New Nuclear Build Security

A gigawatt-class new-build program is a different problem from an SMR program, not a bigger version of the same one. The unit count is often larger, the construction timeline runs years rather than months, and the workforce on site during that window can run into the thousands, most of it transient, contracted, and turning over continuously. Security architecture has to be designed at the same table as the rest of the engineering. Barriers, detection, communications, cybersecurity, and the regulatory requirements each of those has to satisfy should be specified into the program alongside civil, mechanical, and electrical design rather than layered on after the fact.

Construction-phase security is a distinct discipline from the operational security the site will eventually run. Vital areas exist in partially built form before they exist in final form. The protected area boundary itself can shift as construction milestones are reached. Badge population, access control, and material control all have to function under conditions no permanent system was designed for, because the permanent systems have not been commissioned yet, and won't be until well into the build.

GSS works this problem from both ends, with security architecture integrated into the design package that EPC contractors build to, and a construction-phase protective strategy that covers the site for every year between groundbreaking and the point where permanent physical security systems take over. The handoff between the two is planned from the start, not improvised near the end.