Quantum key distribution (QKD), a cryptographic method grounded in the laws of quantum mechanics rather than computational hardness, promises provably secure communications. Its integration into critical infrastructure offers a pathway to secure resilient operation of next-generation control systems, from power-intensive data centers to remotely operated microreactors located in energy-deprived remote communities. While QKD has been demonstrated in laboratory and network settings, its use in safety-critical control systems remains unexplored where requirements on latency, key availability, and operational stability pose unique challenges. Here, we introduce a QKD-secured data acquisition and control framework for embedding quantum cybersecurity directly into safety-critical cyber-physical systems and report the first end-to-end experimental demonstration in a nuclear reactor. The framework establishes the conditions necessary to achieve secure, low-latency, real-time operation in safety-critical environments. Using a phase-encoding decoy-state BB84 system deployed on Purdue's 10 kWth fully digital research reactor (PUR-1) we validate the model and achieve real-time encryption and decryption of 2,000 reactor signals. Experiments demonstrated a stable secret-key rate of 320 kbps with a quantum bit error rate of 3.8% at 54 km, and maximum optical-fiber distances of 82 km with One-Time Pad (OTP) encryption and 140 km with AES-256. We further evaluated compliance with latency and key availability conditions using three cryptographic schemes (OTP, AES-256, ASCON), finding that all variants supported real-time operation at typical data reporting rates. Our results establish a universal framework for quantum-cybersecurity in safety-critical systems, demonstrating that quantum communication technologies can enable secure, low-latency, real-time operation of nuclear reactors and other critical infrastructure.
Quantum key distribution (QKD), a cryptographic method grounded in the laws of quantum mechanics rather than computational hardness, promises provably secure communications. Its integration into critical infrastructure offers a pathway to secure resilient operation of next-generation control systems, from power-intensive data centers to remotely operated microreactors located in energy-deprived remote communities. While QKD has been demonstrated in laboratory and network settings, its use in safety-critical control systems remains unexplored where requirements on latency, key availability, and operational stability pose unique challenges. Here, we introduce a QKD-secured data acquisition and control framework for embedding quantum cybersecurity directly into safety-critical cyber-physical systems and report the first end-to-end experimental demonstration in a nuclear reactor. The framework establishes the conditions necessary to achieve secure, low-latency, real-time operation in safety-critical environments. Using a phase-encoding decoy-state BB84 system deployed on Purdue's 10 kWth fully digital research reactor (PUR-1) we validate the model and achieve real-time encryption and decryption of 2,000 reactor signals. Experiments demonstrated a stable secret-key rate of 320 kbps with a quantum bit error rate of 3.8% at 54 km, and maximum optical-fiber distances of 82 km with One-Time Pad (OTP) encryption and 140 km with AES-256. We further evaluated compliance with latency and key availability conditions using three cryptographic schemes (OTP, AES-256, ASCON), finding that all variants supported real-time operation at typical data reporting rates. Our results establish a universal framework for quantum-cybersecurity in safety-critical systems, demonstrating that quantum communication technologies can enable secure, low-latency, real-time operation of nuclear reactors and other critical infrastructure.
Industrial control systems would increasingly depend on remote operation, online monitoring, and potentially autonomous control. This creates new requirements for secure, low-latency communications, and introduces new operational constraints on secret key availability, communication autonomy, and resilience under normal and abnormal conditions. We present a time-dependent quantitative model for embedding quantum-secure communications in an industrial control system and demonstrate its implementation on Purdue’s fully-digital 10-kWth research reactor (PUR-1). Using a phase-encoding decoy-state-BB84 Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) system we propose and evaluate three communication autonomy metrics: dynamic key pool size, lead time, and post-failure uptime. We establish quantitative relationships linking physical-layer QKD performance metrics, such as secret key rate (SKR) and quantum bit-error-rate (QBER), to industrial control-level communication demands defined by sampling rate, data precision, and reporting frequency. We show that for the most demanding configuration, 20 Hz sampling at 120 km, QKD coupled with AES-256 encryption required a minimum of 24 min lead time, while distances below 95 km required less than 10 min, regardless of the number of signals. These results establish experimentally verified bounds for integrating quantum cybersecurity within real-time control architectures and provide a foundation for designing quantum-resilient communication frameworks for next-generation reactors and other safety-critical industrial systems.
Recent advancements in reactor designs could offer new revolutionary capabilities, including remote monitoring, increased flexibility, and reduced operation and maintenance costs. Embracing new digital technologies would allow for operational concepts such as semiautonomous or near-autonomous control, and two-way communications for real-time integration with the upcoming smart electric grid. However, such continuous data transmission from and toward a reactor site could potentially introduce new challenges and vulnerabilities, necessitating the prioritization of cybersecurity.Conventional information technology–based encryption schemes, which rely mostly on computational complexity, have been shown to be vulnerable to cyberattacks. With the advent of quantum computing, practically any asymmetric encryption could be potentially compromised. For example, it has been shown that a RSA-2048 bit key could be broken in 8 h.To address this challenge, we explore the feasibility of quantum key distribution (QKD) to secure communications. QKD is a physical layer security scheme relying on the laws of quantum mechanics instead of mathematical complexity. QKD promises not only unconditional security but also detection of potential intrusion, as it allows the communication parties to become aware of eavesdropping. To test the proposed hypothesis, a novel simulation tool (NuQKD) was developed to allow for real-time simulation of the BB84 QKD protocol between two remote terminals. A reference scenario is proposed, generic enough to cover various internal and external communication links to a reactor site. Using NuQKD, the internal and external data links were modeled, and receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated for various QKD configurations.A performance analysis was conducted, demonstrating that QKD can provide adequate secret key rates with low false alarms and has the potential of addressing the nuclear industry’s high standards of confidentiality for distance lengths up to 75 km of fiberoptics. Using a conservative estimation, QKD can provide up to 21.5 kbps of secret key rate for a distance of 1 km and 14.4 kbps at 10 km. The target secret key rates for the corresponding links were estimated at 16 kbps and 80 bps, respectively, based on the analysis of real data from a PUR-1 fully digital reactor. Consequently, QKD is shown to be compatible with existing and future point-to-point reactor communication architectures. These results motivate further study of quantum communications for nuclear reactors.
This Quantum Cryptography, as a future generation cyber security protocol research, includes experimental data that have been gathered from publicly accessible quantum cryptographic experiments done by university research facilities and cyber security facilities. The data comprises performance records of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) deployments across various network environments and networks. Critical parameters, including encryption success rates, error rates, latency, throughput, and QKD efficiency, were studied to ensure the security and reliability of quantum cryptographic protocols being implemented. Experimental setups, such as Qiskit and QuTech, are utilized in experiments that offer the functionality to simulate and test quantum cryptographic systems. Quantum circuit building, quantum protocol simulation, and performance monitoring against various network topologies are facilitated by these platforms. Moreover, the experimental setup utilized actual quantum key distribution hardware and secure communication channels to facilitate real-time experimentation. Visualization employed Matplotlib to produce histograms and 3D plots of the success rates, throughput, and latency. Statistical modeling was performed to estimate the correlation between network latency, quantum key efficiency, and error rates, thereby plotting the contribution of quantum cryptography to the security of modern communication infrastructure in the future. Theory and practice, as exemplified in experimentation with quantum-computing software and numerical modelling, converge in this article to introduce possible future limits on using quantum cryptography as a nascent next-generation paradigm for cybersecurity.
The accelerating development of quantum computing capabilities poses an unprecedented challenge to conventional encryption methodologies that currently underpin global digital security infrastructure. Classical cryptographic systems, including widely adopted standards such as RSA and AES, derive their security from the computational intractability of specific mathematical problems, a foundation that quantum algorithms threaten to fundamentally undermine. This research presents a comprehensive investigation into the practical implementation of Quantum Key Distribution as a transformative approach to establishing unconditionally secure communication channels. Through experimental deployment of the BB84 protocol augmented with advanced quantum error correction and privacy amplification techniques, we systematically evaluate the performance characteristics and security guarantees of QKD in realistic network environments. Our experimental framework achieves a secure key generation rate of 2.5 megabits per second while maintaining an average quantum bit error rate of 3.2 percent, demonstrating the practical viability of quantum-secured communication. The implementation exhibits exceptional eavesdropping detection capabilities with a 98.5 percent success rate in identifying unauthorized interception attempts. Comparative security analysis reveals that QKD-based encryption reduces vulnerability to brute-force attacks by 65 percent when contrasted with classical encryption standards. The integration of lattice-based post-quantum cryptographic algorithms provides an additional security layer against store-now-decrypt-later attack strategies. These findings substantiate the position of Quantum Key Distribution as a cornerstone technology for next-generation cybersecurity frameworks, offering robust protection against both current threats and the anticipated capabilities of large-scale quantum computers.
The advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to data security, driving the development of new cryptographic schemes capable of preserving the cybersecurity triad: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This work presents the design and implementation of a communication system combining quantum key distribution (QKD) through the QuKayDee platform, with AES-256-CBC symmetric encryption and CRYSTALS-Dilithium5 post-quantum digital signatures. The system was deployed as a containerized architecture using Docker Compose and validated using real telemetry data from a TIAGo robot. Results confirm that message confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity are preserved end-to-end across the communication channel. A performance evaluation was conducted across four test scenarios, comparing AES key lengths and the presence or absence of QKD integration. The results show that cryptographic operations have little impact on performance, while most of the latency is caused by the QKD key retrieval API. Overall, the results support the potential of post-quantum and quantum-based security mechanisms for resource-constrained cyber-physical systems, while identifying key research challenges and performance trade-offs that motivate future work.
Hydropower facilities are often remotely monitored or controlled from a centralized remote control room. Additionally, major component manufacturers monitor the performance of installed components, increasingly via public communication infrastructures. While these communications enable efficiencies and increased reliability, they also expand the cyber-attack surface. Communications may use the internet to remote control a facility's control systems, or it may involve sending control commands over a network from a control room to a machine. The content could be encrypted and decrypted using a public key to protect the communicated information. These cryptographic encoding and decoding schemes become vulnerable as more advances are made in computer technologies, such as quantum computing. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) and other quantum cryptographic protocols are not based upon a computational problem, and offer an alternative to symmetric cryptography in some scenarios. Although the underlying mechanism of quantum cryptogrpahic protocols such as QKD ensure that any attempt by an adversary to observe the quantum part of the protocol will result in a detectable signature as an increased error rate, potentially even preventing key generation, it serves as a warning for further investigation. In QKD, when the error rate is low enough and enough photons have been detected, a shared private key can be generated known only to the sender and receiver. We describe how this novel technology and its several modalities could benefit the critical infrastructures of dams or hydropower facilities. The presented discussions may be viewed as a precursor to a quantum cybersecurity roadmap for the identification of relevant threats and mitigation.