclear system understand the potential future impact of systemic risk and polycrisis are in the early stages of development. There is, nonetheless, an increasingly urgent need to further develop and then apply these tools to make the industry robust to future risks whilst also keeping safe the societies in which it operates. Systemic risk and polycrisis may present some profound
challenges for the world in future and given that the global nuclear industry likely has linkages and exposure to systemic risks, there is an increasingly urgent need for the industry to recognise this. Although a future defined by rising levels of disruption and uncertainty is not an easy or pleasant subject to consider, downplaying or ignoring such risks will not benefit the industry; an analogy may be that an individual would not ignore or disparage a serious medical diagnosis, even if the symptoms weren’t yet apparent. There is no time like the present to start addressing this situation, and success in this sphere will be an enabler towards building safer and more sustainable societies fit for the future, with nuclear power playing a key role. ■
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